Great White Shark - A Living Legend Natural World

This is the animal that everyone loves to fear -

the great white shark.

The perfect hunter.

And, to many,

the perfect villain.

South African naturalist Mike Rutzen thinks the great white

is the most misunderstood animal on the planet,

and wants to rescue its reputation....

by swimming with it.

No-one else gets as close as this.

Through these encounters, Mike is discovering something new.

An animal that inspires admiration and respect.

A true story which surpasses any fictional tale.

The great white shark is now as famous a feature

of South Africa as the Cape Peninsula around which it lives.

The waters here are freezing cold,

but that doesn't stop the great white,

which can keep its body warmer than the water,

making it one of the most successful predators on the planet.

It has such a fierce reputation that few people dare to enter its world.

But one man remains unphased by the great white.

He's not a scientist, just a local guy,

who began his career as a fisherman.

Mike Rutzen's made his life on the sea.

Every day, he searches out and encounters white sharks.

But, unlike other experts, he has a unique way of getting to know them.

And now has a deep understanding of great white behaviour.

Mike believes you can only learn so much from the safety of a boat

or a cage.

If you want to understand these animals better than that,

you have to actually get in the water and observe them

without the boats and the cages.

This is not reckless.

It's the culmination of a painstaking journey of discovery.

It began in 1990 with Mike's first accidental encounter with a white shark.

The first time I saw a white shark underneath the water,

I was looking into a crevice and suddenly somebody put the lights off.

This big shark came over me,

and she just turned around and went on her way.

Back then, Mike knew absolutely nothing about sharks.

He assumed they would attack on sight.

I went to the one scientist that was working here, and I said, "Look, I saw a shark,"

you know, and he said I mustn't worry about it because, if I saw one, a hundred saw me.

This was a revelation for Mike.

Just because he was in the water with sharks didn't mean he was a target.

This realisation would change the course of his life.

Mike lives in the small fishing town of Gansbaai.

But he grew up on a farm far inland.

He took up diving when he moved to Gansbaai, age 20,

and started bumping into the world's largest predatory sharks.

There weren't many encounters, but every one made his pulse race.

I'd say they've got a way of making you feel small!

The sharks didn't act the way Mike expected,

never staying more than a few seconds,

as if they were even afraid of him.

And that made Mike curious about them.

Unlike most people,

he never saw the film that made them the object of great fear.

I did not see Jaws when I was younger.

It was very nice to actually get in the water

not having this unfounded fear,

and then just slowly learning about the animals.

At first, Mike didn't even know that these sharks were in fact great whites.

We didn't know them as great white sharks.

We learned to know them as Tommy sharks.

Tommy shark is a local name for this animal.

But whatever name it goes by Mike was impressed by how many people flocked to Gansbaai to see it.

In 1994, just when tourists began flooding into the new South Africa,

Mike got a lucky break - a job as skipper on a shark cage-diving boat.

These shark safaris use a pungent mix of fish bait to attract the sharks in.

The great white has the most highly developed sense of smell of any shark,

and is quick to follow the odour trail back to the boat.

This was a dream job for a man who loved the sea.

And now, spending several hours a day with the sharks,

Mike fell in love with them.

He also discovered their true identity.

The first day I went out shark-cage diving, I found out that great white sharks are Tommy sharks.

Because I had four Tommy sharks in the back of the boat, and I was playing with them,

because I'm waiting for a great white shark, and it's quite distinctive.

It's gotta be great and white.

The next moment, the business owner came around and he shouted, "White shark, white shark, white shark!"

And I went "Where, where, where?"

And now, of course, I made the realisation that white sharks are Tommy sharks.

There's a grim story about how the Tommy shark got its name.

It happened here at Gansbaai.

The location, a needle-like outcrop of land called Danger Point.

This was a notorious place for shipwrecks, and mariners took care to sail far around it.

However there was one feature,

nearly a mile offshore, that remained uncharted.

A hidden reef six feet below the surface.

It's now called the Birkenhead Rock.

It is only detectable if an ocean swell moves across it,

causing a distinctive, curling wave to mark its presence.

Over there, where that waves are breaking, that is the site of our most famous shipwreck.

In February 1852,

a British troopship, the Birkenhead, sailed around this point.

It was 2am, a calm, still night,

and a calm, still sea covering the hidden reef.

On board the ship, over 600 people, most of them soldiers.

