- This movie's great 'cause
when Sam Jackson goes,
he's standing there,
"you know we all have
to come together and-"
[chomps]
He just gets eaten.
[laughs]
Hi, my name is Apryl Boyle,
I am a marine and environmental scientist
who specializes in sharks,
and the founder of El Porto Shark.
And today we're going to review some
shark attack scenes in
film and television.
So come on in, the water's great.
[electric guitar]
This clip is from Jaws,
directed by Steven Spielberg.
- What kind of a shark is it?
- Let me see, I don't know.
I think it's a "mah-ko".
- Got a deep throat Pratt.
- Yeah, but what kind?
What kind of shark?
- It's a tiger shark.
- A what?
- A what?
- I love this scene
because it is a crack-up.
The fellas around don't know
what kind of shark it is,
they've allegedly been in
the water their whole lives.
They're watermen, they're
fishermen, they're boaters.
They don't know what
kind of shark this is.
First of all that's
really silly to me because
if they've been waterman
their whole lives,
they know what a tiger
shark, a white shark, a Mako.
It's not "mah-ko", it's mako.
- I think it's a "mah-ko".
- So they're pronouncing
things incorrectly,
and that's not something
lifelong watermen would do,
or waterwomen but in this
case the scene has watermen.
- But the fact is that the
bite radius on this animal
is different than the
wounds on the victim.
- The thing about bite radius,
there is something to that.
Often when a shark bites
a surfboard, a boat,
anything, a person,
you can figure out how large the shark was
based on the size of the mouth.
So there is something to
the bite radius thing.
- C'mon fellas, let's be reasonable, huh?
This is not the time or the place
to perform some kind of a
half-assed autopsy on a fish.
- A necropsy is actually what it's called
when you do an autopsy on an animal.
And to do an animal necropsy
you certainly wouldn't do it on the dock.
Unless you had a lab or a
setting next to the dock,
where you weigh the animal out
and you do it properly by
weighing and measuring.
So back when this film was made,
they absolutely would've put
the shark on display and said
look here's the man-eater
that's been terrorizing the beaches.
However today fortunately,
that's not the case in the US
and many other places
where sharks are protected,
because since this movie came out,
there are 75% fewer great
white sharks in the ocean
largely because of fear, misinformation,
and movies like this.
But, fortunately, this
movie is what inspired me
to grow up to become Matt
Hooper, so it did good.
Peter Benchley, who wrote Jaws,
is a green conservationist.
He spent his life as a conservationist
for sharks and the ocean.
Didn't realize what a bell
he would ring with this one,
and the film was just so
good and so suspenseful
it made us all afraid of sharks.
This clip is from Deep Blue
Sea, directed by Renny Harlin.
[metal scraping]
- How long have they been
synchronized like this?
- So, the whole lab setup and
genetically modifying sharks
that is pretty absurd.
I can't imagine anyone
funding that for starters.
Making sharks smarter,
I can't think of a reason to do that,
without doing other research first.
So the whole notion of
genetically modifying
sharks to be smarter,
and work together and mind control.
This reminded me of the Aquaman cartoons
when I was a little girl,
where he would just
telepathically get animals to do
what they wanted.
And I think I bet the
writer's an Aquaman fan too.
[intense music]
- Tell me I didn't see that.
They recognized that gun.
- An interesting thing a
lot of people don't realize,
is that sharks are skittish.
Most wild animals are skittish.
They all have personalities,
and you'll come across
some who are curious,
and others not so much.
Generally though, a wild
shark is skittish of
something that's not its
food or it hasn't seen.
For example, it would not recognize that
there is a gun pointed at it,
or that a person is doing
something in its harm,
because that's kind of
not part of its world.
I myself have been surfing,
and because a great white shark can't
see directly in front of him,
or directly behind him,
as soon as it turned a touch to see me,
it was just gone,
just super skittish.
And I've seen this behavior
with all types of sharks,
nurse sharks, blacktips,
reef sharks, hammerheads.
I've had more of them swim away from me
than I've had come towards me.
[gunshot]
[Apryl laughs]
Tough guy.
Oh, they got him.
I'm not quite sure what
he shoots into the shark
to make it just pass out like that
and go up and all that's really silly.
So it's kind of not feasible at all.
This is, I would say this is
almost 100 percent fiction.
- And I'm still starving.
- We're about to have a feeding frenzy.
[whimpers]
- Come on, let's get this over with.
- This is finding Nemo,
directed by Andrew Stanton.
[bell dings]
- Right then.
The meeting has officially come to order.
Let us all say the pledge.
- [In unison] I am a nice shark.
Not a mindless eating machine.
