Sharks | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

0:11 The coastal waters around Cape Town, South Africa,

0:14 have long teamed with great white sharks.

0:16 But about 10 years ago, carcasses of these feared predators began washing

0:21 up on beaches with their livers missing.

0:24 Now, it's hard to find any great whites.

0:27 Tonight, a story that has all the hallmarks of a who done it.

0:30 One that's fueled a bitter feud among scientists and conservationists

0:34 who can't agree on who or what is the real culprit.

0:37 They do agree on one thing.

0:39 The great white sharks that once cruised these waters are gone.

0:46 For as long as anyone can remember,

0:48 the ocean off Cape Town was the best place in the world to see great whites.

0:56 There were plenty of smaller sharks for them to hunt and tens of thousands

1:00 of seals which live on a small stretch of rock nearby called Seal Island.

1:08 Early each morning, with a little luck,

1:10 you could catch sight of these majestic predators flying out of the water.

1:16 That was unbelievable.

1:18 Until a little more than a decade ago,

1:20 Chris Fallows, a photographer and naturalist,

1:23 used to see 250 to 300 different great white sharks a year.

1:28 The images he took back then are

1:30 amongst the most breathtaking of the natural world.

1:33 It's a sight you you never forget.

1:35 You know, I still kind of get that tingly feeling

1:38 to see the most spectacular shark on Earth now flying out the water.

1:42 It was truly incredible to see.

1:45 We saw that ourselves in 2010 when we reported on the great whites here

1:50 and the tens of thousands of visitors who

1:52 came each year for a close encounter in cages.

1:55 That was really something.

1:58 We were taken diving without a cage in water

2:01 that had been chummed with blood to attract sharks.

2:06 Immediately, a 15t great white swam straight toward us.

2:11 That's a big voice.

2:12 This is amazing.

2:14 It's coming right toward us.

2:17 Sharks are curious creatures and they circled us constantly.

2:21 It was extraordinary to be so close to such a massive predator.

2:27 How's it going?

2:29 That's just unbelievable.

2:33 Wow.

2:33 And I'm so happy I'm back up.

2:36 But just a few years after that dive,

2:38 sightings of sharks here began to dwindle and the tourists stopped coming.

2:43 If you went out and did that today, you would see nothing.

2:46 Why is that?

2:47 Because their numbers have simply plummeted.

2:49 Tragically, we have all but lost the great white shark.

2:53 The disappearance of great whites from here mystified scientists.

2:58 Allison[ __] a marine biologist with South African National Parks,

3:02 began searching for clues.

3:04 In 2015, divers sent her these photos of smaller shark

3:08 carcasses on the sea floor with mysterious incisions in them.

3:13 It looked so surgical from the photographs that I first

3:17 assumed it must have been done by somebody with a knife,

3:20 a fisherman or something.

3:21 Yes.

3:22 And it wasn't until the next time it happened that I

3:26 managed to retrieve some of the carcasses and study them.

3:32 And I found tooth marks on the pectoral fins of some of the dead sharks.

3:38 Those tooth marks suggested the culprits couldn't be human.

3:41 So[ __] and her colleagues went diving

3:43 for more evidence and encountered an unlikely suspect.

3:47 Orcas, killer whales.

3:50 We just retrieved one of the carcasses and my research partner says

3:56 orca and here comes two orcas under the boat in our study area.

4:02 It was light bulb.

4:05 They were feeding right in that area where we just found the carcass.

4:10 Now what we have is that orcas are

4:13 a real possibility for being the culprit for these carcasses.

4:18 Two years later, great whites began washing ashore with their livers missing.

4:24 What's so tasty about a shark liver?

4:26 It's the most um calorie dense organ out of the whole body,

4:30 and it takes up um almost a third of the shark's body.

4:33 So, they're not trying to eat the entire shark.

4:37 They're just targeting the liver.

4:39 __] and her colleagues perform necropsies

4:42 and confirmed orcas were indeed the culprits.

4:45 They've been in these waters for years,

4:47 but no one had ever seen one kill a great white here,

4:51 though they are known to hunt them off California and around Australia.

4:55 For South Africa, this was completely novel because for a long time you go,

5:00 but white sharks are the apex predators.

5:02 And this is, I think,

5:03 why people struggle to sort of believe that this was happening.

5:06 I mean, it is like something out of CSI.

5:08 It's like you're the detective.

5:09 and I feel like a detective, but for for a long time,

5:12 we we didn't have all of the pieces of the puzzle.

5:17 David Herurwitz helped put the puzzle together.

