Shark Week: Sevengills Hunt in Packs, Great Whites Form Clans?
Discovery’s Shark Week continues July 10 with the premiere of two new specials, Sharks of the Shadowland (9 p.m.) and Shark Clans (10 p.m.). Here’s a preview.
Sharks of the Shadowland is a real-life drama: There’s an evasive plant threatening New Zealand’s remote Sunday Cove, so one week a month, government divers must venture below to contain it. The problem: sevengill sharks, which have teeth designed to rip apart prey larger than themselves, have gotten increasingly aggressive — one even attacked marine biologist Jenny Oliver. In the special, Oliver, shark researcher Kina Scollay, and commercial diver Ross Funnell (who watches their backs), make multiple dives to try to understand the sevengills better so that the ecosystem-saving work can continue as safely as possible.
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In the clip above, you see their first attempts at tagging sevengills don’t go so well. No dive is safe with these thin, long sharks because they like to approach you from behind in the murky water.
They also appear to work in tandem, approaching from different angles. To test the pack theory, the trio dives at night, when the sharks are even bolder. It’s one of the most nerve-wracking sequences in Shark Week 2015.
In Shark Clans, Rodney Fox — whose attack by a great white during an Australian spearfishing competition was the subject of the 1965 documentary Attacked by a Killer Shark (haunting footage of which is shown in the special) — leads a team off Australia’s Neptune Islands investigating whether great whites really are lone wolves. He’s devoted his life to understanding — and saving — the animal that nearly killed him. “Sharks aren’t very high on people’s list of love affairs. Sometimes I wish I was bitten by a koala,” he says in the special. “It would have been a much easier life: ‘Save the koalas.’ Everybody loves koalas. The sharks have been a difficult, difficult job.”
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After 10 years of research and identifying more than 500 great whites by photographing their markings from head to tail, his team believes they’re seeing sharks arrive at the same time each year, with the same sharks they traveled with before. So, for instance, the 18-footer they’ve named Mrs. Moo seems to always arrive with the equally large females Jumbo, Rhea, and Paillete. Does that “Super Giant Clan” travel together, only associate once they hit the islands, or just happen to be on the same migration? What about the “Cowgirl Clan,” composed of Cowgirl, Buffy, and Anika? The team tries to tag its first mature female to find out. Whether or not they succeed, this special, hands-down, features the most — and best — shark names.
Shark Week continues through July 12. Discovery and its conservation partner Oceana have teamed for the new initiative Change the Tide, which aims to create a coalition of engaged organizations and individuals to help preserve and restore our oceans.
