DIVER DUNCAN_BRAKE HELEN_SAMPSON JAY_MALY MALE_CREW_MEMBER NARRATOR OLIVER_CRIMMEN STEVE_BACKSHALL


NARRATOR
Sharks are the most feared predators on earth, but also the most misunderstood. I've been diving with sharks for over 30 years. Now, I'm getting closer than ever before, journeying deep into our oceans to explore their hidden lives, challenging what we think we know to better understand some of the most mysterious creatures that exist in our world.


NARRATOR
Sharks have conquered every corner of the globe and display radical variety.

NARRATOR
To see just how weird and how wonderful they can be, I'm starting in the world's wildest ocean: the Atlantic.



STEVE BACKSHALL
The Atlantic Ocean covers one fifth of our planet's surface and is a truly extreme environment. It ranges from the freezing Arctic Ocean in the north, all the way down through the tropics and equatorial seas, and then down to the Southern Ocean at Antarctica, and with such a DIVERse array of habitats, the sharks here have had to evolve extreme adaptations to survive.

NARRATOR
Over 400 million years sharks have fine-tuned their bodies and their behaviour to fit perfectly into every part of this complex underworld...

NARRATOR
...but the ocean is changing faster than sharks can keep up.

NARRATOR
Somewhere in the astonishing DIVERsity of Atlantic sharks could lie clues that can help us better protect them, but we need to find them, and we need to find them now. I'm starting my search in The Bahamas.


NARRATOR
These islands are positioned with access to both warm, shallow water and the deep ocean, making them one of the best places on earth to see a huge range of shark species in one place.

NARRATOR
I want to get as close to sharks as I can, but these are wild animals. I need to understand their behaviour and be aware of the risks.

STEVE BACKSHALL
I guess to many people, it would be a surprise that you can do this at all. To be surrounded by this many sharks may be many people's worst nightmare. I mean, surely, you're just instantly gonna get eaten.

STEVE BACKSHALL
And you can see, they have no interest in me whatsoever. They're swimming around, targeting the fish that they feed on and absolutely not me.

NARRATOR
I'm beginning with a species that boasts all the features of classic shark design: the Caribbean reef shark.

STEVE BACKSHALL
Say the word 'shark' and most people will think of something like this and with their sleek lines, pointed snouts and that classic triangular dorsal fin, it's as close to a typical shark as you'll ever see.

NARRATOR
Every detail is precision-engineered for predation in the underwater world.

NARRATOR
Their streamlined, torpedo shape, known as fusiform and their multiple, rigid fins give them the speed and manoeuvrability to chase down prey.

NARRATOR
Shark skeletons are made from lightweight and strong cartilage instead of bone. It's the carbon fibre of the animal kingdom.

NARRATOR
Covering it all is armoured skin, with tiny teeth-like scales called denticles. This reduces drag and makes shark supremely stealthy swimmers. But for fish that aren't on the menu, it also serves another purpose.

STEVE BACKSHALL
These sharks have skins like sandpaper and these fish, they're called jacks, they're swimming in and grinding their bodies off the skin of the shark to remove parasites and dead skin.

STEVE BACKSHALL
They're exfoliating. They are creating a living shark spa.

NARRATOR
Reef sharks maybe something of a design classic, but sharks are not a one size fits all animal. I want to see just how radically sharks can differ, depending on their environment. Here in The Bahamas, I don't have to travel far to find an extreme example.


STEVE BACKSHALL
The scientific group that contains the sharks is highly DIVERse, and it contains other animals such as the skates and the chimeras and the sawfish. All of those have a common ancestor, but over millions of years they've evolved to have radically different body plans, and now in modern times, perhaps the most extreme difference is from this.

NARRATOR
Southern stingrays might look nothing like reef sharks, but they're actually close cousins.

STEVE BACKSHALL
As they nuzzle around you, they're kinda like friendly puppy dogs, but this is a predator and one which can suck crustaceans like shrimps and crabs straight up from the sand of the seabed.

NARRATOR
Everything about them is honed for a life cruising the ocean floor where prey conceals itself in the sand and sea grass. Their mouths are positioned on their sensitive undersides where they can feel out and snatch up crustaceans.

NARRATOR
And their pectoral fins have evolved into wings, to soar across the seabed, but there are tantalising clues in the bodies of stingrays that hint at their place in a much bigger Atlantic ecosystem. While the bottom half of the stingray is all about hunting, the top is about hiding.

