Video footage of bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas) in murky water
I had to put this together for a submission to a production company, so I thought I’d post it here. Despite all the time I’ve spent in the water with sharks, I’ve only had bull shark encounters a handful of times. I was once rammed by one in mid-water, which was very exciting, but most of my encounters have involved me holding my breath trying to get close to them.
The exceptions were encounters at Beqa Lagoon in Fiji, and at Walker’s Cay in the Bahamas, which were prolonged and close. This footage is all from Walker’s Cay, where the water can get quite murky when stirred up. It was shot in 2006 with a Sony Z1u HDV camcorder in a Light & Motion Bluefin underwater housing and was one of the first times I took a video camera into the water.
The sixgill shark segment on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Oregon Field Guide is now online! The OPB folks filmed this segment during our charter with Team Hydrus [original trip report].
Sharks which normally spend their lives at the bottom of the world’s oceans have been found living in the relatively shallow waters of Puget Sound. Recreational divers and researchers lure sixgill sharks in for up close encounters. It’s believed Puget Sound is a sixgill shark nursery: a safe place to give birth and raise hundreds or perhaps a thousand or more young sharks. There has never been a report of a sixgill attack on a human.
First Broadcast: 2009 Producer: Vince Patton Videographer/Editor: Michael Bendixen Video & Stills Courtesy of : Eric Cheng-WetPixel.com and the Seattle Aquarium
Appeared in episode: Boat Building, Sixgill Sharks, Tsunami Update
Unfortunately, Andy Letourneau, a crew member with Team Hydrus, recently passed away in a diving accident. Vince has posted a tribute to Andy on the OBP website.
Vince Patton, Producer for Oregon Public Broadcasting, just wrote me to tell me that their story on sixgill sharks in Seattle is finally going to air this coming October 22 at 8:30pm PST, and on October 25 at 6:30pm, as part of Oregon Field Guide. We gave Vince some space on our chartered boat a year ago when we were out diving with sixgill sharks.
Some of my underwater footage will be included, and you might even see me in some of the scenes. ;) I don’t have TV signal here at my place, but I’m told that the story will be up on their website after it airs.
Some wildlife photographers and conservationists out there are very much against images of sharks with jaws agape being shown in the media. Whenever I’m providing images of sharks with jaws open to stock agencies, I worry that the images will be used for sensationalist pieces that fuel the typical person’s media-driven fear of sharks.
In the interview for the articles linked above, I wrote this:
Shark photographers who are also conservationists exist in a strange area — we have both protective and sensationalist attitudes toward sharks. On the one hand, we hate to see so-called “sell-out” television programs who only serve to exploit sharks as being dangerous predators who may bite humans. At the same time, we love to capture images of sharks that show their power and predatory skill. If you look at the statistics, very few humans are killed by sharks each year. Given the actual numbers, it’s pretty ridiculous that people are afraid of sharks. I hope to use my shark imagery to start a dialog that will help to dispel common misperceptions about sharks.
Obviously, my quote didn’t make it into any of the articles. One even decided to include “feeding frenzy” in the title even though I made it clear in the interview that sharks were baited to the boat using fish scraps (i.e. there was no feeding frenzy). Still, the text of the articles are pretty neutral, and the comments in the Daily Mail article are all civil and respectful of sharks.
There is no doubt that some people in the shark “conservation” industry, a group of people who seem to be best at fighting with each other rather than focusing on protecting sharks, will not be so happy to see shark teeth in these articles. I did convince the same press agency that supplied these articles do an article about the evils of shark-finning, so using sensationalist images to open dialogs about conservation issues can be effective.
I have been going to the Bahamas to photograph sharks for eight years. Last week marked my 10th trip aboard the M/V Shear Water with Jim Abernethy. This time, I was part of a private charter for my good friend, Lucien, who was there on the very first dive I made with an underwater camera back in 2001. Lucien, Richard and Jacques joined me, Jim and crew members Don, Mike and Ed for eight days of cruising in the Bahamas for with tiger sharks, lemon sharks, Caribbean reef sharks, Atlantic spotted dolphins, and more. The weather forecasts were good: light winds with afternoon showers every day. (read more »)
We are currently back at West End hiding from the weather after spending the day at Tiger Beach. We had a total of five individual tiger sharks, including Emma, our #1 supermodel! Emma’s pregnant at the moment; when she swims toward us head on, her normally large head looks tiny against the bulbous backdrop of her huge belly (which often drags on the sand — funny!). (read more »)
The Shark Angels have released a new pilot video about sharks and the threats they face today. It features Alison Kock, Kim McCoy and Julie Andersen, three women from three different conservation organizations: Save Our Seas, Sea Shepherd, and Shark Savers.