5:20 He's a whale watching tour operator and was the first person

5:23 to see two very distinctive male orcas hunting and killing sharks.

5:29 He named them Port and Starboard.

5:31 What was distinctive about them is

5:33 that both of their dorsal fins were collapsed, which is very unusual.

5:37 like collapsed over like that.

5:39 The one had collapsed to the left, the other one to the right.

5:42 And being a nautical man, immediately it came to uh my mind.

5:47 Let's call them port starboard.

5:49 And that caught on from there.

5:50 And uh they've become world famous or infamous.

5:55 Infamous because unlike most orcas, which hunt in groups called pods,

5:59 Port and starboard were hunting sharks for their livers as a pair.

6:04 They're hunting on their own in ways people here have never seen before.

6:08 I mean, are these like serial killers?

6:12 They are definitely not serious.

6:13 They're eating the livers of it's like

6:14 Hannibal Lecture with eating liver with fava beans.

6:17 I am so infatuated by Port Star.

6:21 You'll never get me to say a bad word against them.

6:25 Scientists now believe Port and Starbird might even

6:28 be teaching other orcas how to hunt down sharks.

6:31 In 2022, this drone footage captured five orcas working together,

6:36 stunning and then killing a great white.

6:39 Here's an orca with this big white shark upside

6:43 down biting into the area where the liver is.

6:47 More recently, single orcas have been seen

6:49 hunting sharks in South Africa and elsewhere.

6:52 This National Geographic documentary shows an orca

6:55 striking a great white like a torpedo,

7:00 stunning it, then taking it in its mouth.

7:03 They're learning.

7:03 They're learning all the time.

7:05 I think it's hard for people to kind of understand how smart these animals are.

7:10 __] maintains the presence of these smart hunters,

7:13 has chased the once dominant great whites further along the coast,

7:17 and insists that overall the population of great

7:20 whites in South African waters is stable.

7:22 The presence of just two orcas that would drive away hundreds of them.

7:27 The predator eats the prey and that has an impact on some of the numbers.

7:32 But one of the biggest things with predation is the fear of predation

7:36 or the risk of predation and what we call the landscape of fear.

7:40 But gazelle don't disappear because a lion is killing some gazelle.

7:46 They've evolved alongside of their predator.

7:49 White sharks have not.

7:50 White sharks have been the top dog.

7:52 This was a novel predator for them.

7:54 They were not used to being predated on by another species.

7:58 Orcas have been killing white shark for thousand of years.

8:04 Enrico Janari is an Italian marine biologist who's been

8:07 researching great whites in South Africa for 20 years.

8:10 He doesn't agree with Allison[ __] that the population is stable.

8:14 The question is not the orcas are pushing white shark away.

8:18 Same thing happened in California.

8:20 Same thing happened in Australia.

8:21 The question here in Cedria why they are not coming back.

8:25 In California, orcas have killed great white sharks,

8:28 but then the great whites came back.

8:29 Up to six, nine months, the white shark left, but they always come back.

8:35 Janari and photographer Chris Fallows both agree the numbers of great whites

8:40 plummeted a few years before Port and Starboard began their killing spree.

8:46 By the time the great white sharks

8:48 then had completely disappeared from Sue Island,

8:51 we had never once seen port and starboard at Sue Island.

8:55 You don't buy this argument that it's these two

8:57 orcas that have made all the great whites here disappear.

9:00 I don't buy it one bit.

9:01 How can you blame somebody that wasn't even on the crime scene?

9:07 Fellows and Janari argue humans are ultimately to blame.

9:10 They've been documenting the impact of commercial fishing boats on smaller

9:14 shark species that are a staple of the great whites diet.

9:18 The boats lay miles of long lines

9:20 with thousands of hooks attached on the ocean floor.

9:23 The sharks they catch are exported to Australia used for cheap fish and chips.

9:29 Shark long lining is undoubtedly robbing the great white sharks of food.

9:33 It's the primary prey source for the great

9:36 whites when they're not feeding on seals.

9:38 When you remove the prey, you have a significant impact on the predator.

9:42 An even bigger impact on great whites,

9:44 fallows and jennari say are shark nets and baited hooks attached to buoys,

9:49 which the South African authorities have used

9:52 to protect swimmers along the coast since the 1950s.

9:56 Nets and hooks kill more than 20 great whites

9:59 a year along with whatever else gets caught by them.

10:03 The device are designed to kill and lower the population number.

10:07 The concept is one less shark, one less chance of an encounter with a human.

