Discovery Channel: Expedition Shark

Sunset on Osprey Reef

Nearly the whole crew has descended 45 feet underwater to watch the final crescendo, the last episode of shark rodeo. The cameramen are in place, the rest of us are sitting back on the coral shelf, and Richard and JR come down with the bait—200 of bait. They open the crate, and the cloud of rotting fish guts and flesh make the already murky water like a cloud. I can’t see well but I can see sharks. One grey reef shark comes close, swimming right toward me before turning away. Before long they’re in the wildest frenzy I’ve ever seen, tearing madly at the tuna heads and fish, darting around. Because there are so many of us on the coral shelf, we form a wall of air bubbles that tend to keep them away from us.

Richard tries to grab the whitetip but she escapes. Plan A foiled. I see the other shark they’re after & a grey reef with a temp logger as well. Because they are bigger than whitetips, he has to catch them with the “claw.” He makes a grab but misses. So much for Plan B. On to Plan C—use spearguns to attach pinger tags to silvertips, much the same way they tagged pizza sharks, erm, manta rays, but near the silvertips’ dorsal fins. Because of their large size, the only way to catch silvertips would be by hook and line, but that takes time and as we saw earlier in the week, doesn’t always work.

Richard and Mike follow the whitetip into a cave, and several grey reefs and silvertips follow them in. They’re inside the cave with a bunch of sharks that block the entrance, and Richard has to punch two in the nose to get them to back off. Brendon and JR went to the mouth of the cave to keep more sharks from coming in.  When Richard got out of the cave, he saw silvertips circling around. Ping! Richard darts the silvertip in the perfect location and gives Mike a high five. Two more follow in quick succession. They come back out of the water elated. Success!

Without a doubt this week’s trip, plus a research-only shark tagging trip a couple weeks ago, have been highly successful. “We’ve gotten more done in the past month than we have in the last 12 years,” says Richard. They’ve now tagged over 60 sharks and rays, placed a grid of receivers all around Osprey Reef and four inside the lagoon at its center. We made a stop in the lagoon center one evening and caught 7 juvenile grey reef sharks, literally just discovering on this trip that it may serve as a shark nursery grounds. And they’ve collected data from 16 receivers placed a couple months before along Osprey’s western wall. A full picture of how the sharks use the reef — and whether they leave seasonally — won’t come into view until at least a year’s worth of data have been collected.

“We just picked up a manta ray,” Richard says. He’s back on the boat looking at the data from one of the receivers, and has already picked up signals from the manta tagged a couple days ago. By the next night, they picked up the second manta they tagged as well as chambered nautilus tagged by another researcher. What started as tracking sharks around Osprey Reef has turned into a project tracking sharks, rays, nautilus, and potato cod and that will soon track several other common reef fish. They’ve created a one-of-a kind grid where they can track movements of all different species in an ecosystem-wide study.

The ultimate goal is to gather enough data and raise awareness of the importance of Osprey Reef to sharks and other marine organisms to preserve it. The isolated coral reef seamount lies outside of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, so there’s no formal protection here. Scientists know very little about shark natural history, but we do know overfishing and mismanagement threaten nearly all species around the world.

“Sharks are slow growers and take many years to mature. They’re more similar to marine mammals than to fish in that way and they’re extremely vulnerable to exploitation. It’s just that sharks aren’t as cute and cuddly as whales,” says Richard.

By gathering information about how the sharks use the habitat, he hopes to sway the Australian and Queensland governments to preserve it and all reefs within the Coral Sea permanently.

Some progress has been made. As President of the Cod Hole Ribbon Reef Operators Association, JR had been negotiating an agreement to keep the fisheries away from Osprey reef with the Coral Sea Fisheries Association, but had been unsuccessful. After watching an Australia 60 Minutes show, the fisheries organization created a Memorandum of Understanding agreeing that they would not commercially line fish within a mile of the reef. That the commercial fisheries recognized the value of tourism is commendable, but the reality is that anything can happen without formal protection.