Check it out — it features fantastic footage of sharks in the wild as well as footage of the threats that are decimating their population today…
The world’s most feared and misunderstood animal is also the most hunted. The frightening reality few of us know is that sharks, the creatures we fear most, are battling for survival. Over 100,000,000 sharks will be killed this year – that’s 11,432 sharks killed every hour. And, there is no telling what will happen when we remove these critical apex predators from the world’s largest and most important ecosystem – our oceans. Like them or despise them, we need sharks on this planet.
The sharks are in desperate need of guardian angels, and we just might be their last hope. The Shark Angels represent three different conservation organizations, Save Our Seas, Sea Shepherd, and Shark Savers, that are working together, in an unprecedented way, to prove that regardless of approach, we can all work with one another – and that there are many ways to make a difference for sharks. The Angels are leading a grassroots campaign – combining their respective organizations’ strengths in awareness, education, science, grassroots activism, and enforcement – to combat the myths about sharks, to expose the sad truth that many sharks are being chased towards extinction and to stop the global slaughter before it is too late. Simply put, we aim to save sharks… and we need your help.
Below is about 55 minutes of tiger shark video clips from the Bahamas. It is partitioned into 5-minute chunks, which you can view via the “Scenes” interface. Alternatively, you can download the entire video, but it’s 650MB. (read more »)
I found an article on sixgill sharks which states that sixgills have “small, flourescent [sic] green eyes with a black pupil.”
That a perfect example of a writer writing about something he/she has never seen before. In many photographs, the eyes of a sixgill shark do glow green, but that is because sixgills have a tapetum lucidum (like cats do), which reflects light (and thus, appear to glow green when the light source is close to the camera’s lens). In fact, I’ve seen shark eyes reflect like frickin’ laser beams at night when the light source is moved around a bit. It’s creepy.
I’m going to write an article about cats. I found this photo:
Photo: Una Smith (Creative Commons)
… and have concluded that cats have one fluorescent green eye, one glowing red eye, and generally look pissed off. (read more »)
First, a bit of history: Marty Snyderman introduced me to Travis Swanson at DEMA last year and told me that Travis was the “Jim Abernethy of the Pacific Northwest.” Howard Hall and Marty had been out with Hydrus earlier come back with fantastic images and video footage of sixgill sharks (Hexanchus griseus) in relatively shallow water. Sixgill sharks are a deep-water shark species rarely seen by recreational SCUBA divers, and I was really intrigued by the possibility of seeing one. Marty’s introduction prompted me to immediately book an exploratory trip with Travis and [Team Hydrus][teamhydrus]. I invited Douglas Seifert (contributing editor, Dive Magazine) and Simon Rogerson (editor, Dive Magazine) along for the trip; I travel with Douglas frequently, but it had been years since I had seen Simon. (read more »)
I’m in the Puget Sound off of Seattle diving with sixgill sharks(Hexanchus griseus). We just finished our first evening in the water, and had fantastic luck (we started at around 9pm). Matt Segal and I dropped in and had four female sixgills come in on the bait almost immediately. I felt tremendous privilege being in the water with them because they are such elusive animals; our habitats simply don’t normally have any overlap.
a sixgill shark in Seattle (Hexanchus griseus)
During Simon’s rotation, he saw a large sixgill (12 ft long, estimated) eating crabs. We’re told that this behavior has never been seen before, and hope to be able to capture it on video tomorrow night.
I always thought ratfish (Chimaeras) were rare (I photographed some in Alaska, but there were literally hundreds down at the bottom today, along with about a billion dungeness crabs. If you want to photograph ratfish, there is no need to fly off to some exotic place and descend down into the depths. Fly to Seattle, chuck some bait off of the side of your boat, and shoot as many photos as you need!
On the way up from the dive, we ascended through an algae bloom. I looked over at Matt while we were hanging at our safety stop, and the slight oscillation of the ascent line caused his body to throw off literally thousands of sparkling lights…
six-gill shark — count ‘em. there are six of them. :)
Continue reading for video updates from the field. I’ll be uploading video as time allows for the next three days. (read more »)
This image has been sent to me so many times that I thought I’d finally post it (presumably sent to me because it includes a “shark attack” item). I’m told that there are an average of five reported fatalities by shark attack each year, worldwide. This year, I believe there have been four high-profile, shark-related deaths so far. We’re ahead of schedule, it seems. (read more »)
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