If I am to change this image,
I must first change myself.
Fish are friends, not food.
- What I do love about finding Nemo is
they try to portray a different
side of the shark with the
"fish are friends, not food".
I can't tell you how many
students have said that to me
because of Finding Nemo.
And I think that's great
because it's showing that
hey look, the sharks are trying to care,
we should care,
and I think it's trying to send
a bigger environmental message.
But showing you that sharks can be
quote-unquote humanized
to where they're cuddly or friendly.
Which is why conversation is hampered,
because they're thought of as
eating machines, killers, et cetera.
So this humanization if you will,
I think was great 'cause it kind of
gave kids a less scary intro to sharks.
In a way that wasn't so much like
yes, they're going to
eat you no matter what.
- Now do you all have your friends?
- Got mine.
[whimpers]
- A lot of sharks have very
symbiotic relationships with other fish.
You'll see pilot fish
and you'll see remora stuck
to the bottom of sharks.
So those are both kind of
really great symbiotic relationships.
The pilot fish and the remoras
are not part of the sharks food,
they don't think to eat them.
So they hang around and get protection
from the shark and pick up scraps.
They're very specific eaters,
great whites, hammerheads, everyone,
they have their specific
niche in the ecosystem,
so they don't just eat everything.
So they do have relationships
with other fish.
- That's mine give it back!
- Dory cut it out!
- Give me-
Ow!
- Oh I'm sorry, are you okay?
- Ow ow ow.
- I'm so sorry.
- Yeah you really clocked me there.
Am I bleeding?
- Oh.
- Ow.
- Here we go.
- Dory, are you okay?
Oh that's good.
- [Together] Intervention!
- The little tiny bit of blood
that goes into Bruce's nose
and he inevitably is drawn into a frenzy.
Which is one of the best shark
myths that scares everybody.
And I have to say,
I've used it to my advantage before
to get people out of the line up surfing.
Oh you have a cut you better get out.
More waves for me.
But honestly,
if I could cut my finger,
stick it in the water,
and have white sharks or
any other sharks come to me,
imagine how easy my research would be.
How easy would it be to attract them?
The truth is,
there's a whole cacophony
of smell out there
and while sharks can detect
a small amount of blood in
an Olympic sized swimming pool,
that doesn't mean that's what
drives them to go and eat.
Great whites in particular
are very picky eaters.
They don't simply eat everything.
Its a little more complicated than that,
they're not just indiscriminate eaters.
Yes, tiger sharks and bulls
are sometimes known as
garbage cans of the sea
and they'll eat everything.
White shark's far more picky.
So every shark has its specific food.
And again, we have another clip from Jaws.
[crash]
[intense music]
Oh lost the spear.
[Apryl laughs]
So the shark in Jaws is a great white.
And we do cage dive,
or use cages to observe great
white sharks in the wild,
however, most of the time
the cage is attached to
the back of the boat,
there are those that go down by themselves
farther into the water,
but they're not as flimsy as it appears.
The shark simply bumped into it,
and the cage falls apart.
It's far safer than you think.
And interestingly,
I have never seen a great white
or any other shark attack like that.
It seems like in movies
they're made to like,
act like a dog.
I've seen them like,
take something and
[growls]
or like keep going and
[growls]
and that's just not how a
great white shark feeds.
So, the shark is a bit unrealistic,
quite a bit unrealistic,
in the film.
Now, if the shark actually
did get in a cage and present a danger,
he could feasibly go down into
hide in a coral area.
In Southern California he
can hide in a kelp bed maybe,
he can hide in some rocks.
So that's feasible,
that part is more
believable than the shark.
- Marcel we have a real problem here.
- It is not a problem,
it is the circle of life.
- This is Couples Retreat,
directed by Peter Billingsly.
- The circle of life
is circling our lives,
right now.
- Do not move, do not panic.
- Shark!
- What?
- Shark!
- Jason?
- Okay, it's all happening Marcel.
- Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.
- [Marcel] Don't worry!
- Their reactions are so
over the top and unnecessary,
it's absolutely fantastic.
And I've actually seen
people afraid of tiny sharks.
Now, the fella in the movie
calls them lemon sharks.
They look like they're in really
tropical, beautiful waters.
And I've seen lemon sharks in that water,
and I actually have video of
one coming just as close to me
and minding its own business.
So those little guys
were checking them out
and would absolutely do no damage to them.
Sure, there's times where
you'll hear a shark has bitten a foot,
or taken a nibble off of somebody,
But the way those little guys were?
I mean, honestly they were
in no danger whatsoever.
And if that was my guy out there,
I'd be like,
okay we need to sit down and have a talk,
and I would take him cage
diving with 18 foot great whites
to get that fear right out of him.
