Original subtitles

On dry land, we feel at home.

We feel safe.

Place us in the dark open sea,

we're not so confident.

For centuries, we've imagined the ocean

to be filled with nightmarish creatures.

Now, all our fears are focused on one animal.

But is it the monster we've imagined it to be?

Sleek, streamlined and perfectly adapted,

sharks evolved long before mammals, birds or even dinosaurs.

For almost half a billion years,

they have played a crucial role in the marine ecosystem.

And sharks have survived events that wiped out the dinosaurs

and transformed life on earth.

The vast majority of fish in the sea have bony skeletons.

But sharks don't have a bone in their body.

Bony fish may have evolved into the largest

and one of the most varied groups

of vertebrate species on the planet,

but sharks endured.

Partly because they made such incredibly efficient hunters.

Sharks are one of evolution's greatest success stories.

Until now.

With the rise in demand for shark fin soup,

every year tens of millions of sharks

are killed primarily for their fins.

Some shark populations have been reduced by 99%,

and many oceanic sharks face extinction.

But the combined efforts of people all over the world

are helping one shark fight back.

Carcharodon carcharias, the great white.

Up to 20 foot long,

weighing over two tons, it's the largest of the carnivorous sharks.

It has excellent eyesight and sense of smell,

but can also detect vibrations in the water along its entire body.

It can even detect the electricity generated by living things.

With the combination of a soft skeleton and powerful tail muscles,

it is flexible and fast.

Its speed is helped by its elastic skin,

covered in tiny teeth-like scales called "denticles."

And much like mammals, it gives birth to live pups.

It also has a method of regulating its body heat,

so the great white is not cold-blooded.

It's truly a global species.

Its range stretches throughout the pacific,

across the Indian and Atlantic oceans

and even into the mediterranean.

From time to time they do come close inshore,

with the possibility of human interaction.

But you are more likely to be killed by falling out of bed

than by any shark.

Our fear is out of all proportion.

Especially when we discover that some of us have been

living alongside white sharks our whole lives without even realizing.

Here in Los Angeles, there are great white sharks

just off the beach almost every single day.

Ls our coastline a hot spot for

the notorious great white shark? Doug?

They're just babies, Jackie.

These juvenile great white sharks are showing up off our shores

in greater numbers than ever before.

And new research from Cal state university

has actually backed up increasing shark numbers here in California.

Dr. Chris lowe of the Cal state university in long beach

is one of many scientists around the world

trying to fathom the mysteries of the great white.

Southern California is the nursery ground for

white sharks for the eastern pacific.

You know, we heard about it because we heard that

local commercial fishermen were incidentally

catching them occasionally in their nets.

Occasionally people will catch them off the piers, fishing.

The sharks that we've tagged tend to spend their whole summer here,

in the Santa Monica bay area up into Malibu,

kind of moving along the shoreline.

And then we found, based on our satellite tagging data,

that these sharks migrate down to Mexico.

What we don't know is whether they come back.

Now that they're federally protected, there are more sightings.

But Dr. lowe says in south bay,

there has never once been an attack.

I mean, what people forget is you're far

more at risk driving to the beach

than you would ever be from encountering a shark.

Dr. lowe has been working alongside monterey bay aquarium,

who have developed a technique for capturing young white sharks.

With the help of local fishermen, a net is drawn in a huge arc

around a single juvenile great white.

One, two, three.

We put the shark in a water bath.

And at that point, we can assess the shark.

John, you clear?

So we'll take a look at it. Look for scars and marks.

Any injuries that it may have. We'll measure it.

Once we've done that, we then roll the shark

over, and when the shark's inverted,

it goes to sleep.

It's a thing we call "tonic immobility,"

and at that point, the shark just lays there.

Then what we'll do is we'll surgically

implant an acoustic transmitter.

Now the transmitters that we put in these

sharks are designed to last for 10 years.

Every shark gets a unique transmitter that has its own special code.

So when that shark swims by an acoustic receiver

out along the shoreline,

when it swims in the detection range,

it'll tell us the ID code, the date

and the time that that shark swam by.

