Most DANGEROUS Sharks | Up Close and Dangerous

Off the northern tip of New Zealand, the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean. 50 miles out, there's a spot known as Middlesex Bank. Here the seabed rises from 3,000 feet deep to just over a hundred. Ocean currents draw up nutrients that support millions of small fish. Food for some of the ocean's biggest. Manta rays, tuna, and striped marlin. Right up amongst them is a fish so fast and deadly it's called blue dynamite, the mako shark. Makos have been clocked at speeds of 60 miles an hour. A special organ keeps their brain and eyes warmer than the surrounding water, making for sensitive vision and fast reactions. The most attractive thing I find about filming large animals is the challenge. You're in the water with an apex predator. Over the last 25 years, Mark Priest and dive buddy Rob Torelli have become two of Australia's leading underwater cameramen specializing in sharks. You want to have a fair bit of experience and knowledge about the animals and even with smaller sharks that you've got to pick their behavioral patterns. When they do become aggressive, they become erratic. You've got to get out of the water. There's no good being heroic. You always want to live to swim another day with these guys. There's always a risk when you're filming shots like these. But by learning more about wild animals, we also discover how to avoid conflict with them. Sharks locate their prey by homing in on the small electronic signals every creature gives off. Electronic shark repellents take advantage of this by creating a powerful electric field around a diver. It doesn't hurt the shark. It overwhelms its senses like the bang of a firecracker would startle a human. Mark and Rob want to test the electronic repellent with mako sharks. They've baited the water to bring the sharks in and they're in luck. A mature female is cruising around. Beautiful shark. Absolutely fantastic shark. She was, you know, probably about eight foot long to nine foot long. They've got razor sharp teeth and big mouths. When they bite, they play for keeps. A big mako has several rows of sharp hook-like teeth designed to catch the fast-moving fish they prey upon. The males also use those teeth to latch onto a mate. A mature female like this one can often carry heavy scars. The bait has also attracted bronze whaler sharks. It is a dangerous situation to get yourself into and one of the most important things you have to have is a good dive buddy that'll back you up in all situations. He's got to watch your back when things do get a little bit torrid. Both divers are hoping their electronic deterrents will provide a personal safety zone. But soon after they enter the water, things go wrong. The sharks seem overexcited and before Mark and Rob can retreat to the boat, the sharks are onto them. The electronic deterrents are having no effect. The female mako homes in on Rob. All he has for protection is his camera. The shark's teeth bite into the lens cover, leaving deep gouges. Neither diver can turn his back for a second. They're trapped in the water. All they can do is stay alert and fend the shark off with their cameras. If we didn't have our cameras, I think we would have a fair chance of getting bitten. She was right on us, right on us. After half an hour, the mako seems to tire and lose interest. Mark and Rob get out of the water as fast as they can. It's hard to say why the electronic deterrent didn't work. Maybe the mako was just too excited by the bait to care. But while the experience was a scary one, Mark suspects the sharks' intimidating behavior may not have been predatory. This sort of behavior of biting objects is what gets sharks into a lot of trouble. They don't have any hands, they have nothing to feel with. They feel with their mouths. And a lot of the times, it's a mouthing and tasting experience that they do. Northeast of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, you find the Coral Sea. Its tropical waters are home to many marine predators, from sharks to sea snakes. It's here that underwater cameraman Mark Priest and Rob Torelli are filming a shark many divers fear above all others. The tiger shark. When a tiger shark's hungry, it will eat almost anything. They're known as the trash can of the sea. Any diver who sees a tiger shark on the hunt should swim gently away and get out of the water. This female is about 12 feet long, and she's on top of Rob and Mark before they can do anything about it. She seemed to become more agitated. She looked hungry. Both divers want to give the shark some space, but they can't swim away. You don't turn your back on a hungry tiger shark. If I'd have turned away, I think she would have kept coming. So I had to keep basically holding my ground, letting her know that I was formidable too. I was going to become her prey. Luckily for Mark and Rob, the shark is suddenly distracted. Rob and I would hear this crunch. Just 15 feet below, the tiger shark bites a bronze whaler shark cleanly in half. It's a sobering reminder of just how quickly a big shark can kill. Despite the danger, the opportunity to see sharks in action keeps Mark and Rob coming back. That, and the chance to share their experiences by filming them. What we'd like people to take away from our images is that sharks aren't just malicious killers. They're not there just to eat you. They're hunters. They're fantastic hunters. They're machines that are built to kill their prey. That's how they live. That's how they survive. The sea off South Australia is a paradise for underwater filmmakers. 