Tommies, on their way to battle.

The ship ran straight onto the submerged reef.

The Birkenhead had only three lifeboats, so, when the captain made the call to abandon ship,

the soldiers' commander ordered his men to stand fast on deck,

and give the 20 women and children the lifeboats.

The Tommies knew he was asking them to sacrifice themselves.

Every one of them obeyed his order.

The damage was so severe the ship sank in just 20 minutes.

This was where the tradition of "women and children" first began,

and would forever after be known as the Birkenhead Drill.

Over 400 soldiers perished.

The survivors reported that many were taken by sharks.

"The sea was covered with struggling forms,

"while the cries and the piercing shrieks, and the shoutings were awful."

"Many lost their lives.

"The waters were tinged with blood."

And so the soldier-eating shark got its name -

the Tommy shark - and a local legend was born.

It's not certain exactly how many soldiers were killed by sharks,

but when Mike checked the records

he learned most of them died of exposure and exhaustion as they struggled to shore.

In these cold waters, no-one lasts long.

Over 2,000 ships have been wrecked along this coastline,

a testament to the ferocity of these waters.

The sharks, an ever-present reminder that this place is still wild.

Even though the sharks' role in the Birkenhead Disaster was exaggerated,

it still took Mike another four years to risk getting in the water

when they were swimming around his safari boat.

He understood full well that,

by the time the sharks find the chum slick around the boat,

they are in feeding mode.

Not a good time to swim with them.

But he'd learnt all he could by watching them from the boat.

If he was to learn any more, he had to get in the water.

There's no book about it, so you can't learn through the books.

You've got to get in the water and experience it.

With the smell of food in the water, the sharks remained around Mike for long periods of time.

This gave him the chance to study them closely,

and he noticed something crucial.

The sharks responded to his body position and movements.

After many dives, Mike realised that, to swim with a great white, you have to think like one.

When I go into the water,

I want the sharks to believe that I'm just another predator.

The shark can't produce sound to communicate,

so it uses body postures and movement to signal its intentions.

Mike does the same.

This is Mike's most important discovery.

He's found a way to communicate with the sharks.

To attract its attention, he curls into a ball, making himself smaller.

This is Mike's first step,

to introduce himself to the shark and win over its natural caution.

Like a dangerous game of chess, he must read and anticipate the shark's behaviour correctly.

The shark tests Mike.

If the shark comes closer, I make myself bigger.

The shark clearly understands that I feel uncomfortable with it at that distance.

To keep the shark's attention, Mike swims away from it.

Anything that runs away from a predator is automatically food.

So, if I have an animal that I want to keep close,

I'll keep on swimming away from it and it'll keep on coming closer and closer and closer,

just like a kitten with a ball.

But he mustn't let the shark come too close.

Otherwise he might encourage an attack.

If I defend my personal space, it is something the sharks understand.

A second shark complicates the dive.

Now Mike must be on full alert to watch both sharks at once.

No two sharks are the same, and this one wants a bite.

The shark's gaping mouth is a clear sign of aggression.

Now Mike must read every move the sharks make.

His life depends on it.

When a shark becomes too challenging,

Mike makes a daring move.

He swims down beneath it.

This is a power position that sharks use to attack prey at the surface.

Normally, if the animal wants to get in a power position, it'll dive.

The best thing to do is dive with the animal so, when the animal turns around

and lines up on you again, you're not where you were.

You're on the same level.

The shark doesn't like its vulnerable underbelly exposed to another predator.

Once you're also in that same power position,

then you and that shark should be neutral according to the animal.

Even though Mike has blocked the shark's move,

he knows it's time to get out of the water.

He doesn't want to push this chess game any further.

To date, Mike has spent more time in the water with white sharks than any other person.

But this animal still has many secrets,

and Mike is determined to understand it better.

He wants to use what he's learned to venture deeper into the sharks' life.

Whoa!

I've seen hundred and hundreds of sharks breach.

And every time you want to go out of your skin when you see it.

You can't believe how one animal can have such an amount of power

in such a short period of time.

The great white breach is the ultimate ambush...

The shark hitting 30 mph as it flies out of the water.

But the behaviour we see above the surface is like the tip of the iceberg.

There's much more happening down below.

No one has yet witnessed the great white shark hunt underwater.

But can Mike use what he's learned to take him deeper into the sharks' territory?

He's ready to find out.

