It was forty years ago that I crept (underage) into a frozen cinema in Yorkshire and saw my first Shark. I almost hit the ceiling when Jaws first appeared. I still love that movie but it would be an understatement to say it hasn’t done much for the PR of sharks.
My aim with our latest BBC wildlife series was to try and rebrand Sharks as they truly are - fascinating and vulnerable creatures with complex hidden lives. But filming sharks is tough. Except for a handful of species, no one knows even the most basic information about them - where they live, what they do, how many there are. Even those that have been studied mostly live in water that is so murky that not a camera on earth can film them.
But there’s a few exceptions. One of these is on the Coast of Cape Fear in the southern United States. It was given its name by the sailors who were ship wrecked on its wicked shores and shoals. In the second world war, U-Boats patrolled here and sank many oil tankers.
Now these wrecks are home to hundreds of Ragged toothed sharks. No one knows why they like to stay inside these hulls - perhaps it is safety from currents, or warmer water, or just the gloom. But a ship wreck full of sharks makes for great photography and so it was the site of our first film shoot.
Each morning at dawn we loaded the Scuba tanks onto the dive boat and ploughed twenty miles out into the chop. All the production team are highly experienced divers as well as being biologists and we kitted up and checked the gear whilst we motored out. As the diving was deep and we needed to maximize our time in the water the film crew used specialized rebreather diving tanks.
Once on site we dived into the murk and the wrecks slowly came into view in the depth beneath us. Through a hole in the hull we made our way inside. I couldn’t believe my eyes as silhouetted sharks swam along the sunken corridors. In the main hold there were over twenty sharks hanging in the water as we swam around them with our cameras.
They were totally oblivious to our presence. We swam right up to them and although their tiny yellow eyes fixed us in a stare they did not move. It was only if we accidentally touched their tail they would suddenly wake from their trance and shoot off for a few feet.
The truth is, Ragged tooth sharks feed on fish. Not only are we not on the menu, they are not the slightest bit interested in us. In fact that goes for nearly all sharks. Over the course of our two years filming, our camera and production teams spent 2646 hours underwater without a single dangerous encounter. You needn’t worry about Jaws - it is safe to get back in the water.
shark is nominated for Best Natural History Documentary at The Grierson Awards 2016.
Steve Greenwood for BBC Studios; first shown: BBC One