50 miles off the coast, you find one of the area's best known dive spots, Dangerous Reef. It lives up to its name. The waters here are swarming with sharks, including the largest of them all, the great white. Here's what draws them in. Colonies of fur seals. With such a plentiful food supply, the great whites in these waters average 14 feet. That's up to a thousand pounds of shark propelling a mouth with 3,000 serrated teeth. A bite takes just two seconds. Powerful muscles shoot the jaws out from the head. They smash together with massive force. Marine biologist and cameraman Richard Fitzpatrick has spent a lifetime studying these incredible animals. As a scientist, Richard is researching movement patterns. He's learned that sharks travel hundreds of miles to feed a dangerous reef. As a filmmaker, he wants to change people's attitudes towards sharks. To me, I'm out there primarily to learn scientifically and through the films to educate the general public about these animals that people fear. To film and study great whites, Richard must first attract them in. Sharks have an acute sense of smell and can pinpoint a potential meal from hundreds of yards away. Large chunks of tuna keep the sharks interested. Richard films them with a video camera on a long pole. He's after good close-ups to accurately identify individuals for his research. Great whites, like all animals and like us, you know, they're all unique in terms of scars and body patterns and things like that. So we use a video camera to visually identify the sharks. When a shark nears its quarry, superb eyesight comes into play. Great whites are the only sharks that use their eyes both below and above the water to check out prey. But their final attack is made blind. Their eyes roll back to protect them from damage. In those last moments, sharks rely on a sixth sense. They home in on the electrical signals all living creatures give off. What they're using are the black dots on the snout, little electrical sensors, and that tells the shark where the food is. But because the bait is dead, it's not giving off an electrical, bioelectrical field like living creatures do. But a camera gives off a strong electrical field. The sharks can mistake it for potential prey, and one of them is about to get the wrong end of the stick. Richard is filming a large tagged male. The shark passes close to his camera. Then he loses sight of it. But the shark doubles back. He bites the camera and pulls Richard overboard. It's a very surreal experience because in your mind's eye, you actually think you're going down the mouth of the shark. Now Richard is in the water with feeding great whites. And the shark just spat the camera. I quickly threw the camera back up on the deck and then climbed out. I call it a virtual shark attack. I mean, it's the closest thing to a great white shark attack you're going to get without physically having teeth and puncture marks on your body. For the rest of the day, Richard is in a state of shock. But he gets an incredible shot. When the camera goes down the throat, the gills flare out. So you can see the light streaming in through the thing that probably the last thing a lot of seals and other animals get to see. Science gives Richard valuable insights into the life of the great white shark. But it's filming them that keeps his sense of wonder alive. When you film stuff that hasn't been filmed before, it's just such a cool highlight. Osprey Reef, an isolated dot of coral in the middle of nowhere. It lies 200 miles off the coast of northern Australia in the Coral Sea. The 15-mile reef teems with tropical fish. Food for the many sharks that also live here. At eight feet long, gray reef sharks are not the biggest. But what they lack in size, they make up for in attitude. If a gray reef feels threatened by a diver, it can strike like lightning, inflicting severe bites. Scientist Richard Fitzpatrick has a healthy respect for these magnificent creatures. He's here to study them, but he also films the sharks. That way he can share what he learns with a wider audience. For the last eight years now, I've been conducting research on the sharks at Osprey. And what we've been looking at is growth rates, movement