“All shark species in the world are mismanaged, including Australia’s. Once we get all of the info out there, hopefully the government will listen to our recommendations to manage it sustainably,” Richard says.

Expedition Shark is unique because it, along with Richard’s long-term research, partners research with conservation. Not many documentaries involve conducting research as part of the filming, and Celine and Mike say they appreciate that aspect of this film the most.

Celine studied psychology and then inter-cultural relations and it wasn’t until 2003, when she spent time with her father, Jean-Michel Cousteau, while he filmed the grey whale migration to Alaska that she knew for sure she wanted to carry on her grandfather’s legacy in documentary film-making. She’s worked on several documentaries since then, and now sees film making combined with conservation as her future calling. “It’s not enough to protect the shark species. We also need to protect their home,” she says.

The ocean is a foreign world to many people. To all of us really, even those who dive and spend time undersea. But oceans, and especially coral reef ecosystems, have color, beauty, excitement, drama, and, at the same time, a serene peaceful quiet that can not be replicated on land. They also hold incredible biodiversity.

“Some people like going for a walk in the woods but in an hour hike you might see a lizard or a butterfly,” JR says. He introduced Richard to Osprey Reef and to Raine Island, and has been passionate about conserving the region from the start. “But in a dive on the reef you’ll see thousands of animals. You’ll see more different species than you’ll see on land possibly for the rest of your life. Once in a while you’ll get the bonus of seeing these rare creatures, like a tiger shark, but the background hum is incredible— a kaleidoscope of movement and life.”

We’ve spent the last 20- hours battling 10 to 12 foot swells en route back to Port Douglas. The sun goes down as we approach the Australian mainland, and we’ve squashed as many people as we can into the tiny wheelhouse room. “What will define you after Expedition Shark?” Celine asks everyone. Richard is in his bed, hiding from the seasickness, but JR, Mike, Dean, Sean, Cat, me, and others are all still hanging out in the dusky light. “The fact that I’ve had an absolutely fantastic time,” says Dean.

One thing I’ve seen for sure—these guys love their jobs, doing science, making films and  working to conserve species that can’t speak for themselves. Sharks rule the oceanic world. And it would be a shame if we allowed misplaced fear or ignorance to allow even one of these magnificent oceanic predator species to disappear.

Blog Extras:

• Peruse parting shots from Osprey Reef in a stunning photo slide show.
• Listen to Wendee and Cat's audio dispatches from the Coral Sea, too.

 

Images: Silvertip with pinger attached; Potato cod; JR and Richard review footage.

Photos: Cat Gennaro/DCL

Silvertips, Tigers and Hammerheads, Oh My!

So there is Sanjayan, underwater, holding a whitetip shark on a rope; while JR has taken the other two to the boat. They’ve just finished the shark rodeo and we’re heading to the surface. Sanjayan holds a joint appointment as lead scientist for The Nature Conservancy and a research faculty member at the University of Montana. Coming into the show as a terrestrial ecologist, he presents fresh insight into what it’s like to experience some of these things for the first time.

“I’ve spent a lot of time around carnivores. I’ve been with polar bears and grizzlies and mountain lions and leopards and lions and wolves. I know how they behave and I know how to put myself in a situation where I’m never taking incompetent risks,” says Sanjayan. “But the moment I go in the water, I feel incompetent because I’m surrounded by animals that are more comfortable in their environment than me, and I can’t read them. Their body language is new to me.”

The sharks must be having a tough time reading us too. Seeing sharks dangling by their tails is a pretty funny sight. But all that lassoing gets the job done.

“When Richard first told me what he wanted to do, that he wanted to catch a shark by its tail, and transfer the lasso from your hand to its tail, I thought it was a crazy idea,” Mike said in a video diary he recorded for the show last night. “But that’s what we’ve been doing. And it works like a charm.”