If the sharks migrate down to Mexico,

hopefully we'll be able to detect them when they come back

and we'll be able to do that for a decade.

Okay. Ready?

Probably the most amazing thing

is that most people don't know that

right in our front yard in Los Angeles

is the most important nursery grounds

for white sharks in the eastern pacific.

This is the second great white spotted off venice beach in just two months.

But experts say not to worry, they're baby great whites, Jackie.

They're not interested in humans.

Oh, i don't know, Doug.

I'm not going to trust that, Doug.

I'm not swimming with... I'll tell you what,

I'm not swimming with any baby great whites...

- No, no, no, no. - ...Anytime soon.

We have a perfectly understandable

innate fear of the great white's jaws.

It can have over 300 razor-sharp teeth in multiple rows.

So when it loses a tooth, a backup simply rolls forward to fill the gap.

And throughout their life, they will produce thousands of teeth.

Unfortunately, their jaws are highly prized

and can fetch as much as $20,000 on the black market.

They also inspired a story that introduced the great white

to millions of people around the world

and helped to replace the tentacled

sea monsters of our imagination

with one very real creature.

What the success of Peter benchley's book

and Steven Spielberg's movie has proved

is that however much people fear sharks,

they are equally fascinated by them.

Entrepreneurs all over the world

have realized real sharks

might be just as big an attraction as fake ones.

One place the white shark can be worth

more alive than dead is South Africa.

Gansbaai is the self-styled

great white shark cage-diving capital of the world.

Cage diving is not without controversy.

By baiting sharks with blood and fish,

are they learning to associate human activity with feeding?

But is this any different to the hundreds of thousands of fishing boats

casting their bait or cleaning their catch close to the shore?

Many would argue that cage diving

is pivotal to changing people's attitude,

and in 1991, South Africa became

the first country to protect the great white shark.

In other parts of the world,

visitors don't observe sharks from the surface.

Instead, the cages are suspended underwater.

Shark-proof cages were first developed in Australia in the 1960s

as a way of observing and filming sharks.

So it is something of a conundrum

that whenever we observe great whites, they are also observing us.

There's only so much you can learn about great whites by watching them

from behind bars.

Their real life remains something of a mystery.

It is my opinion that great whites, for me, is the most

incredible, beautiful animals on the planet.

Mike rutzen, one of south Africa's leading cage dive operators,

is actively trying to change people's attitude towards the great white.

He does this by getting even closer to the sharks.

Outside the cage.

Most people fear them. Most people think they're the devil.

And that is because they do not know them.

They've never seen them and people like to fear the unknown.

And just the way she approaches the boat. What she does around the boat.

How curious she is. How she investigates everything.

Is the animal going to accept it or not?

They'll try to put you in a less dominant position

every time they approach.

With predators like the great white,

if you see him, keep eye contact

with the animal as much as possible.

They are looking for an edge and as soon

as you can see them and they know

you're seeing them, they do not have the edge anymore.

Best animals for me to work with is big female sharks.

They are very placid normally. If you get a big male,

he tells you what to do.

And then you get the smaller ones, they're like 17-year-old kids

and they try and sneak in and just cause

havoc sometimes like any teenager would.

I like to say that great whites

are the best ambassadors for themselves.

Through the documentaries and through people actually coming out here

and seeing the animals, people get a healthy respect for them

and not this mortal fear.

People fear what they do not know, not what they do know.

So the more we can get people to understand

how these animals are just trying to be sharks

and not the devil,

the more, hopefully, people will want them on the planet.

Young white sharks hunt rays and fish,

but as they grow bigger, faster and more powerful,

their diet changes and they are drawn to larger prey.

As they mature,

great whites work their way through the food chain,

finally assuming their position as apex predators.

They need only fear the occasional orca

and the species at the very top of the food chain...

Mankind.

Marine mammals have a thick layer of fat called blubber.

It can make up to 50% of their bodyweight.

It stores energy, aids their buoyancy,

and provides insulation from the cold water.