10:15 Jinari would like to see South Africa embrace a variety

10:18 of alternatives to protect swimmers

10:20 like underwater magnetic fields which interfere

10:23 with the sense sharks use for hunting or increasing the use

10:28 of smaller mesh nets which create a barrier without entangling marine life.

10:34 The problem that inside Africa we only using

10:38 little method and that is outdated and unsustainable.

10:43 If you believe that it's these two orcas

10:45 which have driven away the great white population,

10:48 there's not much humans can do about that.

10:51 What your argument is there's actually a lot humans can

10:53 do with longline fishing and getting rid of these shark nets.

10:57 That is something humans can impact.

11:00 Absolutely.

11:00 Let's stop bickering about something we can't control.

11:03 and let's start focusing on the things that we can control.

11:07 And if we don't start addressing those factors that we can control,

11:10 I don't believe there's any hope.

11:12 In 1991, South Africa was the first country

11:15 in the world to protect the great white shark.

11:17 But Enrio Janari believes those efforts have failed and now

11:21 fears it may be the first country to lose them.

11:25 If we lose the white shark in South Africa, we lose a battle for all nature.

11:33 If we can't protect even the most charismatic,

11:36 most protected species on paper in South Africa,

11:40 what chance the little guys,

11:43 the other sharks or the other animals have against unsustainable use?

11:49 Nothing.

11:52 There's a lot of people watching who may not

11:53 have a lot of sympathy with great white sharks.

11:55 Why should somebody care?

11:56 I think somebody should care in the same way

11:58 as we never used to have sympathy with whales.

12:00 You know, we are wiping these animals animals out to the point of extinction.

12:04 Great whites are no different.

12:06 So even if we don't like the look of the animal,

12:09 they're incredibly important for us going forward.

12:15 With no great whites to document,

12:17 has shifted his focus to photographing humpback whales.

12:23 Unbelievable.

12:24 Since a moratorum on commercial whaling was enacted in the 1980s,

12:28 humpbacks have made a remarkable comeback.

12:31 Does it have anything to do with the great whites leaving?

12:33 No.

12:34 What it's got 100% to do with is enlightened governments,

12:37 passionate individuals showcasing the whales for what they were.

12:42 Incredibly sentient creatures having an important role to play in our ocean.

12:46 Therefore, they became protected and then now

12:48 their numbers are being allowed to expand naturally.

12:51 To you, that's an example that conservation efforts can work.

12:54 Undoubtedly, it can work.

12:55 I believe, you know, if we take away pressures on animals,

12:59 if there are enough of them, they will still rebound.

13:02 It's called balance.

13:04 A balanced ocean is a healthy ocean.

13:05 A healthy ocean is a healthy environment for us.

13:16 The book and movie Jaws introduced us to the great white shark

13:20 more than 40 years ago and scared us out of our wits.

13:24 Much of the film was shot in the waters off Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

13:28 The irony is that when it came out in the mid 1970s,

13:33 there were very few white sharks around Cape Cod.

13:37 The species was in the midst of a serious decline,

13:40 and the movie made it worse with fishermen

13:42 hunting the few great whites that there were.

13:46 White sharks were granted federal protection in 1997,

13:50 and in the years since have made a comeback

13:53 that has delighted conservationists and frightened swimmers and surfers.

13:58 On Cape Cod this summer,

13:59 shark sightings and beach closings were about as common as lobster rolls.

14:04 As we saw for ourselves, the Atlantic great white shark is back.

14:13 Look at this fish.

14:14 Look at this fish.

14:16 Yeah, look at this fish.

14:17 On a Tuesday in midepptember, we are with Dr.

14:20 Greg Scoal, chief shark scientist

14:23 for the Massachusetts Department of Marine Fisheries,

14:26 following an 11 ft white shark swimming just

14:30 feet off the beach near Truro on Cape Cod.

14:34 And if you're standing there, you don't know that shark.

14:37 You don't know that shark.

14:38 No idea.

14:39 She's like 10 ft offshore.

14:41 Yeah, it's very close.

14:42 Now,

14:43 white sharks are so close to shore because that's where their favorite food is.

14:48 Gray seals.

14:50 Thousands of which now call Cape Cod home.

14:53 This is the restaurant right here.

14:55 These sharks have found the restaurant

14:56 and they're waiting for the doors to open.

14:58 You know, and when those seals begin to leave the beach, you know,

15:02 it's dinner time.

15:03 It's dinner time.

15:05 Scoal and his team from the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy are trying

15:09 to attach electronic tracking tags to as many sharks as they can.

15:14 Nearly 200 so far.

15:16 The way they do it is fascinating.

15:19 Pilot Wayne Davis locates sharks from his spotter plane,

15:23 then guides boat captain John King onto them.