patterns and things like that. We still have a lot to learn about sharks. The work of people like Richard helps to fill gaps in our knowledge. Underwater data recorders track daily movements. The data tells Richard where the sharks breed and what hunting strategies they use. But working with sharks 200 miles from the mainland is risky. The expedition ship carries full first aid equipment. But if Richard was the victim of a serious shark attack, he'd have to rely on a rescue helicopter. Sharks are particularly dangerous if they associate humans with food. Richard has developed a safe way of bringing them in. We put the food into a crate so they smell and come in. But we don't want to feed the sharks and upset the ecology and balance out there. And because I'm actually doing research on these animals as well, we're trying to look at their natural behavior. Today, the sharks are behaving anything but naturally. As soon as we hit the water, you could tell something was up. You know, just the body language of the sharks. It's like an electric vibe kind of thing. And we had about 40 sharks around us. Then I decided to go directly above the crate because I wanted to shoot down on the pack of sharks milling around the place. Out of the corner of his eye, Richard recognizes an ominous sign. One of the sharks arches its back, fins pressed down. Before Richard can move away, another shark shoots upwards, straight at him. As soon as the shark strikes, it triggers a pack attack. In seconds, sharks are coming at Richard from every direction. Sharks are just pelting in from everywhere. I was getting rammed all over my body. It was like a scene out of the Matrix. It was just bizarre, just spinning and beating sharks off. They just kept coming, coming and coming. I had my camera running, but the whole time I had this one gray reef shark on my left leg. The bottom jaw was flicking on the calm. And by spinning in the water was the only way I could keep my calf muscle out of the mouth. Richard does everything he can to prevent the shark from biting down and creating a medical emergency. You're just preparing yourself mentally that as soon as it does bite to reach down and grab the shark by the gills so it doesn't take that bit of flesh. Because it's easier to stitch up a bite than, you know, fix up a crater. With his adrenaline pumping, Richard feels as if the attack goes on for minutes. The whole event just went for over 12 seconds and then bang. Everything stopped, all the sharks just stopped attacking and I just cruised out back into the normal motion again. When I came up to the boat, my calf muscle just had lots of scratches from the teeth. So I had no teeth lock in actually, which was quite lucky. To this day, Richard has no idea of what went wrong. Perhaps the shark sensed an unusual electrical signal from Richard's camera and this sparked an automatic response. It's another example of how complex sharks are and how little we understand them. It's very important for us to put stuff back into the scientific community and the general community by supporting new types of research. We're using video as a technique to learn about these animals to prevent people from getting hurt by them. Not just out there make a film and that's it. Give something back. Shark experts Val and Ron Taylor pioneered underwater filmmaking. For decades, their shows have taken viewers into the danger zone with some of the largest sharks in the oceans. They want to show us that sharks have their place in this world. They're not mindless killers, but they do demand respect. Every time the tailors climb into the water, they know they're at risk. The California coast to the west of the United States is a hot spot for sharks. 72 miles off San Diego, the tailors are filming blue sharks for a documentary. Blue sharks grow as long as a family car and eat almost anything dead or alive. They swim at more than 25 miles an hour and dive to 1100 feet. Val has studied their behavior. Blue sharks are very, very beautiful, lovely gunmetal blue, and they live in the deep ocean. The only thing that will bring them to the surface is food. The tailors tempt them up by putting out a trail of fish blood and meat. To get good footage of an animal underwater is far more difficult than doing it, say, on land. First of all, you have limited visibility. You generally have to attract the animal to you. After years of practice, Val can hand feed sharks to keep them in front of the camera. She just has to avoid their teeth. Most sharks, when they finally decide they want to know what you are, will fill with their teeth. They don't have hands. They can't go up and fill with their hands. They fill with their teeth. The first touch may do no damage, but as soon as the shark moves its head, its teeth slice through flesh. We were working with Howard Hall, another well-known underwater photographer, and he jumped