National Geographic, Disney+ and Hulu are deep diving into shark month in July with a series of close encounters with these behemoths of the deep.
Ever since the massive predator took a bite out of the orca in “Jaws,” people have been fascinated by these voracious creatures.
And BAFTA-winning cinematographer and National Geographic explorer Bertie Gregory is no different. Cruising the placid Pacific waters off Mexico, he’s searching the distinctive and elusive hammerhead shark. Titled “Hammerhead Sharks Up Close with Bertie Gregory,” the mission is streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
Gregory is no stranger to perilous places. “The most ambitious shoot we went on was for the Antarctic episode, and we went to try and film the biggest gathering of fin whales ever,” he recalls.
“And we spent six weeks on a sailboat. We had to cross the Drake Passage, one of the roughest parts of oceans on the planet. We spent six weeks there, and we were on a 75-foot sailboat. We had drones. We had diving equipment. We had gyro-stabilized cameras. We were really throwing the kitchen sink at these adventures.”
But the kitchen sink was no help when Gregory discovered a crocodile in his camping cot in Zambia.
“I screamed. And I ran out of the room and went to get one of our guides and said, ‘Yeah, Adrian, dude, there’s a crocodile in my bed. Can you come and sort it out?’ And during the shoot, we played loads of practical jokes on each other, so I definitely suffered from crying wolf, or crying crocodile,” Gregory says. “It took about 10 minutes for me to convince him that actually this was an actual problem and could he come help?
“Adrian’s very good at dealing with difficult situations. And he actually managed to get a towel on this crocodile’s head. And together, we managed to sort of grab it, and Adrian picked it up and walked it out to the river.
“And as he was walking out my door, it started going (makes honking noise). And I was like, ‘Oh, Adrian, what does that mean?’ He’s like, ‘Oh, this is actually a juvenile. That’s the distress call. He’s just calling Mum.’”
More adventures
There’s no calling Mum among the other “SharkFest” adventures on this series, including the search for the “World’s Biggest Mako” in the waters off New Zealand.
Aided by a local fisherman, the team of scientists and a cinematographer discover a coven of the giant sharks. While the mako may be an endangered species in other parts of the world, here they may be making a comeback.
Also on the docket is “Attack of the Samurai Sharks” in which a 3,000-year-old skeleton in Japan is found to have curious slice marks on his body. Could they have been caused by a shark? Shark experts Alyssa White, Gavin Naylor, Kirin Sekito and Masato Nakatsukasa ponder the evidence.
The seas surrounding a remote island in the South Pacific seem to be the country club for a variety of sharks, including the dusky, the tiger and the Galapagos sharks. Why they congregating in such big numbers in this secluded site is the subject of “Shark Island Showdown.”
“Great White Gauntlet” isn’t Ahab in search of Moby Dick, but a team of experts trying to discover why there’s a massive rally of great white sharks off the coast of Australia.
‘Can’t get enough’
Gregory’s own fascination with wildlife began when he was a kid. “I was about 12 or 13, and I lived in the southwest of England near a city called Reading. And it definitely wasn’t a wild place, but I was near farmland, and I made friends with the farmer, and he let me explore his land.
“And it was things like deer and kingfishers and foxes and badgers and maybe not the most, I guess they’re not polar bears, they’re not lions. But, to me, the excitement that I got from getting close to those animals, that same excitement I get from being with a fox or a badger, near to where I live, as I do with a polar bear. I just can’t get enough of it.”