15:27 Yeah, use a little gas, John.

15:28 He's right on the shore.

15:30 It's about as good as it's going to get.

15:33 Standing on a pulpit on the bow of a small boat,

15:36 Greg Skumo wields a long pole that has a dart and a tag at the end.

15:43 Wait, right there.

15:44 Done.

15:44 You got him.

15:46 Tag.

15:46 That was it.

15:46 There he goes.

15:47 Oh.

15:48 Oh my god.

15:49 Beautiful.

15:50 Beautiful placement, Greg.

15:51 Yeah.

15:52 Thank you, John.

15:52 Nice work.

15:53 See, you can see where it was.

15:55 Yeah.

15:55 You could see it right at the base of the dorsal.

15:57 See it?

15:57 Yeah.

15:57 Yeah.

15:58 Now, we're going to learn about that fish for the next 9 10 years.

16:02 They will track the fish because the tag constantly emits a ping that is

16:07 picked up when the shark swims close to acoustic receivers attached to buoys.

16:12 And how many of these do you have up and down the coast?

16:14 We have over a hundred out all over Massachusetts.

16:17 And that's just you.

16:18 Other people have others.

16:19 Yeah.

16:19 So, we can actually track the movements

16:21 of our white sharks when they leave here.

16:24 The tags also help Scoal and his research

16:26 colleague Megan Winton figure out just how many sharks

16:30 there are and have established that Cape Cod

16:34 is now one of the world's white shark hotspots.

16:39 They regularly haul buoys out of the water and download data from them

16:43 to a tablet that displays each time a tagged shark swims by.

16:49 Lots of white shark detections over the This tells them a lot about individuals.

16:55 They have confirmed that they are loners and that the same one

16:59 will often come back to precisely the same hunting ground year after year.

17:04 A white shark seemed to be hunting Greg Scoal last

17:07 year when it came up jaws open right under THE PULPIT.

17:12 OH, holy crap.

17:15 Came right up and opened his mouth right at my feet.

17:18 That shook him up for a bit, but he insists it shouldn't shake up the public.

17:23 You know, all I can tell them is is

17:25 that the probability of them being bitten is incredibly low.

17:29 But there's not much more I can say because that fear is primal.

17:35 I think that fear is primal.

17:36 I think it's innate.

17:37 I think it's in them.

17:38 It's in us.

17:38 It's in all of us.

17:40 5 days after our day on the water off Cape Cod,

17:44 we needed a bigger boat for a very different shark tagging expedition

17:49 600 miles to the northeast just off Hay Island in Nova Scotia.

17:55 Good morning.

17:56 Morning.

17:56 How are you?

17:57 We boarded a 125 ft research ship called O Search,

18:02 which has been tagging Atlantic white sharks from Florida to Canada since 2012.

18:08 Founder Chris Fiser invited us to join

18:11 the first day of his 2019 Nova Scotia expedition.

18:15 And we come up here.

18:16 We've been here 24 hours.

18:17 We've seen two or three sharks and no

18:20 one ever even knew to come look here before.

18:23 Oarch launches a team on a small boat to hook

18:26 white sharks much as fishermen would using long lines,

18:30 bait, and floats to keep them near the surface.

18:34 Hook in the corner of the mouth.

18:35 Squirt away.

18:36 Everything's green out here.

18:37 O search is a converted Alaskan crab boat equipped

18:41 with a platform that's lowered into the water off one side.

18:46 As the small boat towes the shark alongside,

18:49 O search fishing master Brett McBride leaps

18:52 onto the submerged platform into water that's 49°.

18:59 With the line in his hand, he guides an,00B male white shark onto the cradle.

19:09 Whoa.

19:09 Whoa.

19:09 Look at that.

19:11 The platform is raised out of the water, effectively beaching the shark.

19:17 It offers no resistance.

19:19 Worn out after being hooked and towed for nearly an hour.

19:23 McBride gets right in its face to insert a hose between its giant jaws.

19:30 Keeping the clean sea water from flowing over its gills.

19:34 I'm making sure it's getting good oxygen.

19:36 A team member starts a clock.

19:38 They don't want to keep the shark out of the water for more than 15 minutes.

19:42 And O search chief scientist Dr.

19:45 Robert Huder gives me an opportunity I'm not quite sure I want.

19:50 So, Bill, just go ahead.

19:52 Go ahead and take your time because feel how beautiful that is.

19:56 Oh my god, how smooth.

20:00 Then go this way.

20:00 Rub your hand the other way and you feel it's kind of bumpy.