NARRATOR
See a stingray up close and you might wonder why this awesome predator needs eyes in the back of its head, or why it has a fearsome weapon hidden at the base of its tail.

STEVE BACKSHALL
Despite their almost friendly nature, they do have a defence and that is their legendary sting. It's ragged and secretes a proteinaceous venom which can cause extreme pain, but they only use it to defend themselves.

STEVE BACKSHALL
Those stings are often found embedded in their dozens in the mouths, throats and stomachs of their number one predator, the hammerhead shark.

NARRATOR
The great hammerhead is a dominant force in the Atlantic. It's an apex predator that preys on other, smaller sharks, but what gives it the edge over its rivals, and why is it so important for the health of our oceans? To find the answers, I need to go in search of these impressive predators.

NARRATOR
To locate this shark, I'll need to turn its amazing predatory abilities to my advantage.

STEVE BACKSHALL
The visibility is enormous, but yet I know that just beyond my vision, out there in the blue, is the animal we've come all of this way to find. Every single shadow, although I know they're probably nurse sharks, is transforming in my head into a great hammerhead.

STEVE BACKSHALL
There's quite a lot of current right now and that'll be carrying all the scent, all the smell from our bait guts.

STEVE BACKSHALL
Sharks' sense of smell is incredibly highly developed, and they can pick up just one single drop of blood in an Olympic swimming pool sized area of water. So tiny, tiny molecules of scent could well draw in our great hammerhead from 100 metres, possibly even kilometres away.

STEVE BACKSHALL
Now it's just a waiting game.

NARRATOR
If there's a great hammerhead in the area, those super senses should kick into action and bring it to our bait, but this is a critically endangered species with numbers that have crashed by 80% in some areas, so an encounter is far from guaranteed.

STEVE BACKSHALL
We've got one! We've got one!

STEVE BACKSHALL
Wow!

STEVE BACKSHALL
The animal we've come all this way to find, a great hammerhead shark.

STEVE BACKSHALL
They're a true giant. The very biggest ever recorded have been over six metres in length, which is great white length.

STEVE BACKSHALL
Look at that head, shaking from side to side, picking up the scents and the smells. What an animal.

NARRATOR
The hammerhead's head is its secret weapon. It's packed with sensors that can detect even the tiniest of electrical currents given off by prey animals.

NARRATOR
But to be a perfect predator, you need to not just find that prey, but be sure to catch it. Twice a year, at the start and end of the summer, blacktip sharks which are prey for hammerheads, migrate in their thousands along the east coast of the USA, triggered by temperature changes in the water. The small black tips stay close to the shore, and the relative safety of the shallows.

NARRATOR
But those left on the fringes are still vulnerable to a larger predator.

NARRATOR
The hammerhead powers through the water with incredible agility, outmanoeuvring the blacktips until there can only be one outcome.

NARRATOR
By controlling the numbers of other sharks, which in turn control the numbers of other fish species, the great hammerhead exerts a powerful regulating force over the ecosystem, but as the climate changes and the ocean warms, blacktips are failing to migrate. Hammerhead numbers are in decline and the outcome for this delicately balanced system is anything but certain.

NARRATOR
For sharks, hunting isn't the whole story.


NARRATOR
900 kilometres to the south west of the Bahamas at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico, another shark is on the move...

NARRATOR
...a female whale shark.

NARRATOR
Normally, she roams the globe utterly alone seeking out plankton. She may be a totally different kind of predator to a hammerhead, but she's just as finely tuned to the rhythms of the Atlantic, and today that means she's on a journey.

NARRATOR
Every year, in early summer off the coast of Mexico, something extraordinary happens.

NARRATOR
The warm waters surrounding the Yucatan peninsula creates perfect conditions for tuna to spawn.

NARRATOR
These fertile fish release trillions of their tiny eggs into the water where they float just beneath the surface, all but invisible to the naked eye.

NARRATOR
For a whale shark, it's a banquet.

NARRATOR
For the first time in many months, she's joined by others of her kind. In the presence of such an abundant food source, the whale sharks change the way they filter the water. Instead of passively letting it flow into their mouths, they actively pump it through their internal filtration system, gorging themselves on the rich eggs.

NARRATOR
More whale sharks join the aggregation until they number well into the hundreds. As the gathering peaks, giant oceanic mantas, their close cousins, emerge from the depths and glide among them in a breath-taking ballet.

