This is Doctor Neil Burnie.
He lives in Bermuda, a stunning Atlantic Island six hundred and forty miles east of North
Carolina, USA.He’s spent the last thirty years practicing veterinary medicine, but
now he's transferring his veterinary skills to help save, protect, and learn more about
the incredible marine life of Bermuda’s Ocean.
This is a completely wild shark.
Alongside his dedicated Ocean Vet team, are a number of scientists,
Yeah, this and probably.
marine biologists, Just cut a little nick off the back fin.
and specialist master divers, helping to perform a number of unique and dangerous procedures,
in a bid to safeguard critically important marine species.Together, the team will be
fitting satellite tags to huge tiger sharks, saving precious green turtles, dissecting
giant blue marlin, and obtaining unique toxin samples from forty five tonne, migrating,
humpback whales.
Yay!
Woo hoo!My knees are like jell-o.
Yes, man!
This is Bermuda!
Home to Doctor Neil Burnie, the Ocean Vet.
Sharks, they have existed for over four hundred and twenty million years.
They were around before land vertebrates and even before plant species colonised the continents.
They are without question one of the most perfectly formed of all planet earth’s predators.
The sixgill shark, like many shark species, is listed as near threatened.
Cruising Bermuda’s inky depths at well over two thousand feet, they often fall foul of
deep sea commercial fishing lines set down for table species such as, the Atlantic wreckfish.
With no real commercial value, these massive sharks are hauled to the surface, killed,
and used as bait.
Ok, the shark, the shark is, er, maybe eighty feet down right now.
You know, let’s get Drew in the water.
In this episode, the Ocean Vet team are on a rescue mission.
They’ll be working alongside Andrew Marshall, and Stevie Cabral, two local commercial fishermen,
fishing for deep sea wreckfish.
Wanna get that, might wanna sort that out later.
Maybe, Drew.
Andrew has requested the assistance of the Ocean Vet team, to attempt the rescue and
release of any sixgill sharks that are accidentally caught.
Yeah, it’s a lot of gear to transfer.
You can see there’s a big ruley sea, so it’s all hands on deck.
Under the water, Neil, will complete a dangerous assessment dive to monitor the condition of
a sixgill shark as it ascends from the depths.
The team will also be working waterside, to free this monster shark, carefully removing
the tangled fishing lines and hooks.
Slap it with the heel of your hand, man.
Slap it as hard as you can.
No.
Hard as you can, all your weight!
Finally, Choy Aming, the series marine biologist, assists Neil to install a sophisticated PSAT
tracking computer, a tag that will reveal if the shark makes it back to the ocean floor
and indeed survives.
Ugh!
That is a lot of, er, shark!
Local fishermen think it’s unlikely a sixgill will make it through the catch and release.
The Ocean Vet team are on a mission to prove it can be done.
So this is a genuine first for us.
We’ve never rescued a shark from commercial fishing lines and we’ve never seen a sixgill,
so it’s gonna be very interesting what happens today.
Basically, with the sixgills they live down deep.
When the guys go wreck fishing, sometimes the sixgills will get tangled up in the wreck
fishing gear and they get brought up to the surface.
Stevie, and Andrew are out there wreck fishing right now and they’ve invited us out today
to help them rescue any sharks that might get brought up in the line.
Relax, there we go.
Hose is in.
The Ocean Vet team have a vast amount of experience tagging and releasing sharks, including large
species, like the tiger shark.
But Choy, and Neil have yet to even see a sixgill, let alone attempting to rescue one
from commercial fishing lines.
Then, we’ve got, at least that is secure.
The team need to be able to alter their technique on the fly if they’re to stand any chance
of getting this right.
As always, Neil, and Choy are supported by the entire Ocean Vet team.
Andrew Kirkpatrick, is the underwater videographer, and will help Neil assess the sixgill shark
as it’s brought up to the boat; Dylan Ward, is taking control of the Ocean vet boat, Bones;
and Oscar Duess, is piloting the Ocean Vet RIB, deploying divers, and supporting the
needs of the entire team.
The commercial fishing boat, Bay Routes, is six kilometres, four miles, south of Bermuda’s
southwest edge.
The ocean floor drops away quickly here, reaching depths of five thousand feet in many places.
The Atlantic wreckfish, the fishermen’s target species, lives right along this deep
shelf sharing the same habitat as the sixgill shark.
So if the guys do bring a sixgill up to the surface today, we’re gonna try to fit it
with this, this is a PSAT archival tag and it’s programmed to record the shark’s
depth changes after it returns to the depths.