20:04 Yeah.

20:04 My god.

20:05 The O search team swarms the shark, drawing blood and tissue samples,

20:10 picking off parasites to be analyzed, and measuring its girth and length.

20:17 371 total.

20:18 That's 371 cm or 12 feet 2 in.

20:23 The biggest Atlantic great white they've caught was

20:26 a 16 foot female who weighed 3500 lb.

20:31 As Chris Fiser measures this one,

20:34 Bob Huder inserts an acoustic tag like the one Greg Scoal attaches with a dart.

20:41 That doesn't harm the shark.

20:43 No, it's just it floats in the body cavity.

20:46 Let's roll the shark.

20:47 Everybody step back.

20:49 After the shark is rolled onto its belly, there we are.

20:53 We're at 11 minutes.

20:54 Chris Fisher drills through the dorsal fin.

20:57 He insists it's no more painful than piercing an ear.

21:01 He's attaching the tag that really sets OARCH

21:05 apart in the world of white shark tracking.

21:08 The spot tag allows us to track this animal in real time for up to 5 years.

21:12 The spot tag will send a signal to a satellite each

21:16 time this shark's dorsal fin comes above the surface of the water.

21:20 Oarch has put nearly 50 of them on Atlantic

21:23 white sharks and displays their tracks on its website.

21:28 And that's how you learn not only where they are,

21:30 but what they're doing where they are,

21:32 which is what you need to know to manage, right?

21:33 Where's the mating?

21:34 Where's the birthing?

21:35 Where's the foraging?

21:36 Where's the gestating?

21:37 While some scientists criticize the O search techniques as too invasive,

21:42 they are gathering a lot of data.

21:45 17 different research projects will get

21:48 samples and information from a single shark.

21:51 Doesn't take much to make everybody happy.

21:54 Still, there are a lot of unknowns.

21:57 No white shark has ever been kept in captivity,

22:01 and no one has ever seen them mate or give birth anywhere.

22:06 But there are also discoveries.

22:08 The O search team has confirmed that the waters off Long

22:11 Island are an important nursery for baby whites like these called pups.

22:19 Did you get him?

22:19 Yeah, got him.

22:20 And back on Cape Cod,

22:22 acoustic tags are teaching Greg Skoal about just how far adult sharks travel.

22:28 So, what's the most interesting thing you have learned about them?

22:31 We now know based on the tagging work we've done

22:34 the last 10 years is that when they leave Cape Cod,

22:36 they go down to Florida and they spend the time

22:39 in the Gulf of Mexico and they overwinter in these southern climates.

22:43 But then some of these sharks move out into the open Atlantic Ocean.

22:47 And when they're out in the middle of the Atlantic,

22:49 they dive down to depths as great as 3,000 ft every day.

22:53 And there's not a scientist on Earth that can tell you why they do that.

22:57 Scientists have learned how long live they are.

23:00 White sharks we now know live over 70 years.

23:04 70 years.

23:05 70 years.

23:06 They don't start hunting seals until their late teens.

23:10 But when they do, watch out.

23:13 In this footage Greg Scoal shot,

23:15 you see a seal leap out of the water with a shark right on its tail.

23:21 HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THAT BEFORE?

23:24 HERE, the shark catches a seal,

23:26 and the ocean water explodes in blood red in an instant.

23:31 The shark then swims away with half a seal in its jaws.

23:36 Seals have been protected by federal law since 1972,

23:41 and some 25,000 now live near Cape Cod.

23:45 More seals means more sharks,

23:48 and that's what worries the swimmers and surfers sharing the water with them.

23:52 This photo was taken at the Cape barely a week ago.

23:57 Great white sharks very rarely attack people.

24:00 The one that killed a swimmer named Arthur Medishi just off this beach

24:05 last September was the first fatal attack on Cape Cod since 1936.

24:10 But it triggered a fear of attacks that can hardly be measured.

24:15 Scary warning signs on every beach.

24:18 Stop bleed kits at lifeguard stands.

24:22 a phone app called Shark Tivity that reports sightings

24:25 in real time with local news doing much the same.

24:30 And community meetings packed with frightened citizens.

24:34 And no sharks or seals are worth a young man's life.

24:37 They're just not.

24:41 You're the scientist, but you also live here.

24:44 And you know, people are afraid.

24:47 We can't bury our heads in the sand when it comes to shark attacks.

24:50 And so that's in my face every day now.

24:53 And then it always falls back on, you know,

24:55 the question of, well, what do you tell your kids to do?

24:58 You know,

24:59 what do you tell your kids to do?

