Searching for Sharks Waterworld

It's said that half of all life in the British Isles

belongs in the sea.

It's all around our glorious landscape,

a spectacular realm that's waiting to be explored.

This is Waterworld, discovering life below the blue horizons.

It's a quarter past four on a breathless summer morning.

As dawn breaks on the Antrim coast, our team is already up and about

at Glenarm marina.

Hugh, Doug and Richard are preparing

for what promises to be a dramatic day at sea.

We're ready to search for the biggest fish in the Atlantic Ocean.

The day is alive with possibility.

We're all upbeat after weeks of weather watching,

the prospects for success look bright.

Filming basking sharks isn't nine to five,

but I'm looking forward to what could be an unforgettable day

at the office.

It's just turned five o'clock in the morning,

the sun has just come up

and the moon is still there from the night before.

This is kind of a defining moment for us on Waterworld

because we've been monitoring whether the basking sharks

that we want to film with have arrived here

and we're told that there's a number of them

off Malin Head in Donegal and well, the stars hold our fate.

I just hope and pray that we'll get into the water with them today.

Real life adventure is such a rare thing these days and yet, here I am,

living the dream, entering the wide, blue yonder in search of Leviathans.

It's a delicious prospect, but on a four-hour cruise,

there's plenty of time to drift off,

to sleep among gentle giants from another world.

We're leaving the Antrim coast behind, and beyond Loch Foyle,

the watch begins.

Scanning the horizon for signs of life.

Look, look!

Oh, that's amazing.

And then it happens.

Suddenly, we're surrounded by huge sharks.

Big, dorsal fins slice the surface.

We count more than 20. Our decision to head north has paid off.

We're actually seeing basking sharks.

Portrush is just around the corner.

We're just off the coast of Donegal.

That is a majestic creature.

I never actually believed, or dared to believe,

that we could get among them.

One here, one over there, one over there, there's two behind us.

I really... My mouth has gone dry. I'm absolutely so nervous.

I might actually get into the wetsuit now and go and see

if I can swim with these things.

Look at that.

Just off the bow of the boat.

These are probably the biggest fish in the Atlantic Ocean.

The only thing that's bigger is the whale shark

and you find them in the Pacifics.

This is a once in a lifetime experience

and our underwater cameraman, Doug Anderson, will keep me right.

We want to be about 20 metres,

50 feet in front...and just looking for a direction.

-We just need to keep working on it.

-OK.

You've got a lot of experience of being in the water with big animals.

What should I or shouldn't I do here?

It's very difficult to tell you.

Just get in there,

get into a situation that you feel comfortable with,

and if it's too scary, just close your eyes! That's what I do!

-Really?!

-Yeah.

And the thing is, we have prayed for weather like this!

You know, you couldn't look for a better day to do this

and to be suddenly surrounded by basking sharks,

it's beyond our dreams, isn't it?

It's just ideal. We only get into these places...

These are wild places.

We only get in so many days of the year

and this is just one of those days.

Doug, Doug, Doug.

Just cut it.

I know this is bad form, but let's see what happens.

I can't believe I'm doing this.

The basking sharks swim up tide,

extracting great mouthfuls of tiny plankton,

sieving the equivalent of an Olympic size swimming pool every hour.

I've always wanted to do this.

To swim with fish as big as a bus

and heavier than an African elephant.

That was astonishing!

Absolutely astonishing.

-You saw four.

-I had four sharks.

Mouth closed. There's something else going on there.

They weren't feeding, they were just together.

Like, literally, two or three apart. Incredible.

I've never seen anything like that.

I really have never seen anything like that.

I had a real Jaws moment because Doug pointed

and I could see this enormous grey shape down there.

Just astounding.

The assumption was that was not feeding. That was an aggregation.

We just get glimpses of their world and who knows what's going on there.

'It's exceptional to encounter

'so many of these colossal fish off our shores.

'And then something even more exceptional.'

A world exclusive.

The first time a leaping basking shark has been filmed.

Can't believe this. I'm quite seasick.

It's the story of my life out here!

Right in the silvery wilderness,

surrounded by mega-sharks

and I've been sick.

But I'm absolutely determined.

I don't care how long it takes and how sick I get.

I'm going to get in there

because I may never ever get the opportunity to do this again.

It's kind of a dream that I've been living for quite a long time.

I'm determined to get back in there.

These prehistoric heavyweights are so big,

yet we know so little about them.

Basking sharks are symbols of the majesty

and mystery of the world about us.

What you can't get a sense of, when you see these creatures on TV,

is the scale of them compared to yourself.

I looked down and was able to watch them. These things have got

a brain the size of a golf ball

and a mouth the size of a jet engine.

They just open it up like this huge canopy.

All of that plankton is being poured in, poured in.

And whenever they close their mouth,

you'd actually see them working the food

back down into their stomach. Phenomenal.

You know the really nice thing about that encounter

-was that it came to us.

-Yeah.

It just... He gave us two little passes and then, you know, away.

No stress.

-A very nice encounter.

-Phenomenal.

I'll remember this day for a while.

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