in the water and he came out and he said, there's a lot of sharks down there. He said, someone's going to get bit. And I said, well, it won't be me. I've never been bitten. I'm not going to get bitten. Val knows the sharks are there for the fish, not for her. But there are so many, it's hard to keep track of them. I'd been in the water about two minutes. It was very busy. I didn't know where to look. I couldn't even see the other divers. I was just so busy with sharks. And I just felt a bump, just a gentle bump on my leg. And I looked down, it was in the shark's mouth. And I thought, uh-oh, not good. And as I looked down, it moved its head. One movement. And I grabbed its nose, held its nose with one hand, and started punching it in the gills. Sharks hate that, with my other hand. And it let go. And when it let go, the blood squirted out, just like it turned on a tap. And I thought, I'm going to bleed to death. When the shark realizes Val isn't bait, it lets go. But even a gentle bite slices through her wetsuit and cuts in deep. I actually grabbed my leg, and this finger, my big finger, disappeared through the wetsuit into the carton. I felt the warmth. Val's nightmare is just beginning. With fresh blood in the water, the shark is back. Val knows she's in the shark's territory. Bitten and bleeding, she's fighting for her life. The shark came back, and I beat him off again. And then I swam to the surface, got to the surface. And I called out to the guys on the boat, get the cameras rolling, get the sound on. I've been bitten by a shark. I think it's bad. Most of the people in the water hadn't realized I'd been bitten. I'll tell you, he's cut right through my leg. How bad is it? I'll have to look. Oh! What do I do? Lay down, Val. Lay down. Sit down. Oh, yeah, it's a bad one. Yeah. That'll have to be stitched. It looks like the teeth are going in about an inch and a half. I know. And into the plate that way. I know. I know it's a nasty one. The wound needs urgent attention. The Coast Guard helicopter races Val to the hospital. 300 stitches later, her leg is saved, but her foot has been numb ever since. Val's spent her life trying to show the world what a magnificent creature the shark is. The attack hasn't changed her feelings. She's still passionate about sharks. Sharks should be respected and loved and admired. They are the perfect creature, nature's perfect invention. She hasn't seen fit to change them in 200 million years. All wild animals belong where they are, and we should love them, admire them, and leave them be. The coast of Patagonia, at the bottom of South America, is wild and remote, which makes it a popular hangout for sea lions. Each year, they gather here to give birth and breed. And each year, they're followed by killer whales. Sailors named them killers when they saw them attacking other whales. They're actually orca, the largest species of dolphin. They grow up to 28 feet long and can weigh around five tons. 48 four-inch teeth grab their prey, which they swallow whole. This is the ultimate ocean predator. Filming them for the first time was an unforgettable experience for American cameraman Paul Atkins. Paul's been making wildlife documentaries for over 20 years. He's filmed from the tropical Pacific to Antarctica. I can't imagine doing anything else for a living. It's the greatest job in the world. I film wildlife because I have a degree in marine biology, and I've been fascinated by what goes on in the ocean ever since I was a little kid. Where do those creatures come from? What's down there? And that translated into filmmaking. Paul's fascination for the ocean and the animals that live there leads to one of his hardest assignments. Every year, one family group of orca returns to this beach, just as newborn sea lion pups enter the water. To have a chance to go to Patagonia, Argentina, and watch this race of killer whales that had learned how to catch sea lions off the beach, actually slide up the beach and grab sea lions off the beach, this was an amazing opportunity. Killer whales can swim at 25 miles an hour. Their eyes are covered with a special oily mucus that allows them to see equally well both below and above the water. They pinpoint prey with deadly accuracy. In five weeks of shooting, there were two fantastic days where these males came in and slid right up the beach, caught the sea lions, and just gave us a really spectacular show. We knew we'd gotten the footage topside. We knew we had some really good stuff. But it just didn't seem like enough. We're filming a marine predator. It's sliding up the beach. A lot of the action is occurring in the water, actually underwater. The water's murky. To get the shots, there's only one solution. Get in the sea. But it's a dangerous proposition. A diver in a wetsuit looks a lot like a sea lion, the orca's prey. And we ask all the local divers, have you ever been in the water