25:01 You know, I I tell my kids, don't go out past waist deep.

25:05 That's chilling advice for swimmers, for surfers,

25:08 and for the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce.

25:11 I mean, we basically got to undo everything Jaws did.

25:15 I mean, we got half the people on the eastern

25:17 seabboard terrified about something that almost never happens.

25:21 I saw the teeth on this character here.

25:24 People who are swimming nearby should not be afraid of that.

25:27 No, they're clever.

25:28 Like even though we dress up like their food and try to fool them,

25:30 they very rarely get fooled.

25:33 What do you mean dress up like their food?

25:35 You ever seen what someone in a wet suit looks like compared to a seal?

25:38 He's got a point.

25:40 When this white shark's 15 minutes on the O search platform ran out,

25:44 we were ordered off.

25:47 That was amazing.

25:48 They gave him a name,

25:51 Sydney.

25:50 For the nearest Nova Scotia town, and began lowering him back into the water.

25:55 And what you guys have done to this does not harm or hurt the shark at all.

25:59 No, because we're we're monitoring the stress of the animal throughout.

26:02 After a couple of minutes, he perked up,

26:05 especially when he noticed the O search

26:08 photographer in the water around the corner.

26:12 He's looking at

26:14 Finally, with fish master Brett McBride helping steer him by the tail.

26:19 Off went Sydney.

26:22 There he goes.

26:23 Do your thing.

26:24 Good luck, OLD BOY.

26:26 SYDNEY.

26:28 SYDNEY.

26:29 YEAH.

26:40 There's no animal that we fear more

26:42 and understand less than the great white shark.

26:45 In part because it's so hard to get near them.

26:47 Studying great whites hasn't been easy.

26:50 But there is one man who has spent his life

26:52 getting closer to great whites more often than anyone else.

26:56 His name is Mike Rutson.

26:58 And in South Africa, where he lives, he's known simply as the shark man.

27:02 What he's discovered about these predators will surprise you.

27:05 Far from being mindless killing machines,

27:08 Rutson believes great whites are smart, curious, and not out to kill humans.

27:13 And as you're about to see, he's willing to risk his life to prove it.

27:24 Mike Rutson is looking for a great white shark he can swim with.

27:28 That's right, swim with.

27:33 Before he gets in the water,

27:35 he needs to find a great white that's both calm and curious.

27:38 A shark he refers to as a player.

27:42 That's a player.

27:44 What's a player?

27:45 Well, player is basically the shark that's so relaxed, has a nice personality.

27:50 woke up on the right side of the reef and

27:52 on the right side of the reef.

27:55 Yeah.

27:54 Um and the animals willing to interact with us.

27:57 It's so curious.

27:59 Rudson says great whites have personalities.

28:01 They may be the top predator in the sea,

28:03 but he says they are not the man-eating killers of our nightmares.

28:08 Now, how how can you tell that's a player?

28:09 Look how she's moving.

28:11 She's checking everything out.

28:12 Checking how slowly she's going to do this.

28:15 See how she looks at everything.

28:16 Wow.

28:17 Yeah.

28:17 Yeah.

28:17 It's moving very slowly around the boat.

28:18 Very slowly check.

28:19 He's going to come and watch the motor now.

28:21 That's what we want.

28:22 So, this is a curious shark.

28:23 You You can work with this shark.

28:25 This is a player.

28:26 This shark and several others have been attracted to Rutson's boat by chum,

28:30 a mixture of bait and fish blood.

28:32 It's believed Great Wyatt can smell a single

28:35 drop of blood from a 100 yards away.

28:39 My cover.

28:41 Now that he's found a player, Rudson and his cameraman,

28:44 Moure Hardenberg, suit up and prepare to do the unthinkable.

28:48 Plunge into bloody water with great white sharks all around.

28:52 There's no universities to teach you what

28:55 these animal social dynamics are and social behavior is.

28:59 And the only way to find that out is by getting into the water.

29:04 Immediately, a curious great white comes straight at Rutson.

29:07 His only protection, his camera.

29:09 Rutson has figured out that great whites don't like the feel of metal.

29:16 Good visibility is crucial.

29:18 The sharks are constantly circling and Rudson has to continually

29:21 turn around so they don't sneak up on him.

29:24 They are extremely inquisitive creatures.

29:26 I like to say they're like little kids

29:28 in a toy store and you just tell them don't touch.

29:31 Observe.

29:32 They'll touch.

29:32 Problem is when when they get curious they they sometimes bite.

29:37 Yes.

29:37 The animals are not trying to actively kill you.

29:39 They're trying to outwit you.