Now I want to take the next step

and swim with these animals in a truly wild setting,

when they're hunting, and see what goes on underneath the breach.

This is a huge challenge.

It will take time and lots of planning.

Mike needs to work it out carefully.

First, he will set out to understand the great white's feeding behaviour better.

He will need a strong understanding of what the sharks eat,

where they hunt and how they adapt

to the seasonal changes in this ocean.

The golden rule of hunting marine predators are, if you want to find something, find its food.

It's always around its food.

The great white hunts in a dynamic marine habitat,

where cold, nutrient-rich water from the Atlantic

collides with the much warmer Indian Ocean.

This mix of energy and nutrients creates rich feeding grounds for great shoals of fish.

And, following the fish, a multitude of hunters.

The great white sits at the top of this food pyramid,

adapting its diet from fish and seals to squid, and even other sharks.

The sharks are constantly on the move, swimming hundreds of miles to new feeding opportunities.

Nature has a rhythm here, which the sharks tune into,

and which Mike must follow too.

Every June, at the beginning of the southern winter,

spouts of vapour explode from the water surface.

There's only one whale here that creates such a distinctive V-shaped pattern to its breath,

the southern right whale.

These are large animals.

60 feet long, and weighing 80 tons.

They're 40 times bigger than the largest great white,

but Mike's discovered that even these animals are on the sharks' diet.

The shallow, sheltered bays are a good refuge from the open seas.

It looks like two mothers and two calves.

This newborn white baby is vulnerable to shark attack.

So its mother keeps it close.

Like white sharks, southern rights are also curious,

and Mike uses this to bring them in.

Looking at us...

Hold on!

It's always the babies that come to the boat.

They're the playful and naughty ones.

This is the best interaction we've seen so far. She's just looking..

Heh! Whale spray! Whale breath.

Fishy!

See now they're gonna greet each other.

It's amazing how they come together like that and just socialise.

Adult whales are too large for white sharks to hunt but most years a whale dies in the bay.

The strong odour of the carcass can attract dozens of sharks from miles around.

For sharks used to hunting live prey

this is an enormous feeding opportunity.

What the sharks are after when they come across a whale carcass is the blubber.

The blubber is the energy.

The blubber is so energy-rich the shark won't have to eat again for many weeks.

It's very rare to see close up how the great white feeds.

It uses its lower set of pointed teeth to impale food,

and its upper teeth which are shaped like steak knives,

to saw through it.

Mike witnesses not a feeding frenzy,

but predators taking turns to come in to feed.

They do it almost in a military position style.

There was 21 sharks.

The first thing they did was work out a hierarchy.

And they would come in, one would feed.

When he leaves, another one would come in, feed.

If one were feeding on the head, the other one comes in and feeds on the tail.

Never in competition with one another.

This calm sense of order amongst the sharks gives Mike the confidence to get in the water.

By now the smell of whale oil covers everything, including Mike,

but the sharks don't harm him.

When I was in the water, sharks would come around, look at me,

go around me and feed on the whale carcass.

As long as I didn't' disturb them

they would allow me to be in their presence.

This is a breakthrough.

The sharks can clearly distinguish between him and food.

But will they accept him when they're hunting live prey?

Around Gansbaai, the great white's favourite prey are Cape fur seals.

They use a sea swept island called Geyser Rock to haul out.

It's a convenient place from which the seals can set off

to search for fish in the open ocean.

They are the perfect bite-sized source of blubber.

This is one of the great white's most important hunting sites.

The area we are in now is very special for marine life.

On the side here we have Geyser Rock, home to 60,000 Cape fur seals.

They are one of the favourite food sources for white sharks, but also one of the most difficult to catch.

On the other side we have Dyer Island, and it is a bird sanctuary.

And of course in between we have a stretch of water called Shark Alley.

It's called Shark Alley because the sharks come in and patrol the alley.

With so many seals here, the current carries their scent far out to sea, advertising their presence.

Two sharks are known to have swum from as far away as Australia

to hunt around this island.

But Cape fur seals are not an easy catch.

Adults are strong and feisty.

And intelligent.

The relationship between seals and sharks goes far back in time.

The sharks keep the seals fit and healthy.

Any seals that weaken or make a mistake keep the sharks fed.

In early summer across the Cape,

the seals haul out to mate and give birth,

and so renew the cycle of life on which the white shark depends.

