I've always been shark obsessed, even as a kid. While others in Massachusetts would fear the summertime beach trips, I ran there hoping to catch a glimpse of a great white attack. (It never happened; mainly we saw overweight Massholes smoking cigarettes way too close to children.) The first novel I read was Jaws, and I even had a copy of Carl Gottlieb’s The Jaws Log, where he detailed the making of the film. I went on whale watches, I’ve been surfing, I even went scuba diving in Thailand for my honeymoon, but I had never seen a shark outside of the aquarium. Until Discovery asked me if I wanted to dive with sharks for Shark Week.
Everyone kept asking me if I was scared or told me I was insane, but honestly, I felt like a kid going to Disney World for the first time. I had cameras filming me as I suited up like a Game of Thrones character about to storm Winterfell (or King’s Landing, depending whose side you’re on). As we got out in the water, my heart started racing as I saw a few sharks swimming around near the surface. The water in the Bahamas was so clear it was like looking into a glass tank, with the sharks all swimming 30 feet below. I stood up in what felt like 100 pounds of scuba gear, waddled over to the edge of the boat, and jumped in.
I have seen a lot of terrible CGI sharks in movies, but now just ten feet away, they actually looked like CGI characters. They were beautiful, graceful, elegant creatures, much different from the ones I take meetings with at Soho house. At first the sharks kept a safe distance from me - circling, watching from afar, reading the vibrations of my heartbeat. In my mind I was of course trying to use the shark telepathy I’m convinced I’ve have since birth to let them know that I was a friend and they should come over. Slowly, they circled and passed, and eventually swam right at me.
These were reef sharks, about 7-9 feet long, and I learned they only attack sick or dying fish. It was important that I not make too many quick splashing movements, since they don’t really use sight to hunt, it’s all vibrations in the ocean, and when you kick your bare feet or splash your hands in the water to the sharks you’re mimicking the motion of a fish on its way out. I held up my arms and watched them in awe as they glided by, my hands gently grazing them as they passed by. I was right, I was a shark whisperer, I could call them to me. Then I turned around and saw our dive master, Beto, pulling out the chunks of dead fish from a metal crate. So much for my telepathic abilities, although I am still convinced that they knew I was a friend.
Beto, the suave Brazilian diver who I like imagine I look like when I’m diving, told us that if we were lucky maybe we’d put a shark in “tonic.” The sharks’ nerve endings are all concentrated in their nose, and if you can tickle them in the right spot they go into a trance-like state and will let you hold them for a period. A shark slowly glided over to him, and he reached up and in one motion began to tickle her, and she stopped. After a few seconds he had her in tonic, and I carefully swam over. I reached out, and replaced his hand with mine, gently tickling the underside of her nose. My other hand reached out for her fin, as she lay there, looking at me. I was eye to eye with this shark, totally at peace. Pia, our fearless photographer, took out the camera and gestured for me to kiss the shark. I was more than happy to. I have to say, she was a gentle kisser, much smoother than I imagined.
I later learned that the shark I held is named Lucy, and she actually came to them with a rope around her neck in April asking for help. They showed me a YouTube video “Shark Asks Divers for Help,” and there she was, scars on her gills, the rope choking her, swimming up to Pia and our other dive master Charlie and clearly asking them for help.
They cut the rope and Lucy swam free, and now she comes every day to feed. It was clear to me that the shark knew who they were, and understood that they were friendly. The sharks always approached us with caution, and were gentle. They oddly reminded me of my French bulldog puppy, who gets most interested in me when I’m eating dinner. Otherwise she just watches me going about my business. The sharks were curious, even playful. I had never before thought of these creatures as having this kind of emotional intelligence. I asked the divers if I was imagining this, and they said no, sharks absolutely have personalities (and moods), very much like dogs. For the rest of the dive Lucy followed us, and eventually I fed the sharks by hand. I sat 60 feet underwater, on the deck of a wrecked ship, with a spear, hand feeding the sharks. They swam right over my head, gently taking the food, and going around for another lap. They had absolutely no interest in eating me, and were even bumping into me fighting for a bite to eat, but never aggressively. I was so comfortable I filmed all my promos in the water with chain mail below the neck, swimming in chum filled waters as fins passed by my face and sharks knocking into my feet. I even got to do Katy Perry’s Super Bowl dance, and left shark did not comply with me either.
While hosting Shark After Dark I asked the world’s top shark experts the question on everyone’s mind: what is going on in North Carolina? Why are the sharks biting? One common response from everyone is that humans have overfished to the point of devastating the sharks food supply. They’re hungry, and even the term attack isn’t accurate, since they’re just investigating because they think it’s food.
I also learned some truly terrifying facts about what humans are doing to sharks. On average only 5 people a year worldwide die from shark bites, but 100 million sharks are killed every year by humans—for shark fin soup (also called “Fish Fin Soup”). It’s not the sharks who are eating us, it’s the other way around. Most of these sharks have their fins chopped off and are thrown in the water to drown. In the last 15 years we have lost 1.5 billion sharks. I also learned that the function of sharks in nature is to keep the ocean healthy—they’re the ocean’s doctors. They eat the sick and diseased fish. There are over 500 species of sharks, so there are ambush predators like great whites that eat seals, but the very purpose of sharks in our ecosystem is to keep disease from turning into epidemic.
I came out of my shark dive an even bigger fan of these fascinating, intelligent creatures. I’m about to embark on my own shark movie—Meg—for Warner Brothers, about a giant megaladon shark that escapes from the bottom of the ocean and wreaks havoc on the ecosystem, and I see it as an opportunity to re-educate and re-brand scary sharks in movies. For once, I want people to be afraid for the great whites. I know I am.
Shark Week begins on the Discovery Channel Sunday, July 5.