That way we’ll be able to see whether it survived it’s trip to the surface and hopefully
our release.
You hold on to it, Choy.
Sure.
At three thousand dollars a tag, the archival PSAT computer represents a significant financial
investment.
But this tag won’t just be used to acknowledge the success or failure of a sixgill rescue,
it will also reveal new and exciting movement information of a species the team knows very
little about.
Now i’m going to insert this large PSAT archival tag into the fish.
Neil, and the crew have used these tags on four other species, one was attached to a
galapagos shark, to understand more about their long-range migrations.
So, now i’m going to plant the tube.
Two of Bermuda’s spotted eagle rays also had PSAT tags installed, and the team even
managed to install one on a wahoo, and to one of the most powerful predators in the
Atlantic, the mighty blue marlin.
This fish is gonna swim, man!
His dorsal’s up.
He’s gonna swim, I tell ya!
Once deployed, the computer will record the sixgill shark’s depth, the temperature of
the water, and ambient light levels.
This information is stored in the tag’s memory and will upload to satellites when
it pops off.
So, I can see Bay Routes directly ahead of us.
We’ve got a big swell, so i’m gonna keep the boat pointed into the wind as we get all
our gear ready for a fairly critical transfer onto Andrew’s boat.Choy.
The team need to move lots of equipment to attempt a rescue.
What they don't realise is the fishermen have already started pulling up one of their deep
set-lines.
It’s not until Choy boards the boat, that the crew finds out there may be a sixgill
shark on the end of the line.
We’ve gotta go look at it and we’ve gotta get all our gear on, man.
It’s gonna be a while, so just slow him up.
Whatever it is, it’s on its way up, and the team need to be ready for it.
Ok, they think that.
Ok.
The shark, the shark is, er, maybe eighty feet down right now.
Let’s get Drew in the water.
Cameraman, Andy, on the boat here, he’s gonna go boat to RIB to boat with a very expensive
camera.
So, it’s all going down now.
We’ve got Drew jumping in the water.
Fish is coming up.
So, we’re gonna send him down, just to be the first eyes on it, to actually see what
is on the line and if it’s a big shark, then, er, we’ll just make a game plan on
the fly.
Sixgill sharks have a nasty habit of rolling when caught, sadly, each roll wraps the animal
into more hooks and cable.
It’s this scenario that the teams don't usually deal with.
To work out the best way to handle the rescue, Neil, and Kirkpatrick need to go down and
assess what’s on the end of the line.
Drew and I are really excited to see if we can get overboard and see if we can do something
to help this shark, if it is indeed a sixgill.
So, we’re setting up our comms system here, this links up to the comms mask that the guys
have, that way when they’re at eighty feet, or whatever depth they need to go to, then,
er, we can, er, be communicating with them, we can speak, and we can figure out exactly
what needs to be done just to give us a couple of extra minutes.
And, um, yeah, so just gotta set it up, drop it in the water.
With the dive brief and safety checks complete, Neil, and Kirkpatrick are ready to dive.
Three, two, one, go!
After a brief moment of disorientation, Neil, and Kirkpatrick start their descent straight
down.
Now I can now tell you, that this is a large shark, a large shark.
This animal has been hauled from it’s home over five thousand feet below the team.
The wreckfish have long worked themselves free.
This is the sixgill shark the team are now faced with saving.
Ok.
So you have a visual of a fish on the line, but you are not sure what it is yet.
This is, indeed, I suspect, a large sixgill, a large sixgill shark.
He has taken the second hook and there’s several other hooks wrapped around him.
This is probably a fish of over several hundred pounds, six, or seven hundred pounds.
We have multiple hooks wrapped over him.
However, I believe we shall be able to disentangle this fish, fairly easily, that is my hope.
Coming up, Neil works to free some of the hooks and line while deep in the ocean, then
attempts to attach a tail rope to raise this huge shark the final hundred feet to the surface.
Deep rope, deep one out.
Once at the side of the boat, the team will work quickly to remove the final hooks and
line before finally attaching the PSAT computer.
A piece of technology that will reveal if the team have successfully saved the life
of this sixgill shark.
So, I am filming, I am filming the hooks as they are wrapped around the shark.
I can see how they are wrapped, I have managed to free one.
The wire leader that is running through his mouth has encircled the fish.
He’s tenuously hooked with what appears to be the third hook of the leader, the third
hook of the leader.