NARRATOR
It's an exceptional Atlantic spectacle, all brought about by the tiniest trigger.

NARRATOR
From scooping up plankton to shark-on-shark predation, sharks interact with every level of the food chain and play an essential part in the ecosystem. Fitting in so harmoniously into this underwater world has taken sharks millions of years, but in just a few decades we change the oceans almost beyond recognition.

NARRATOR
To find out how we can help sharks, I want to uncover the mysteries of how sharks find a mate and secure the next generation.

NARRATOR
Recent decades have been a golden age of shark discovery, but there are still many unsolved mysteries, especially when it comes to giving birth and raising young.

NARRATOR
To protect sharks, we must safeguard future generations. I'm travelling to a unique part of The Bahamas that could hold some answers.

STEVE BACKSHALL
This beautiful, tangled, living labyrinth is the mangroves. Mangroves are the most extreme of all plants, able to grow in saltwater that no other kind of tree would tolerate, and they're also critically important to wildlife, but especially for sharks.

NARRATOR
This juvenile lemon shark has already had a tough life.

NARRATOR
Some sharks hatch from eggs, but lemons give birth to live young which are immediately left to fend for themselves. This youngster has survived starvation, predation and even cannibalism. Incredibly, he's made it to two years old, something fewer than half of lemon sharks manage to do.

NARRATOR
The mangroves have been key to his success. The dense maze of roots shields him from predators, and bony fish and crustaceans provide valuable hunting practice.

NARRATOR
There's another advantage to growing up here: companions.

NARRATOR
Scientists studying this shark playground have discovered that two and three-year-old lemon sharks hang out in gangs. They stick with the same crowd and even learn from one another. It's an advanced level of social behaviour for fish.

NARRATOR
Stepping into the mangroves, it's easy to see just how valuable this habitat is for sharks.

STEVE BACKSHALL
So, here and now it's all about the lemon sharks. These are all lemons, but there are so many different species of sharks that totally rely on these mangroves for their nurseries, so you'll get tiny hammerheads, perfect representations of the adult animal, bonnetheads, tiger sharks, all having their young pups in here.

NARRATOR
But this playground is under threat.

STEVE BACKSHALL
First time I came to Bimini to work with the sharks was just over 20 years ago and we came here to Mosquito Point because this was the very best of the mangroves. It stretched on for miles in every direction, and now it's been totally destroyed. It's been dredged, reclaimed and is making way for luxury homes and a big hotel complex, and this same situation is going on all over the world.

NARRATOR
Mangroves are disappearing faster than rainforests, but if we can prove their value, we may be able to protect them. All over the world, scientists face a race against time to uncover the facts that could help us protect sharks, and the tropical mangroves are just the start.


NARRATOR
Leaving the Bahamas behind and following the warm waters of the Gulf Stream far to the northeast, you eventually arrive at the rugged coast of the British Isles, a place that every summer plays host to a mysterious shark.

NARRATOR
Basking sharks are super-sized filter feeders that strain plankton from the top of the water.

NARRATOR
Their lives on the surface are fairly well understood, but when these creatures disappear into the depths, our knowledge disappears with them.

NARRATOR
Mating, gestation and birth have rarely been witnessed, but here in Scotland, scientists have spotted sharks doing something new.

NARRATOR
This female has a companion. For days, they've been swimming in tandem, nose to tail, or side by side, fins almost touching.

NARRATOR
The behaviour of following each other is intriguing and though it's not yet been proven, it does look a lot like courtship. Scientists here now hope that by tagging sharks and using newly developed cameras, they may at last be able to fill in the blanks in their knowledge of basking shark behaviour.

NARRATOR
Journeying further north, as you approach the Arctic, the Atlantic becomes an arena of freezing temperatures, shifting ice and deep, dark basins. Its hostile depths are home to the highly illusive Greenland shark.

NARRATOR
These slow swimming giants have chemicals that act like anti-freeze in their blood. Their prey is thought to range from sleeping seals to the scavenged carcasses of reindeer and polar bears. Their sluggish metabolism allows them to reach astonishing ages of over 400 years, the oldest vertebrate on the planet. There's much we could learn from an animal that's so long-lived, but it's very rare to encounter one. In 30 years, I've never caught a glimpse.

NARRATOR
My best chance of seeing this enigma...

NARRATOR
...is by visiting the Natural History Museum in London.