with killer whales in these waters? And if so, you know, what happened? Almost all the divers told us they thought it would be suicide to get in the water with the killer whales. Paul watches the orca and notices something very interesting. What we saw was that they were incredibly selective at what seals they attacked and what seals they ignored. They seem to be primarily after the young pups. Now, if they're that sophisticated in detecting a baby sea lion from an adult sea lion, we figure they're not going to confuse a diver with a sea lion. That's what we figured anyway. Working with wildlife means taking one step at a time. Paul tries filming the orca in the channel that leads to the beach. So we got in the water and we were hanging on to the side of our inflatable and coming down the channel straight towards us were these huge dorsal fins. And I thought to myself, I've got a choice right now either let go of this boat, swim out and film this, or I call this off and get back in right now. Because it was a part of me that wanted to do that. Paul knows that wild animals can be unpredictable, but he trusts his research. He launches himself into killer whale territory. One of them heads straight for him. It looks him right in the eye, but swims on by. And then the next thing we tried to do was to position ourselves right in front of the sea lion colon. Cameraman Paul Atkins and his team are filming killer whales snatching sea lions from the surf. They've got the surface shots. Now they want the underwater action. It's never been attempted before, so preparation is the key. Whenever we do something like this, it's always after studying the animals for a long time, taking the advice of local experts and watching carefully to judge the animal's behavior before you take a risk like getting in the water with a killer whale. The water was only about chest deep and we were standing like that with our cameras waiting for the killer whales to come down the channel and behind us were the sea lions. I remember we saw the dorsal fins coming down and we were standing there looking at us, you know, we looked at one another like, is this the right thing to do? Have we gone nuts? We turned around and the sea lions were looking at us like, are you crazy? You know, get out of the water. As the sea lions flee up the beach, a dorsal fin breaks the water. A huge head appears in the murk. The killer whale sizes Paul up. Then he slides by. It was the most amazing moment when this huge male killer whale was coming towards us in the water and we were underwater. Paul's shots become a famous first in wildlife filmmaking, but it's connecting with the orca that Paul remembers. I find that moment, you know, to be the most intimate moment you can ever have with wildlife when you actually make eye contact with an animal. It's extraordinary. Those intimate moments are what Paul treasures most. I don't do these things because I'm an adrenaline junkie. You know, I don't get off on risk taking necessarily. I do it because I want to record something which has never been seen before and experienced before and I want to share something about the natural world with the audience. That's why I do it. There are plenty of places where you can pay to experience a little danger, but they don't get much more picturesque than Walker's Cay in the Bahamas. Every day a boatload of adventurous tourists enjoy one of the most exciting shark dives there is. The action is so spectacular that it also attracts filmmakers. Originally an adventure photojournalist, for the last 14 years Mike Bonner has been a TV producer and underwater cameraman. Mike's passion is predators. His job and his life rely on thorough research and preparation. Learning about an animal before you work with it is vital. Spend time with it, watch it, get to know how it's behaving, why it's behaving like it is before you take that opportunity to get in there and try and film it. No matter what happens in the field, if you're well prepared you can deal with pretty much any situation. Mike's at Walker's Cay to film a unique interaction between the tourists and sharks. Under expert supervision the divers enter the water before the sharks are summoned. That's to stop the sharks from associating tourists with food. When everyone's ready, a frozen lump of bait is dropped in the water. That's the dinner bell for dozens of sharks. Caribbean reef sharks and blacktip sharks get up to eight feet in length, so they're a formidable predator. When they're excited they can be a very dangerous shark indeed, and there's been a number of attacks on humans. The sharks are feeding voraciously. This behavior is often described as frenzied, but it's not. The feeding frenzy is one of the most enduring myths of shark behavior, and Mike is passionate about busting this popular misconception. I don't think there's a blind feeding frenzy. I think it's important