29:40 There's a difference.

29:42 And you're trying to outwit them again.

29:43 So, there's a mental battle going on or a mental

29:45 game being played between you and the shark, I believe.

29:48 So, yes.

29:49 I That seems like the ultimate test of putting your life on the line.

29:54 I would like to think that it's the ultimate trust between the animal myself.

30:02 Rutson is not a scientist.

30:04 He was born on a farm and knew nothing about sharks until 20 years

30:08 ago when he began working as a fisherman along this rugged coast near Cape Town.

30:13 These waters are home to the world's highest concentration of great whites.

30:18 This is the hot spot in the world for great whites.

30:21 A perfect hot spot because it's an ideal feeding ground for great whites.

30:24 It's not far from the southern tip

30:26 of Africa where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet.

30:30 The water is rich in nutrients which attract whales,

30:33 huge shos of fish and seals, some 60,000 of them.

30:39 Seals are a prime target for great whites.

30:42 Early one morning, Rutson takes us to an area called Shark Alley.

30:46 The seals pass through here searching for food.

30:49 There are plenty of fish in the sea.

30:50 Why why are the sharks so interested in the seal?

30:52 The reason for that is the blubber.

30:55 Marine mammals have a blubber layer and that blubber whoa big shark.

31:00 That blubber layer is extremely energy rich.

31:04 OH MY GOD.

31:06 That's what we're talking about.

31:07 The sharks leap straight out of the water,

31:09 stunning the seals before devouring them.

31:12 Seals are mammals.

31:13 They're quick, agile, and smart.

31:16 But as Rutson has learned, they're no match for the power,

31:19 speed, and intelligence of the great whites.

31:22 They have to outsmart the seal.

31:24 They if they weren't as smart or smarter than the seal,

31:27 they wouldn't have eaten it.

31:30 Watching great whites hunt has become a big

31:32 business in this part of South Africa.

31:36 Each year, tens of thousands of tourists flock to the town of Khanbai.

31:41 They're offered a close encounter with great

31:43 whites from the safety of an underwater cage.

31:47 That was that was really something.

31:50 Rutson started his own dive operation 15 years ago.

31:54 It began as a business, but has become a mission,

31:57 an effort to learn about great whites and dispel the myths surrounding them.

32:01 I think that humans like to fear these animals and not understand these animals.

32:08 Each year, as many as 70 million sharks are

32:11 slaughtered to make shark fin soup, a delicacy in Asia.

32:15 This undercover footage shows how fins are

32:17 cut off while the sharks are still alive.

32:20 Their bodies are thrown back into the sea.

32:22 If people can just see these animals for what they really are,

32:25 I'll be happy because then they have a chance of survival.

32:29 By diving without a cage with the sharks, Rutson is trying to show that they're

32:33 a lot more complex animals than previously thought.

32:39 After every dive, he spends hours reviewing his material,

32:42 trying to make sense of how the sharks interact with him.

32:45 What are you doing with your body here?

32:47 The smaller you make your body, the lesser threat you are,

32:51 and then the animals should come closer.

32:53 The bigger you are, the more threatening you are.

32:57 Ruten believes that the great white is extremely selective

33:00 about what it eats and insists he is not

33:03 on their menu as long as he stays calm and shows the shark that he has no fear.

33:10 So, it's important to stand your ground.

33:12 The most important thing is don't chase the animals.

33:15 Don't run away from the animals.

33:17 Stand your ground and keep eye contact with animal.

33:20 Make eye contact with Make eye contact.

33:22 It's not like a primate.

33:23 If you looking at it, it's already lost the element of surprise.

33:28 Wow.

33:28 Look at this.

33:29 Nice.

33:29 See that?

33:30 You don't see every day.

33:33 You see the eye?

33:34 Oh my god.

33:35 People like to think it's this evil black eye of this great whites.

33:38 Their eyes are actually the color of the blue sea.

33:41 It's beautiful.

33:41 Do you like blue-eyed blondes?

33:43 There's a blue eye that you can't match.

33:48 I hope you've never complimented a woman by telling

33:50 her she had eyes as pretty as a great white shark.

33:52 Uh, not yet.

33:54 Great whites have been around for millions of years,

33:57 but they've never been seen mating or giving birth.

34:00 Their senses are highly developed, but when it comes to touch,

34:03 Rutson believes they often rely on their mouths.

34:07 So, it just uses its mouth to feel you,

34:09 but that's ends up being could be a deadly bite.

34:12 Touch is a very important sense for a living animal.

34:15 So, why shouldn't they use that sense?