Most pregnant seals deliver their pups over the same few days,

flooding the beach with tens of thousands of squirming black babies.

The young seals will grow fat on their mother's milk, and become a prized meal for the sharks.

These newborns will spend most of their lives at sea, but they aren't yet capable of swimming.

When winter arrives in six months time

they'll be ready to join the adults at sea.

And the sharks will be waiting for them.

Great whites can live for 60 years.

In this time, they develop a detailed knowledge of many feeding grounds.

In summer around Gansbaai, the sharks move inshore to feed on fish.

Mike is on their trail.

You guys can see here, how the sharks come into the shallows.

See the animal is right here.

The joke is,

these animals come in closer than we can go in with the boat.

This one came out of the break.

They hunt right inshore.

The closest I've seen whites sharks is about a meter deep water.

Once we had 12 four-and-a-half meter animals

in about a meter, meter-and-a-half deep water, just circling, doing whatever white sharks do.

There's only one problem when sharks swim into shallows...

This is where people like to play.

But despite people sharing this beach with sharks,

there's never been an attack here.

Mike thinks he knows why.

We believe it's because the animals are hunting in a different manner.

When the animals come in here they're looking for stingrays and other big fish.

It's also all bottom dwellers, so the attention's down on the bottom.

Then whenever they bump into humans it's more or less,

"Excuse me, didn't see you there," and they move off.

A clear shallow bay is a great place for Mike to

observe some of the animals on the great white's summer menu.

This is one of the reasons why I love this part of the ocean so much.

These beautiful animals,

they're very big but they are only a snack for a great white shark.

These animal's quite big for stingrays,

this is one of our biggest species around the coastline.

I'd say that animal weighs what 100 kilos, 150 kilo?

They hide underneath the sand and that's how they get away from predators,

and now they come up to have a look at us,

and you can see the sand lying on them.

But the stingray has a way to fight back, with a large barb on its tail.

With the barbs on these animals,

if they put it in the right place it can make a difference.

If that thing hits you, you gotta problem.

With any animal, if you treat them correctly

then there won't be problems,

but if you treat him incorrectly then of course you have a problem.

These animals are not trying to hurt me.

Just a little curious.

Mike's careful way with wildlife is the key to getting closer to great whites.

But it's not the animals which pose the greatest challenge here.

It's the weather.

In June, winter storms move in with a fury onto the Cape.

The stingrays and sharks move to the deeper water.

The coast is surrendered to the waves.

The winter storms often prevent Mike from going to sea.

There is one silver lining to the storm clouds...

they blow away the plankton-rich surface water, and bring in clearer water.

Ideal diving conditions around Geyser Rock.

Now Mike has a chance to observe how great whites target seals.

But Mike, and especially the sharks, face a new and unusual problem here.

An organism whose presence is revealed with each passing swell.

It is a plant.

The fastest growing thing in these waters.

Bobbing together, they are like a legion of aliens.

This is in fact a species of kelp which locals call sea bamboo.

Kelp is spreading so quickly

it's now taking over the great white's hunting grounds.

Each plant can stretch 50 feet high,

supported at the top by a floating bulb.

Its phenomenal growth used to be kept in check, but not any more.

It's all because this large mollusc is disappearing from the waters of the Cape.

Abalone feed on kelp.

But this shellfish is a prized delicacy,

and widespread poaching for the Asian market has wiped out most of it.

And so the kelp forests are spreading around Geyser Rock,

and blocking the narrow entrance to the sharks' hunting ground, Shark Alley.

White sharks do not like to go into the kelp.

So, even the lack of the simplest shellfish can impact the apex predator in the area.

Unlike white sharks, fur seals thrive in kelp.

Shark Alley has become their refuge.

An unlikely place where Mike can see the speed and agility seals employ

to escape snapping jaws.

If Shark Alley has become a seaweed sanctuary,

then Mike must look elsewhere to witness sharks hunting.

He knows the seals must travel far out to sea to feed,

and that the sharks will target the inexperienced youngsters.

They've been suckling on their mother with the rich milk.

They got the fat layer to withstand the cold water,

and of course, it's that fat layer that makes them so yummy for great white sharks.

The pups may be fast and agile, but they lack experience.

The pups don't have all the skills

that they need to withstand a shark attack.

They are still a little bit stupid.

They also don't have the breath-holding capacity that the big ones have.