in the work that we do in bringing films about sharks to the world, is that we give people an opportunity to see sharks as they really are, as the animal that they are, rather than the beast that we make them out to be. Sharks have exquisitely tuned senses. An acute sense of smell guides them to their next meal. In dim light their eyes are better than cats. Even in zero visibility, they detect an animal by the electric field it gives off. An animal with such highly tuned senses doesn't bite by accident. Sharks know exactly what they're doing. As long as the tourists keep a respectful distance from the feeding sharks, they're safe. But Mike's filming the action up close, and his only protection is his camera. The camera for me is also a shield. It weighs nearly 100 pounds. It's made of aluminum. Very, very strong and very tough. So in a situation where animals are moving towards me, the camera is always between myself and the animal. The only added protection that we were using was that our air hoses were coated in a steel mesh, just so that if they did get bitten, we weren't going to lose our air supply on the bottom. Everything's going as planned, with Mike and another cameraman covering the action. The sharks are only interested in the frozen bait. But then, things go seriously wrong. A chunk of bait breaks off, and suddenly a gang of hungry sharks is heading toward Mike. The block of fish came straight at me, and at that point I could no longer keep the camera between myself and the sharks. If Mike panics, the sharks will know. They sense fear because they are able to detect the electrical fields around your body. They detect things like rises in pulse rates. So when your heart starts to race, and that animal can actually sense that. Mike is surrounded. In the confusion, one shark misses the bait and instead bites Mike. The fish came in beside the camera, and I had one of the sharks actually grab my arm in its mouth. I could hear the other divers underwater screaming and yelling in the background, because immediately people expect that there's going to be a major incident when a whole bunch of sharks converge on a diver. Cameraman Mike Bana is filming feeding sharks when things go horribly wrong. A lump of bait gets pushed his way, and in the confusion, one shark bites Mike on the arm. Potentially an animal at eight feet could easily have taken my arm off. So it was a real threat. When it bit down, I could feel its mouth on me. I realized what was happening, tried to remain as calm as I possibly could. If I had a panicked in that situation, what I would have done is I would have given the shark a fright. Now all animals have a fight or flight response to situations that they're put in. If you put an animal under stress, it's either going to fight its way out of the situation, or it's going to try and run. His arm in the shark's mouth, Mike fights the urge to struggle. His expert knowledge tells him the shark will let go. Now it could be realized that I wasn't the fish, instantly released and carried on with the rest of the sharks. Mike comes away completely unscathed. The shark's teeth haven't even punctured his wetsuit. He's living proof that it takes nerves of steel to be a wildlife cameraman. If I had have reacted, then the situation would have changed dramatically. It is about remaining calm and collected. Being taste tested by sharks isn't the only danger Mike's faced. Soon after, he's on location in the Philippines. This time he's searching for the elusive thresher shark. Threshers can grow up to 11 feet in length. And that long, whip-like tail has earned them another name. The fox shark. Threshers live in open water, but are notoriously shy. A combination that makes them very difficult to film. It's often only possible at cleaning stations. Here, small fish make a meal of the parasites that cling to their giant clients. But filming the threshers getting their valet service will be hazardous. The sharks are easily scared by scuba bubbles. Mike has to resort to complicated rebreather gear. A chemical compound removes the carbon dioxide from his breath and allows him to rebreathe the rest. Two or three people die every year using this equipment. And even when it's used properly, it has its dangers. Within 10 days of filming, our bodies were so full of both oxygen and nitrogen that we had to actually stop filming for a few days to allow our bodies to recover. As Mike and TV host Ian Gordon search for the thresher, they see disturbing signs. The reef is like an underwater ghost town. It's as if everything is hiding. Finally, they find their mysterious quarry. But as they're filming, an unexpected hazard literally leaves them stunned. Fishermen are bombarding the reef with dynamite, an illegal and devastating way to catch fish. Dynamite fishing is one of the most destructive methods of fishing there is. The dynamites drop to the bottom. When