Seals and sea lions can find refuge out of the water

or in the depths of the kelp forest.

But they need every ounce of agility to evade predation.

Because their concentrated store of energy

is exactly what attracts the great white.

In the open sea,

a seal or sea lion can still outmaneuver a shark.

They're even known to snap at the tails of sharks

to send them on their way.

So the great whites learn to keep a respectful distance and wait.

They know the only way to prey upon a seal or sea lion

is to find a blind spot,

and in a display of astonishing speed and pure force,

take them by ambush.

Using a wooden decoy on a fishing line

when the sun is low and the shadows long in the water,

we can demonstrate the true power of the great white.

But there is something amiss in the food chain.

The ocean has become a dumping ground

for industrial pollution, plastic,

and pesticides.

Poisonous chemicals and heavy metals like Mercury

work their way through the marine food chain,

accumulating in the blubber of marine mammals.

And scientists are beginning to see the

side effects, sickness and sterility,

not just in the animals that eat fish, but in people, too.

These chemicals pass from fish to seal blubber, to adult shark

and onto their unborn pups.

But Dr. Chris lowe and his students made an important observation

on the toxins he's finding in the bodies of the baby white sharks.

The levels that we 're measuring would be harmful to people.

But we're not seeing those effects in these sharks,

so we don't know what effect these

contaminants are actually having on them.

Perhaps the immune systems of the great whites

hold the cure for serious or even life-threatening illnesses.

In the cold waters surrounding Stewart island

are some of New Zealand's great whites.

There are anywhere between 100 to 200 great white sharks

in these waters.

These sharks have had little interaction with people.

They are the southernmost known population in the world.

Little is known about the social interaction between great whites,

but there does appear to be a hierarchy based upon size.

And some interaction involves biting.

But great whites have great powers of recuperation from such wounds.

These sharks are being attracted to the surface using bait and chum.

When the shark takes the bait, researchers are able to attach a device

that can record how deep and how far the sharks actually go.

The tags have revealed that these sharks dive

down to over 4,000 feet,

depths previously unheard of.

Satellite tags are beginning to reveal

some of the great white's secrets.

The tags show us that white sharks make

epic journeys through unprotected waters.

New Zealand's sharks venture as far north as

the tropical waters of the coral sea.

South African sharks are capable of crossing the Indian ocean to Australia

and back again.

Each year, Californian and Mexican sharks travel towards Hawaii

and a region dubbed "shark cafe'. "

Only now are scientists beginning to interpret this data

and theorize as to where great whites mate, gestate, and give birth.

Clearly, tagging is crucial to our understanding of great whites.

Guadalupe is a volcanic island in the pacific,

a lost world.

Mauricio hoyos has been studying the great

whites of Guadalupe for over 10 years.

I first became interested in white sharks

when I was a little kid.

When I saw the movie jaws I fell in love

with the perfection of this animal.

Instead of being afraid,

I was amazed by all the adaptations,

which make them the most perfect predator in the oceans.

We have detected sharks that i have tagged in Guadalupe island

in the west coast of the united states, and also in Hawaii.

For years, he has tagged sharks at the surface,

which can be literally a hit and miss affair.

He has enlisted the help of two world champion freedivers,

Fred buyle and William winram, to try and increase his success rate.

We've been working with Mauricio since 2009.

We helped him to tag shark underwater because the way he tags sharks

is from the boat, but sometimes some shark

don't want to come close to the boat

so he cannot tag them.

During this expedition, our entry and exit into the water

to dive with the great whites was from a Mexican fishing boat,

which is known as a "panga."

Whenever the panga comes in and cuts the motor,

immediately at least one shark will come up to it.

So every time we were getting in, it was kind of like,

"well, do we wait for a shark to show up

"or do we take the decision and jump in

"right away and then make eye contact with it?"

So it was always a little stressful

getting in and out of the water.

The advantage of freedivers is that we can choose the sharks.

If he asks us to tag a big female,

we can choose the animal and place the

transmitter exactly where he wants

and on the animal he wants.