34:18 Rutson believes most attacks by great whites

34:20 on humans have been the result of curiosity, not deliberate acts of aggression.

34:25 Worldwide, there are only about five deadly shark attacks each year.

34:29 A tiny amount considering the millions of people who swim in the ocean.

34:33 Rutson says many of us have likely had

34:35 a positive encounter with a shark without even knowing it.

34:39 What do you mean by a positive encounter?

34:41 It's where the animal comes to look at you,

34:43 sees you're not food, it's not what you're hunting,

34:46 maybe very curious in what you're doing,

34:48 look at you for a while, and then move off again.

34:50 You never know the animals there, but the animal knows you are there.

34:53 And that should tell people what

34:55 it would tell the people that these animals are not out to get us.

34:59 They're not in our oceans to kill humans.

35:03 Rutton doesn't take tourist diving with sharks without a cage,

35:07 but we've dived together before and he offers to take

35:10 me for an uplose look at the great whites.

35:12 No cage, no protection.

35:15 On a perfect calm morning, we head to Shark Alley.

35:21 We drop anchor and the chumming begins.

35:25 It doesn't take long for the sharks to arrive.

35:31 I'm reminded of that line in the movie Jaws.

35:33 I think we're going to need a bigger boat.

35:36 The fact we have a paramedic on board

35:38 and an ambulance waiting on shore isn't exactly reassuring.

35:45 They've been chumming the water for about 40 minutes now,

35:48 and there's about four or five great

35:50 whites circling the boat, searching for food.

35:52 There's one in the water right there as we speak.

35:55 So, it's time to start the dive.

35:57 Mike Rudson says the most important thing to remember when

36:00 you're actually underwater with the great whites is to remain calm.

36:03 It's easier said than done.

36:07 Project confidence.

36:08 That's what Mike Rutson recommends.

36:10 Not exactly sure how to do that underwater with a wet suit.

36:15 Rutson and cameraman Hardenberg have been doing this so long they're relaxed.

36:20 My pulse is already high.

36:22 Okay.

36:23 How do you feel?

36:24 Feel good.

36:24 Feel good.

36:25 Good may be an overstatement.

36:28 Just remember, if I get eaten, just keep rolling.

36:30 Cuz the only thing more stupid than being eaten

36:32 would be to be eaten and not have it videotaped.

36:35 Rutson believes the sharks now circling the boat

36:38 are players curious and not too aggressive.

36:41 It's an odd sensation knowing that you're

36:43 about to jump into blood-filled sharkinfested water.

36:47 Rudson goes first, then I take the plunge.

36:51 Immediately, a 15t great white swims straight toward us.

36:55 And listen, that's a big place.

37:00 Their size and power is awesome.

37:03 They don't attack.

37:04 They want to see what we are and circle us constantly.

37:08 This is amazing.

37:10 It's coming right toward us.

37:13 Up close, you see their razor sharp teeth and the strength of their bodies.

37:20 Beautiful.

37:20 It's terrifying but thrilling to be so close to such a massive predator.

37:25 Seeing them in their own environment, not grabbing at bait or lunging at seals,

37:29 gives me a new impression of them, a more complex picture.

37:34 And that is exactly what Mike Rudson is hoping for.

37:41 The current is getting stronger and visibility is deteriorating.

37:44 Mike, you guys are returning to the cage.

37:47 It's getting dangerous down there.

37:48 So, we decide it's time to surface.

37:56 That's just unbelievable.

37:57 It's terrifying and at the same time just exhilarating and

38:01 it's unlike anything else.

38:05 Wow.

38:06 And I'm so happy I'm back up.

38:10 That was great.

38:11 Thank you.

38:12 That's incredible.

38:13 I'm glad I did it, but I'm not sure I'd do it again.

38:17 As for Mike Rutson, he continues to push the boundaries.

38:20 He sometimes even hitches rides on the dorsal fins of great whites.

38:26 These interactions are stunning, but Rutson insists he's not being reckless.

38:32 The more we work with him, the more careful we are because of the knowledge.

38:38 It's not that we're getting complacent because we have done it so many times.

38:42 You're more careful with them now than you were when you started.

38:45 Yes, because we are learning small things of what makes them tick.

38:50 So, we are so careful not to do the wrong thing.

38:53 You did say before though when we talked that you

38:55 know you expect to die at a young age.

38:58 Yeah.

38:59 Well, look at my lifestyle.

39:00 I smoke too much.

39:01 I drink too much.

39:03 And I drive my car very fast.

39:06 But so you don't expect to die from a great white.

39:08 No.

39:09 No.