it goes off, it stuns all the fish. The fish float to the surface. It's like somebody hitting you. It's a pressure wave. So it's actually shocking your entire body. There's that moment almost like when your TV set loses signal. That you're completely, absolutely floored. You can't move. You suddenly sort of come around and realize that that's what's happened. Your ears are ringing. And trying to get your bearings again and get focused was extremely difficult for about a minute after that. It's clearly distressing the sharks too. And the state of the reef gives Mike even more reason to worry. So you can tell a dynamite fished area in that all the soft corals are dead. There is nothing left in terms of marine animals. And often there's great hunks of the reef blown clean away. This was one particular cleaning station that was one of the last left on that entire reef system. Now with that station gone, that meant those sharks would have no relief from the parasites that they're constantly doing battle against. Wildlife filmmakers accept their job can put them in jeopardy. But that jeopardy multiplies when humans enter the equation. To Mike, the risks are worth it. The opportunity to find something that has never been documented before and put that on film, that's the thing that makes this job absolutely unique. And it's the thing we're always striving for. Off the coast of South Australia lies Dangerous Reef. It lives up to its name. It's one of the best places on earth to film great white sharks. This is why they're here. The fringes of the reef are a major breeding ground for fur seals. And sharks eat seals. Even professionals who make their living filming sharks don't go in the water here without a cage. All of the live shark sequences for the movie Jaws were filmed at Dangerous Reef. And this is the man who filmed them, Ron Taylor. Even after 50 years of filming sharks, Ron still remembers the first time he saw a great white up close. The hair actually stood up on the back of my neck. And that had never happened before. It must have been a primitive instinct, an instinct of self-preservation that said, that is a very dangerous animal. Ron's wife Valerie has been his filming partner since the 1950s. When they started filming, very little was known about sharks. To get up close, Ron invents the chainmail suit. Here the suits are put to the test for the very first time. The metal mesh protects the tailors without harming the sharks in any way. Sharks explore their world using their teeth. They soon learn that Ron and Val are not a meal. But there's one shark they don't even try it with. The great white. Ron knows that its jaws are just too powerful, thanks to a unique feature. The great white can detach its upper jaw from its skull, allowing the jaw to close with incredible force. They've got such big teeth, powerful jaws, that an investigating bite can be fatal. When I first saw the white shark, I thought it was just a giant marauding killer. But I found that they were a magnificent creature. I had a great deal of respect for them. When the tailors get the call to work with live great whites for the movie Jaws, the safety of the sharks is their main concern. They're horrified when the shark gets caught in the cables that secure their filming cage. The shark swam into the bridle right up to its fins and got caught, and went crazy and was thrashing around. With a shark's life in danger, Ron thinks how he can save it. But at the last minute, the shark frees itself. It was a very lucky shark. He was alive and he swam away. A few years later, history repeats itself with dramatic consequences. I was in the cage with Valerie, filming the shark swimming around, and the shark swam over the top of the wire and it rubbed against the shark's belly. And he flicked his body around and tangled himself in the steel cable. And the more he struggled, the more he tangled himself. And the cable was through his mouth and around his tail. He was actually pulling the cage down. It's a terrifying ordeal for both the tailors and the shark. After about 10 minutes, the shark tired and was just hanging limp in the water. I thought, this shark's going to die unless we do something. Off the coast of Australia, a great white shark is tangled in the cables of a filming cage. Exhausted by the struggle to break free, the shark may have only minutes to live. To save the animal, Ron and Val Taylor must venture out of their cage. But the shark baits are still in the water. The fear I have when I'm outside the cage is that there'll be a second great white come along and you don't see it coming. With little regard for their own safety, Ron and Val leave the cage. The shark appears lifeless. But with a thousand pound great white, anything can happen. Despite the risk, they're determined to do whatever it takes to free the shark. I found that I couldn't untangle it. It was too