Ok, so now that we have identified it is actually a sixgill, quite a large one, we’re gonna
get our head rope out, our tail rope out, and i’m gonna prepare the sling.
These guys can be huge, fully grown, er, they can be fourteen, fifteen, feet long and a
thousand pounds.
We don’t know how big it is yet, but we’re gonna measure it.
But, it’s a huge animal, so i’m just pulling out all the stops as i’ve never dealt with
one of these before.
This is the situation.
The fish has got a hook caught in the corner of it’s mouth, but, the, the thing that’s
bringing him up is the entanglement.
I’m keen that we don’t get him up to the surface and then have him pop that hook and
roll around further and get more of a mess.
Get more entangled.
And we don’t have his head controlled.
Right.
I think if we at least get his tail controlled from the outset, I can go put a tail rope
on him now.
Right.
And then we’ll have his tail roped as you get him up.
Right.
So I’m thinking i’m gonna put my dive gear back on and put a tail rope on him with
a large buoy.
Alright.
That will hold him.
If we get him to within ten feet of the surface, I can simply dive down and snag that rope.
Alright.
The team prepare for the procedure and head back out to the shark as quickly as possible!
It’s now been just over seven minutes since the team started the rescue.
Every minute that passes reduces the chances of a successful release.
The decision to attach the tail rope underwater is not just to prevent the animal further
wrapping in the lines, but crucially to reduce the time the shark spends at the side of the
boat.
Neil, manages to secure the rope on the tail and indicates to the surface with several
sharp tugs.
The shark is now semi-secured, preventing any further rolling in the fishing lines.
Tail rope is on!
The large orange float helps lift the shark’s tail up and away from the fishing line.
As this happens, the fishing wraps on the shark tighten and force the animal to reverse
it’s original role, further freeing the shark.
So, as you can see the shark is now held with the tail rope, it’s started to unwrap, and
is now ready to be lifted up.
I’m really excited!
This is a big female sixgill shark, the first i’ve ever seen, and I believe that we’ll
be able to gonna get a tag in her, and check her survival without a lot of undue distress
and trauma to this fish.
Ok, let me get off the bow.
Next, the team work together to secure this massive sixgill to the side of the boat, a
position that will allow the final untangle and tagging procedure.
Wow!
Oh my gosh!
That is like a dinosaur on the end of the line!
Alright, so we’ve got our tail rope here.
What i’ll do.
Actually, excellent!
They’re very sluggish, which is what we heard, but this is fantastic.
She’s got, er, no way near the fight of a large tiger shark, which is good.
But she’s rolling a little bit, so she still looks in, er, good condition to me.
A few little bumps and bruises, but nothing serious.
So i’m just gonna tie off her tail, right here, and then once she’s tied on we’ll
get this thing, oh my god!
Look at the green eyes!
It’s like a goblin!
The team brace the shark using the same sling as they used whilst working with the tiger
sharks.
Together with the tail rope this holds the animal in place so Neil and Choy can start
to remove the final hooks and line.
So now I have the hook attached to it, i’m gonna cut these away.
And then we can get the deep rope, deep one out.
Yeah.
Neil has cut the last hook away from the commercial fishing line and attached it to a rope leader
to control the head of the shark.
This is a much bigger animal than any of the tiger sharks we deal with, but luckily they
don’t seem to put up as, er, bad of a fight.
Look at the glowing green eyes!
That thing is incredible!These guys have come from a deep, dark, cold environment, basically
it’s devoid of light, hence the large green eyes.
He’s down, usually, there anywhere from a thousand, to maybe five thousand feet deep.These
guys have been around for so long they actually predate flowers on Planet Earth, this is a
true living fossil, right here.
Sixgill sharks are considered the oldest of all modern sharks, dating back some one hundred
and ninety million years!
They were around during the early Jurassic period and have had the benefit of an unimaginable
time period to evolve into the animal Neil and Choy are fighting to rescue.
Alright, so with the shark secure we’re gonna go for our DNA sample, so i’ve got
my scissors here.
Neil’s just gonna take a clip off the dorsal fin, which you can see is really far back
on these guys.
Thanks, Choy.
Bumpy conditions to work in, huh?
There we go.
Oh, sweet!
So this DNA is gonna go to, Mahmood Shivji, at Nova Southeastern University, to contribute
to his massive database of sharks taken from all around the world.
Yeah, I think he’s gonna be happy as this is a brand new species from Bermuda.
Ok, we’re gonna take a measurement now on this animal.
I’m gonna guess, you know, twelve or thirteen feet maybe, these guys are very long, and
lean.