STEVE BACKSHALL
The museum is the most iconic and dramatic of buildings, but it's so much more than that. Behind the scenes here is a quite extraordinary repository of knowledge. The fish collection alone has more than 900,000 specimens and is probably the most important collection in the world of preserved sharks.

NARRATOR
Among the dried, pickled and bottled specimens in senior curator OLIVER CRIMMEN's collection, is a perfectly preserved Greenland shark.

STEVE BACKSHALL
Oh! That is breathtaking. What do we do? How do we handle it?

OLIVER CRIMMEN
Well, it is quite a heavy beast, so if you can find something to pick it up by. That's it.

STEVE BACKSHALL
Oh, those teeth. Whoa! The top and bottom jaw have completely different dentition, don't they?

OLIVER CRIMMEN
Yeah.

STEVE BACKSHALL
So, would these be an anchor and those be almost like a saw?

OLIVER CRIMMEN
Indeed, and when they've been filmed feeding on a whale carcass on the bottom, we see this rotational movement of the whole shark as it is using these as a saw to cut through into the blubber.

STEVE BACKSHALL
And why do you think it's important to keep animals like this preserved?

OLIVER CRIMMEN
Well, its true value will emerge over time. We wouldn't have dreamt 50 years ago that we'd be looking at DNA in these museum specimens. We just didn't know that was possible. Now we can even use CT scanning to look at the whole anatomy without even opening up the animal.

STEVE BACKSHALL
I guess that's particularly important for something like this that's so difficult to study in its natural environment.

OLIVER CRIMMEN
Absolutely, and sadly for some species, the specimens in our collection are all that's left of animals that have become extinct.

STEVE BACKSHALL
Yeah.

NARRATOR
A shark that takes more than 150 years to reach sexual maturity stands little chance of adapting to a melting Arctic, and without action, we run the risk of losing entire shark species before we've even begun to understand them.

NARRATOR
Today's reality is that humans have made parts of the Atlantic a hostile place for sharks, through climate change, habitat destruction and industrial scale fishing. The Bahamas is a rare sanctuary, one of very few places where sharks are protected by law, but small pockets of safety are not enough. To understand why, there's one last species I'm desperate to find.

NARRATOR
Believed to have once been the most numerous large predator on the planet, there are now only a handful left.

STEVE BACKSHALL
As you head away from the shore here, there's such a defined divide between the inviting turquoise aquamarine of the shallows, then the reef and beyond it, the deep, deep blue of the open ocean. Different blue, different habitats and different sharks.

NARRATOR
This is one of the last-known strongholds of oceanic whitetips. Unlike the other sharks I've seen in The Bahamas, this is a pelagic species. It lives in deep, open water and behaves totally differently to the sharks on the reef.

STEVE BACKSHALL
There's something... Something is kicking off.

Divemaster
We're good to go under.

NARRATOR
These sharks are attracted by thrashing in the water.

STEVE BACKSHALL
You go, go, go. Jump, I'll catch you up.

NARRATOR
So, we should enter as calmly and as smoothly as we can.

STEVE BACKSHALL
So, we have at least three oceanic whitetips circling at the back of the boat at the moment.

STEVE BACKSHALL
Because you're in the blue, there's no bottom to protect you, there's no reef behind you to protect you. You really could have a shark come in from any direction.

NARRATOR
I'm taking a camera with me to record them, but it's also useful for fending off sharks that get too close. I've been hoping for three or four individuals, but as soon as I'm in the water, I'm surrounded.

STEVE BACKSHALL
It's hard to imagine this is a critically endangered species and this is the only place in the world that you can see them like this.

STEVE BACKSHALL
Look at that. They come in so directly. They are incredibly bold in their approach.

NARRATOR
Away from the abundance of the reef, the vast Atlantic is a hostile home where whitetips can go weeks, or even months, between meals.

STEVE BACKSHALL
The oceanic whitetip is like the blueprint for the perfect open ocean hunter. It's so perfectly hydro-dynamic, streamlined in form and they barely seem to be moving as they cruise. On a single flick of the tail, an explosive speed carries them away.

NARRATOR
They're constantly on a search for sustenance and this hasn't just honed their bodies, it's also shaped their behaviour. These sharks are highly inquisitive, exactly what's needed to find food in an extreme environment.

STEVE BACKSHALL
Whoa! Well, that's my first bump.

STEVE BACKSHALL
They're basic programming is quite simple: cruise, conserve energy, if you find something that might be food, sniff, bump, bite.