tightly tangled. With the clock ticking, Ron makes one last ditch effort to save the creature he loves and respects. The only way to release the shark was to take it ashore. We buoyed the shark up with a big float and I actually swam it into shore. It was only about 50 yards away. The shark shows no signs of life as Ron drags it ashore. But the Taylors aren't ready to give up. The shark's looking pretty sick at that time. But when we were disentangling it, Valerie could feel muscular movements in the body of the shark. So we felt that it was still alive and that's why we persevered. Freeing the shark is only half the battle. The animal is no longer breathing. But how to resuscitate a thousand pound great white? When we turned it around into the sea, there were little waves coming in and we sort of opened its mouth and was hoping that aerated water was going into its mouth. What Ron is doing is incredibly dangerous. If the shark suddenly comes to, things could quickly turn nasty. We were in knee-deep water. It could have turned around a bit. I don't think sharks think that way. I think all that shark wanted to do was get away. And it just swam away with such vigor. We thought, wow, terrific. It's alive. In a career filled with highlights, the rescue of the great white remains one of Ron's most satisfying moments. The sharks have been very good for us. We had filmed them and in their environment, they're just magnificent. And when I saw one in danger of dying, I felt I've got to do something about this. And I did. Tropical Malaysia is home to underwater cameraman Simon Enderby. A marine biologist, Simon turned to filming as a way of sharing his love of the undersea world. After 10 years and thousands of dives, he knows it's not always the big fish to be wary of. One of the most aggressive fish on the coral reefs here isn't a big shark. It's not a tiger shark. It's not a thresher shark. It's a fish that's about, you know, about, you know, one foot long. They're trigger fish and you're swimming along quite happy amongst all this great coral. Before you know it, a bolt out of the blue, this trigger fish comes shooting out and starts attacking it. Well, a lot of it is basically it's territorial. They're highly aggressive during the nesting season. So they're coming out and protecting their nest. And you've got to keep your wits about you. The teeth are really big peg-like teeth that can seriously take a chunk out of you or chunk out of the camera as well. It was an even smaller fish that put Simon in fear of his life. We didn't know that a fish sort of this size, sort of like an eight inch long fish could actually ultimately end up killing you. Simon's toughest ever assignment is filming millions of sardines that gather off the South African coast each winter. Sardines grow to only eight inches, but there are so many that they attract hungry predators. What's chasing them is these common dolphins, which then round them up and break off big balls of sardines from the main shoal and form bait balls, which is basically maybe a thousand sardines all bunched together, being rounded up by dolphins, which are acting like sheepdogs, and then bring them up to the surface. And they're just pelting in there and grabbing fish. But that's just the start of it. Now the sharks move in. Copper sharks or bronze whalers are the most common, snapping at everything in front of them. Up to 10 feet long and weighing 600 pounds, they're known to attack people. If you happen to be on the wrong side of the bait ball at a time the shark comes out whilst it's chomping, then you've got a pretty sticky situation. There's also danger from above. You've got gannets from the sky shooting down dive bombing onto the sardines from the top. And then you've got the sharks, the opportunists, that are coming up them from the bottom. Of course, we want to get as close to the action as possible. But in this case, getting too close was putting yourself into a dangerous situation. I could suddenly feel sardines under my armpits and around my neck. And the little flag went up in my head, sort of, this isn't right. You need to fin backwards as quickly as possible. Simon's in the sardine zoo the sharks are eating. They're just automatically heading into the mass of fish and just snapping their jaws as they go through and gulping down fish as much as they possibly can. You can't always see the ones in front of you, let alone the ones behind you or above you or below you. Simon's follow the rules for filming in shark territory. But the rules just changed. There's a huge bang underwater. A shark hits hard. The camera is pushed back into my face. It's like, whoa. It's a close call. The shark bites the camera and not Simon. Despite the danger, he continues filming and captures some amazing shots. That's what you want to do. You want to capture these moments and share it with as many people as possible.