They can't go as deep amongst the sharks.

80% of the seals the sharks catch are youngsters like this.

But where exactly will the sharks strike?

The seals swim out in all directions.

Mike will have to track the sharks down.

And he has a way to find them.

We're going to use a decoy.

It's the shape of a live seal.

We're going to put it out in the water and tow it around, and hopefully the sharks breach on it.

If the sharks breach on it, I would like to go down in the water column

and see how they anticipate,

and how they work out the situation to be able to catch a live seal.

Finding a shark ambush site won't be easy.

This is a big ocean.

Mike needs to judge which part of this vast habitat has the right conditions for a shark hunt.

He must use all his knowledge of the sea and the shark's behaviour to find it.

Woo!

After weeks of searching, Mike has found a great white ambush site.

This is the hotspot! This is a fantastic place for breaching.

I can't wait to get in the water!

But first, Mike needs to see how the sharks behave with real prey.

He knows the sharks prefer to hunt in the low light of the early morning.

A time when many seals are returning to shore.

Despite the shark's power and precision, 50% of seals get away.

The hunt is as much a battle of wits as a battle of fitness.

The seal has a simple yet effective strategy...

it leaps out of the water to escape the snapping jaws,

zigzagging and diving.

And it repeatedly swims behind the shark where it is safest.

The shark's strategy is built around one massive burst of energy.

Its goal - to disable the seal with just one bite.

And then devour it quickly to prevent other sharks stealing the pray.

If we can go down and see this animals actually hunting seals,

even if they interact on the decoy,

they are going to use the same method.

But Mike' s diving into the shark's ambush site

where they are in hunting mode.

The animal is going to be very pushy with us,

hopefully not that pushy that you actually get hurt.

We're going to go down and hopefully get a place that our back's covered

by a reef or something, and be very quiet, very calm and observe.

If you are lying on the surface,

you will not see a great white shark if it's in the gullies

because the whole bottom is very dark. It's black.

And the shark's black on top, so they are very well camouflaged.

If the shark looks up, the whole surface of the water is illuminated.

Mike will need to apply everything he knows about white sharks to dive here.

He'll also try to film the action.

The dive will only last one hour,

but it will be most thrilling of his life.

Mike barely touches bottom when he sees his first shark.

A large 13-foot male.

Mike follows it and discovers why the sharks hunt here.

The seabed has a ten-foot drop off.

The perfect place to conceal themselves from seals swimming above.

There are lots of sharks here.

The sharks come close, giving Mike a perfect view of the perfect hunter.

With a sleek torpedo-shaped body,

a huge muscular tail for propulsion,

and a set of broad fins for total control.

The perfect shark.

Up above, Mike's crew begin towing the decoy.

And instantly one shark takes notice.

Within seconds it's beside the boat.

The decoy is doing its job - turning on the sharks' hunting behaviour.

The sharks swim faster.

Totally alert.

One shark tests the decoy

and figures out it is not a meal after all.

But another shark picks up the decoy.

It makes a decision and turns on the power.

To witness a shark attack is more exciting than Mike ever imagined.

It is sudden, fast

and extremely powerful.

It's one of the most amazing things you can see.

It looks almost better underneath the water than on topside,

to see this animal coming past looking at you, going "Pow"!

"That seal is mine!"

There's a lot of them down there.

Utilising the same area, and it's basically first come, first serve.

The one sees the decoy, wants to go for it, goes for it, the other one wants to, goes for it.

Incredible.

It's not just the shark's strength and speed that is a revelation,

it's the intelligence it shows in executing the attack.

I believe that white sharks don't do anything without pre-thinking it.

And that animal made up its mind very, very fast.

It's almost like it sees the seals, works out a perfect strategy,

and attacks the seal in an instant.

You have to be an extremely smart animal to interact in such split seconds.

It's the most amazing experience I believe anyone can have,

to be in the water with great white sharks hunting.

Mike's journey into the sharks' world could have ended in disaster,

but instead it's brought him a huge step closer to understanding the great white shark.

It's brought him face to face with a living legend.

White sharks are a living legend.

With Hollywood, everybody knows about the great white shark.

In our waters here, we call them Tommy sharks because of the Birkenhead disaster,

and the more we learn from them, the more we also actually learn what a legend they are.

So, the true story of this force of nature is more extraordinary than any fictional tale.

Mike Rutzen knows this well.