NARRATOR
Like many sharks, whitetips will favour easy targets, probing for signs of weak or ailing prey. This focused feeding helps maintain healthy ecosystems.

STEVE BACKSHALL
That one has been totally different in its attitude to all of the others around us. You can see it a mile off. Here it is again, coming straight back. It's much more determined and focused in its movements than the others.

STEVE BACKSHALL
Whoa! Ho-ho. It's unusual that it gives your camera quite such a big bump as that. The snout is so sensitive that normally just a touch of the hard glass is enough to repel them.

NARRATOR
Inquisitiveness has served them well for millions of years, but now it's part of the reason for their massive decline.

STEVE BACKSHALL
It's possible that the reason this shark is so much trouble than any of the others is down to that hook. Essentially the hook could be causing it pain, could be making it harder for it to hunt.

NARRATOR
The fishing hook stuck in the mouth of this shark is not the only one. A large number of the sharks around me are trailing hooks, lines and other fishing gear. These highly intelligent animals have learnt to follow the fishing boats that work this part of the western Atlantic. It's a sobering reminder we may be in a sanctuary here, but as soon as sharks leave this small refuge, they're totally unprotected.

NARRATOR
Commercial long-line fishing which targets big fish like tuna, ends up catching sharks by mistake. It has caused numbers of whitetips in this region to drop by a staggering 98%.

STEVE BACKSHALL
It's hard to get your head around when you see them here in such numbers and in such control, that this is a critically endangered animal. In fact, it could lay claim to the dubious honour of being the most persecuted creature in our seas.

NARRATOR
There's a chance that if I can get close enough, I may be able to free some of these sharks from the hooks and lines that are causing them so many problems, but to do that, I'll need to ditch the scuba gear and enter their world unencumbered.

NARRATOR
Free diving among these incredible females, I can see many of them are pregnant. What makes sharks so vulnerable is their slow rate of growth and the time it takes them to reach sexual maturity. That's why places like The Bahamas, where they can feed and rest without persecution, are so vital.

NARRATOR
A curious female keeps approaching me with a hook in her mouth and a long length of line trailing behind her. Her willingness to come so close gives me a chance to remove it, but I still need to go carefully.

NARRATOR
Finally, I manage to cut away the line. It's a small gesture, but one I hope will give her, and her pups, a better chance.

STEVE BACKSHALL
Sadly, my time here is limited to the amount of air that I can fit in my lungs and that's not much. It means I'm on borrowed time down there in their world because, seriously, I'd like this moment to last forever. It's one of the greatest of all wildlife encounters with an animal that only has a future if we're willing to give it one.

STEVE BACKSHALL
When you look out at the Atlantic like this, it seems to go on forever. You can understand why for millennia people have thought that it must be infinite, that you could take whatever you want, and there would always be more, but we know now that that's not true. The sharks of the Atlantic are extreme survivors. They've lasted for more than 400 million years, through all of our planet's great extinction events, including the one that took away the dinosaurs, and they're still here - just - but now they're facing their biggest challenge, and if we're their greatest threat, we also have to be their saviours. It’s not too late to save our sharks.


NARRATOR
Making the Atlantic ocean episode, I was lucky enough to have some exceptional close encounters. Diving with different species of shark presents different challenges. Early on, we drew on all our team's knowledge and experience to film a shark with a formidable reputation. A tiger shark.


STEVE BACKSHALL
One of the things about being on a shark boat, out here, is that, you know, pretty much anything can happen. You've got to be ready to roll at any second, and this big, dark shadow bumbled up behind the boat, is a tiger shark. A good sized one as well. So, we're trying to get ready as fast as we possible can, hoping that it'll stick around, because it'll be absolutely beautiful, in this light, in this water right now, to see this tiger.

MALE CREW MEMBER
You ready to dive?

NARRATOR
Each tiger shark has its own personality. I need to get a sense of how this female will react to my presence.

STEVE BACKSHALL
It's one of those scenarios, when you haven't planned for it to happen, so we all just need to be watching each other's back, and be super conservative.

NARRATOR
Just like its namesake, tigers are big and powerful predators. While sharks don't deliberately target people, they sometimes feel threatened, or can mistake our hands, feet, or equipment for food. Being able to read their behaviour, is vitally important. The position of this female's fins, and the way she's swimming, tell me if she's becoming agitated, or switching into predatory mode.

STEVE BACKSHALL
The tiger's interested in us, and the boat, but not in any way aggressive. Very, very beautiful.