- Stop it.
You said not to panic,
you said not to panic.
I'm sitting in blood.
I'm sitting in blood.
Marcel this isn't a drill buddy,
you got real sharks here.
It's time to get the guns,
and it's time to shoot some fish.
- So let's talk about the word attack.
It is used in a lot of situations where
it isn't actually human
and shark interaction.
You can go to the
international of global
shark attack files,
search it online and download
the excel file yourself,
and see that sometimes a bump and run,
as I said I was bumped by a leopard shark.
I was never in any danger,
it was turbid water,
trying to figure out if I was food or not.
Boom, wasn't, it left.
That would be classified as an attack.
Nothing wrong with my wetsuit, nothing.
This also maybe characterizes an attack,
and there has to be
something done about that
and there's some
researchers including myself
trying to get rid of the
crazy attack scenario
where everything is an attack
and not just an encounter.
So I had an encounter.
These gentlemen are having an
encounter with these sharks,
this is not an attack.
The one actor dumps him
and leaves Vince Vaughn there
with all the blood.
Really is a non issue
but Vince Vaughn should
get out of the way,
because there's little
bits of food in there
that they were feeding the sharks.
So it's not necessarily
the blood's going to
attract them right away and everything.
But if there are bits of food in there
you know, get out of the
cloud of food dumb dumb.
Just, you know
swim a little bit.
But they really weren't in ever
in any danger.
So they were just letting all their fears
get the best of them.
This is The Meg, directed
by John Turteltaub.
[slow music]
[sound intensifies]
This is allegedly a big
research thing of some kind.
The shark would already know it's there.
Not only does it have lateral lines
so lateral lines on fish
are those things that,
they go down the sides,
and it allows them to feel vibrations.
And sharks have this,
and its why, you know,
you'll see schools of fish schooling,
they can feel the
vibration of the other fish
and by vision as well.
So vision and the lateral lines,
they're ampullae of Lorenzini,
these are all things
that allow them to hunt.
And their vision is not that bad.
So if it was dark,
if it was turbid,
meaning there was a lot of
particulate in the water,
a lot of wind action,
sure something could happen.
But this thing in the water
should've been there for awhile
and this big ginormous shark
trying to take a bit of
this tiny little girl
is incredibly silly.
I mean if there were
a whole bunch of kids,
like you've got a whole
bunch of potato chips,
I could see him going by and tasting one.
But for the shark to do that,
that was pretty absurd
and something I don't think would happen.
[crash]
In The Meg its really ridiculous
the shark would try to bite that glass
where the little girl is
because if you recall,
the shark came from way down
deep in the Marianas Trench
and had never been up
above a certain layer.
So this shark would
have really bad vision,
because you don't really need vision
down where there's no light.
You hunt by other means et cetera.
Your vision doesn't have to be that great.
So the fact the it was dark around there
would have nothing to do with that shark
eating that little girl
or trying to eat it.
It would not go after it
because it certainly doesn't look,
or sense, or smell, or sound, or feel,
like any food its ever had.
It'd be afraid of it.
It'd be away from that.
- Get out of the water!
- Next up we have Baywatch
filmed right here in
beautiful Los Angeles County.
- Help us!
- Help!
[all yelling]
- Help!
- So they definitely had
a lot of fun filming this.
The entire thing is an homage to Jaws.
When Michael Brody was in the pond
with his little kid friends in a boat,
and they got knocked over,
all his friends swam away,
and he sat there,
and the shark went by him
just like in this.
So, the writers of this,
to me this whole clip is just a fun
we really love the movie Jaws
and we're gonna be as absurd as possible
and make up all kinds of
nonsense about a shark attack.
- Get out of the water!
[intense music]
- [Apryl] The whole absurdity is
I could see everyone
shark oh my god get out of the water
out of the water!
I can see people panicking
and that happening.
But I can't imagine a lifeguard
getting in the water
when the lifeguard boat is right there
and could get to them far quicker.
Because when you're
training to be a lifeguard
or a first responder of any kind,
you don't kill yourself
to save somebody else,
you have to make sure
you safely save someone,
its part of their training.
The fact that lifeguards,
especially Los Angeles County lifeguards
who are part of the fire department,
they're incredibly trained,
would run out into something that
was dangerous like that if for real,
that little tiny shark
that looks like a dolphin in some shots
was actually going to attack.
If there was some real danger right there
they would bring the boat over there.
Now the other silly thing is,
okay she swims out,
she gets to him,
turn the boat over,
get on the boat,
get your limbs out of the water
if you're so worried about it,
but really just swim calmly to the boat
because the shark isn't going to
keep coming after you like that
and the other homage to Jaws
was when Jill does get eaten
and she's taken through the water
just the top part is out.