So, Choy!
Be aware, his head is free, Yeah.
because the hook came out.
So i’m gonna be trying to hold this.
Sure. and i’m gonna measure back.
Don’t pull it tight until i’m back here.
I’m gonna measure the first third of the fish and then we’ll measure the second two
thirds, ok?
Ok, yeah, that works better, yeah, cos I was gonna say the measurement might end up being
approximate cos of the way this guy wiggles.
Neil shows an astonishing amount of confidence working around this massive shark!
He’s so focused on the job in hand that he is oblivious to the fact that this massive
predator has it’s jaws wide open, inches from his head!
He’s happy to put his life on the line while they collect the data and work to free this
sixgill shark.
So, we’re gonna take her tail length to add to that eleven feet.
Yeah, I can see it.
It’s, er, three foot two on the tail length.
Three foot two, plus eleven.
Fourteen foot two, inch, sixgill shark!
That.
Let’s do her girth.
That is a monstrous animal.
Fifty nine inch girth!
Fifty nine inch, just shy of five.
Wow!
Just, just shy of five feet around her tummy.
That’s a big girl!
So, we’ve got our, er, DNA clip.
We’ve done our measurements, we know what that are.
We know it’s a female.
So the last thing to do is to stick the, er, tag in, and then, er, we can release her,
and, er, hopefully she swims off happy.
Ok, here’s the scalpel.
Thank you.
Gentle.
I’m gonna make a little cut in the skin, just big enough to enter the tag, and then
we’re gonna place it into the tissues beneath the skin.
This skin is very tough, it’s like trying to cut sandpaper, and with this action of
the waves, i’m just trying to avoid slicing my finger.
Alright.
That should be big enough.
Yep, yep.
Alright, now you may need.
Yeah, we’re gonna have to drive.
It’s quite a tough drive.
Drive this with some force.
That’s it!
It’s in.
It’s planted.
Well done!
So, the archival tag is firmly planted in her skin and should survive for the four months
that we’re gonna record data from this shark.
Now it’s merely a question of releasing her.
I’m gonna put my dive gear on so that I can make sure this shark swims away.
So, this has been so exciting!
And now we’ve got this big female sixgill.
And i’m gonna release her.
And I’m really keen to see that she swims away.
Ok, so, Neil’s in position.
I’m in position.
We’re ready to drop the ropes, so we’re all set to have this girl swim away.
Ok, guys!
Excellent!
Ugh!
That is a lot of, er, shark!
Neil carefully moves the shark through the water to oxygenate it’s massive body.
A journey close to one mile, straight down, lay ahead of this incredible prehistoric creature.
With the tag firmly in place, the Ocean Vet team, can now establish if the shark makes
it back to the ocean floor and indeed survives.
The shark eventually finds it’s fins and starts to power down into the deep.
As it passes through sixty feet of water, it starts to pull away.
Neil is left watching as the animal the team have worked so hard to rescue successfully
swims down and out of sight.
That was absolutely phenomenal!
That shark swam a circle.
I was holding onto her.
I could feel her start to kick underneath me.
She swam back, as if to look at the boat, swam under the keel, I thought ‘is she gonna
hit the rudder?’
No!
Straight down.
And we followed her down, probably, to about eighty five, ninety, maybe even ninety feet
down.
And she was just going like a freight train, swimming and kicking back down into the abyss
from where she came.
It was phenomenal!
Great job everybody, Ocean Vet team!
Really well done.
Just spectacular job, man.
And, Dylan!
Good job, man!
Love it!
Best job in the world!
The data from the PSAT tag did eventually reveal the shark’s successful journey back
to it’s home, some five thousand feet down.
It tracked the shark’s regular movements over the following four months and served
to prove, that although at great cost and effort, it is worth trying to rescue these
incredible animals!
A little disappointingly you didn't get any wreckfish, but.
Since the filming of this project, the Ocean Vet team have spoken with other local commercial
fishermen and standby to assist as they continue to save, protect, rescue, and learn more about
the incredible marine life in Bermuda’s beautiful ocean.
Next time on Ocean Vet, Neil, and his team witness the deep spawning aggregations of
Bermuda’s famous black grouper.
So now we’re into our oxygenated bath, we’re gonna turn him right ways up.
They’re on a mission to test new tagging methods, both on the sea floor, in mid water,
and at the surface.
Their goal is to map the population dynamic of this important commercial species, helping
the Department of Fisheries with their mission to ensure the survival of a key Bermuda fishery.