So that's the advantage of having freedivers.

Freediving, for me, is the best way to

explore the ocean and the underwater world.

It's the most natural way of going underwater.

Humans have been doing that for 20,000 years.

On freediving, you just go by your sensations.

You are able to enjoy more of the surrounding and the animals.

And I think that's why, as a freediver,

I have a better contact with the animals.

And the best way to observe an animal in the water is not to chase him,

but it's to have him coming at you. That's the best way.

I'm excited about what's going to happen. At the same time, we know,

always, if either one of us, Fred or myself, starts to space out,

we start to lose our ability to concentrate,

then, you know, we give a signal and we get out.

Because you have to pay attention all the time with a great white shark.

Every single time i dive with them,

I'm learning more and more about them and one of the things

that's become really evident about these

animals is that they're really, really smart.

Buyle". We always work with three divers

in the water because then we can have

like a triangle and everybody's watching each other's back.

So we always know if there is a shark behind us.

And that's the most important because

the great white will always come from behind

or where you don't look at.

They know exactly where your field of vision is.

We never stay five seconds with our head in the same position.

We need to show them that we are

watching constantly. They see that.

They analyze our bodies. They know where our eyes are. They test us.

They know our field of vision. They know that.

So we have always to show them that we are aware. They know.

It's a kind of a game.

Well, when you're in the water with the great whites

you have to make eye contact.

You make eye contact, you're giving them notice that you're not prey.

You're not reacting like prey. You're standing your ground.

It's really about managing them and

keeping them in a place where they're not

certain what you are.

They haven't gone into an instinctual mode.

And the biggest thing to do that is to maintain your cool.

The tagging itself, the process when you dive on a shark,

it's a very mental process.

In fact, you have to be in a space

where you don't think about anything else.

But it's a zone where you should be

very calm, peaceful, not moving.

Not even thinking. You don't have to think because

they can pick up thought and little differences in your body language.

I take a last breath and of course, then,

I stop thinking about not breathing.

It's just... freediving is then just a tool.

Go as slowly as i can towards the shark

and then pull the trigger and place the transmitter.

And then usually the sharkjust shake a bit and swim straight.

The good thing with great white, because they are really big,

they get a bit annoyed, leave,

but usually in the next two or three minutes, they are back.

When you reach the moment where you are able to swim with the shark

and you are at the same speed

and in the same kind of state of mind, I think,

because, at that point, the shark is peaceful.

Of course, he's careful like we are.

But we are peaceful and we think

that we can swim for a while with them.

We just observe each other,

and I think we just try to understand what is the other creature.

It's a zone where nobody is aggressing the other

and we just try to understand each other.

I feel good if I see people going and enjoying themselves with animals.

Especially with their kids because

they are the conservationists for the future.

So I've talked with colleagues in Australia

and South Africa and they think

they're seeing some of the same trends that we're seeing here.

So they've been protected in those countries for 15 years,

and the generation time of a white shark

takes 15 years for them to reach

sexual maturity.

So it kind of makes sense that we should start to see more individuals

if all this conservation is actually working.

I am concerned for the future of the white shark.

Internationally, they are protected in a few

countries but they are highly migratory.

And they do not respect human boundaries.

I think that we are still on time to avoid their extinction,

but we must get as much information as

possible to give the governments the tools

to protect them.

We don't know much about them because

most of the observation so far has been

made from cages with bait.

Just by going freediving with them, you see their true behavior.

If great white sharks were mindless killing machines,

we would not be able to do what we do in the water with them.

Despite being protected in key territories for the last 15 years,

great white sharks are still considered vulnerable to extinction.

They are slow growing, late to mature, and don't produce many young.

Key to their survival is a change in our attitude.

Nothing will change our innate fear of this king of the sea,

but perhaps we can come to substitute fear with respect.

By helping the great white survive,

we'll have a chance to unlock its mysteries

and perhaps learn something for our own survival.

The interesting thing that people don't think about

in looking at an animal of the size and power

of a great white shark is that we are far more dangerous to them

than they've ever been to us.