That's just like the very
beginning of the very first Jaws
where Chrissy, if you remember,
she's screaming
oh god send help!
You know,
and then she lands on the
buoy before she goes down.
So this was a giant love
letter to the movie Jaws.
Just this over the top absurd,
probably a really fun shoot to do.
This is The Shallows, direct
by Jaume Collet-Serra.
[roars]
If the shark in this
movie is supposed to be
a great white shark
they're picky eaters.
I've witnessed myself
them accidentally taking
a bite of something
that wasn't their normal prey
and spitting it right back out.
So the notion that they
would fight so hard
to get this small morsel
that is not calorie dense.
Again, in the wild,
survival means calorie dense meals.
Which is why they love seals and sea lions
because their blubber
is not like human fat.
It's super dense,
it's a whole other organ
which is why its called
blubber and not fat
I don't care how big
and fat a person may be,
we're still not shark food,
they don't want you
'cause you look like a
big weed ball or whatever.
They want the calorie rich food.
Because they don't know
when their next meal is.
So it's like any other animal in the wild.
You waste a certain amount of energy
to get the food.
So the amount of energy that shark wastes
jumping out and hurting itself
is not worth the payoff
if it got to eat her.
The shark going up on
the rock and in the coral
probably would be pretty
abrasive on the animal.
So movies where the shark
comes up and it's bite bite,
it's just not their behavior.
I've never seen that happen in the wild
and I've seen them eat stuff in the wild
with my own eyes.
This is Open Water,
direct by Chris Kentis.
- I don't see anything.
- Are you okay?
Are you hurt?
- I don't know-
- Oh, oh honey!
Oh my god!
Honey, you're okay.
- I'm bit!
- Honey?
- I'm bit.
The [beep] bit me!
- Okay, okay.
- Yes.
- So Open Water is the
most frightening movie
out of all these movies today.
So its based on a true story.
Two divers did actually
get left behind on a dive
and they were never found.
So the movie is speculating,
kind of what they went through.
I mean I'm getting chills thinking about
being left behind on a dive boat.
That is the scariest part of this movie.
And anyone who's a diver,
research diver, or commercial
diver, or just for fun,
that is the most frightening part.
[groans in pain]
And then the next most frightening part is
the little shark bite,
and how this happens is
actually on the feasible side.
The shark took a bite like
yep this isn't my food
and took off.
So that makes it really
feasible and believable.
Which makes it entirely frightening.
And the fact that divers
do get lost on dives
is a thing that happens.
And unfortunately this
clip is very feasible
it could definitely happen
with the certain conditions.
So it's the most realistic.
This is Bait, directed by Kimble Rendall.
[somber music]
So sharks don't feed at the top
as much as previously thought.
In fact, a paper just came out
about this very recently,
they spend more time down below,
being that their food
isn't on the surface.
However, if the shark
was going to come up and
take an entire person,
it would be very quietly
much like that fella
that just was swimming
and whoop, he's gone.
But I don't know what that
explosion was afterward,
I'm not sure what that was.
But I could definitely see
someone being dragged down
if the animal thought that was food
and took the person in.
But again, we're not their food
so we don't look like their food
so it's really unlikely.
- Shark!
- I can't hear ya!
- Shark!
- What?
- So, sharks in South
Africa and other places
actually come up from the bottom
and surprise attack.
I've actually seen them do this
in Guadalupe Island in
Mexico with my own eyes.
Looking at one shark
behind you another one
goes up and grabs something.
So they do come from the
bottom and just [snaps].
So that's part of their strategy.
Go swimming everybody,
did I scare you enough?
But at any rate,
they took the shark jumping up
out of a natural behavior that
sharks in South Africa
and other places have done
to get seals and sea lions.
So that behavior is something that
they over exaggerated for this clip.
But once the shark ate the guy,
he probably realized that's not food
and probably wouldn't be
so excited about this guy.
Again it's all a big, absurd, really quick
oh my god there's a shark
he's eating everybody.
It's perfect for the movies.
So, we've seen a lot of
clips with shark attacks.
A lot of encounters,
things called attacks
that weren't attacks.
We have to remember,
using this language to say attack,
makes the sharks a villain.
And really they're a top
predator of the ocean
that keeps the entire ecosystem in check.
And they need our protection.
In just one hour, over
11 thousand are killed.
If there's one thing you can do
to help sharks and the
whole ocean ecosystem,
stop using single-use plastics,
and especially straws.
What the alternative?
Look.
Oh my god, I drank
something without a straw,
you can do it too.