NARRATOR
It's the gentle side of this feared predator, that is rarely seen. It was the finale of the Atlantic episode, that would really test our team's experience, as we attempt to film oceanic whitetips.

STEVE BACKSHALL
Something is kicking off!

MALE CREW MEMBER
Got a whitetip guys, whitetip!

NARRATOR
It was a large number of sharks, in deep, open water. 

MALE CREW MEMBER
All get in the water.

DUNCAN BRAKE
[INAUDIBLE] the camera.

NARRATOR
Camera operator, DUNCAN BRAKE, has dived with these sharks before, and knows they're highly intelligent predators, with a curiosity for DIVERs.

DUNCAN BRAKE
Every time I think I've figured it out, and I know how these animals are gonna behave, it changes, and they show you, every single time, they have the upper hand.


NARRATOR
It's all part of this predator's inquisitive nature, but it can feel intimidating. For camera operator, HELEN SAMPSON, it's her first dive with whitetips.

HELEN SAMPSON
I'm quite nervous, because I know that they're inquisitive sharks, and they like to come up and check you out at close range, but I have a camera, so I feel a bit more confident that I have a barrier between me and them, if they decide to come too close.


NARRATOR
With their attention focused on the viewfinder, the camera team is unable to keep tabs on all the sharks around them, and that's where the, behind the scenes, dive team comes in, under the watchful eye of shark safety expert, JAY MALY.

JAY MALY
Very frequently...

DIVER
Whoa!

JAY MALY
... you will get them coming in behind you.

NARRATOR
It's the job of Jay and his team to monitor every shark's position and communicate that to the film crew.

JAY MALY
The number one rule is always knowing where those sharks are. So, I'm underwater, pointing out where these sharks are, as well as I am calling numbers out. So, four sharks, five sharks, six sharks. I mean, I've had days when I don't have enough fingers. I got ten, 20, 23.


NARRATOR
Sharks' sensitive snouts, mean they will avoid any hard object placed in their path. Simply holding out a plastic pipe, will gently redirect a curious advance... and the hard glass of a camera lens does the same trick. 

STEVE BACKSHALL
More than any other species, you can see them looking at you, in the eyes, trying to figure out what you are.

DUNCAN BRAKE
You see these sharks are swimming around in the deep, and they're not coming up, viciously, trying to take a bite out of Steve.

DUNCAN BRAKE
... they're just trying to investigate; are you food or not?

NARRATOR
But the know-how of our experts, did more than facilitate dramatic moments with sharks. It led to some powerful revelations, too.

STEVE BACKSHALL
Quite a few of the females here are quite heavy in the belly. They might well be ready to have pups.

NARRATOR
Just before we finish, we're keen to explore how the whitetips will react if we ditch our scuba gear, with its cumbersome tanks and noisy bubbles, and enter the water, as free DIVERs.

STEVE BACKSHALL
On the face of it, I guess, you know, free diving is simpler than scuba diving. You know, all you've got is your fins and the air you keep in your body, but actually it's kind of more complex,

DUNCAN BRAKE
When you're free diving with them, everything is kind of limited by the amount of time you can hold your breath underwater. So, we really have to keep an eye on their behaviour, look out for any visual cues to see if they're showing any signs of aggression, and see if they allow us to interact with them.

NARRATOR
But, once we're in the water, I'm faced with a dilemma. A female, who's snagged herself on a fishing hook, has been circling the team and repeatedly approaching me. Under normal circumstances, we're careful not to touch, or interfere, with wild animals... but, with her clearly suffering from a human made problem... I don't feel I have a choice. I move in and cut the line.

NARRATOR
This was never our original plan for the scene, but the footage would become a poignant ending to the Atlantic episode, with a powerful message.

STEVE BACKSHALL
It's such a sad sight, every single day we've done, we've seen sharks that have been snagged by hooks and lines, and we've managed to cut a couple free, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. You know, it's a critically endangered species. Just imagine what it would be like if, you know, giant pandas and mountain gorillas were wandering around with this stuff trailing out of their mouths? Then I think people would start to take notice.

NARRATOR
Intimate encounters, like this one in the Bahamas, help the team reveal a very different side to sharks. It's one that goes beyond the myths, and, I hope, inspires people to cherish and protect the precious sharks we still have left.



Job ID:  188362
Shark with STEVE BACKSHALL 
Shark_Ep_1_Atlantic_Ocean_NBCU_BITC_H264 
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