The shark rodeo takes place at North Horn, at the relatively shallow depth of 55 feet. The plan had been to capture the same three whitetips that they’d placed the temperature loggers on, but catching the third whitetip they placed temp loggers on has proven a bit tricky. The outside capsule fell off her tail fin, so she’s not quite as easy to identify, but Richard can tell her by the fresh sutures on her belly.

After bringing the sharks they captured to the boat, Richard carries them one at a time to the kiddie pool to wait while they work on the third. Richard gives the new whitetip a pinger ID, and removes the temp loggers from the other two.

We watch the shark rodeo again the following day, catching one new whitetip, but the one they really want eludes us yet again. She’s turning out to be a slippery shark. So Richard tries a new capture technique for grey reef sharks. He opens the bait box, which gets them hyped. With fish in the water, the greys started circling and grabbing aggressively at the fish —very different behavior from their regular cruising mode. Once the greys get in a frenzy, Richard tries to hook their tails with a “claw” he invented —a metal hook that works like a handcuff.

We watch for another 20 minutes or so, but it’s not working so Richard makes the call to head up. “The claw just seems to not work around their tail. It just slips out,” Richard says. But the good news: “We’ve now tagged 50 sharks at Osprey Reef.”

Out here on the Undersea Explorer, there are two simultaneous agendas—conduct scientific research and film a documentary. Some days they do both at the same time. Other days, no cameras are around and they just capture sharks. Sometimes they film scenes on board the boat or in the water while no research is happening. Sometimes they just play around, like when Sanjayan, Richard and Mike lay in the kiddie pool with a small whitetip shark.

Sometimes different things are happening at the same time. Various divers are setting and retrieving receivers, fishing for sharks or setting out reef cams. When Undersea Explorer biologist Gabriel Vianna was retrieving one of the receivers at North Horn, several silvertip reef sharks “buzzed” him. Instead of keeping at a distance, the silvertips were checking him out, just slightly more aggressive than their normal cruising mode.

Since the silvertips were in the area, why not try to catch some? Silvertips forage differently than grey reef sharks, so researchers have to capture them differently too. While you can catch grey reef sharks by fishing off the back of a moored boat, silvertips tend to swim in deeper water and go after moving bait.  So with engines idling and winds behind us, the crew cast a 400-pound fishing line with bait, and let the line drift with the boat away from the reef. When the boat gets too far out, skipper Sean would reposition the boat closer to the reef, and then let it drift some more.

I watched the fishing from the back deck and saw several silvertips swimming in the water just off the duckboard. Despite heavy winds during our trip reducing water visibility, the ocean is still incredibly clear blue, and sharks can be seen with clarity under the water’s surface. After an hour and a half, several to try to take the bait, but not aggressively. Once again the sharks just weren’t biting.

Yesterday morning we were traveling from Admiralty Anchor to North Horn to try our hand at shark rodeo again. I was standing at the duckboard when crew started running past and talking about a tiger shark. Mike spotted something at the front of the boat and so we all went out there to check it out. It comes really close to the surface and Richard makes the call, “definitely a tiger.” I can see the tiger-like marking on its flanks. “It’s a small one.” It is probably about 10 to 12 feet long—larger than any of the other sharks we’ve seen so far, but small for a tiger.

“Ask me how many tigers I’ve seen out here at Osprey, including that one,” Richard says to Sanjayan. “How many have you seen?” Sanjayan asks.

“One,” Richard replies.

JR grabs some fish bait to see if they can hook it, so they can see whether it’s one they tagged at Raine Island earlier in the year, also part of the Expedition Shark film. Tiger sharks lurk in great numbers off of Raine, a green sea turtle nesting beach. The crew got in the water to film, tag and release them. Is it possible that one of those tiger sharks made its way out here, over 100 miles away? No one knows.

They try to hook the tiger shark for about 20 minutes but unfortunately, it didn’t take the bait. She swam close to the surface a few times, dove deep, surfaced again and then swam away— a typical day of shark research.

“First a thresher and now a tiger shark. What’s next?” I say. What a rare, privileged sighting! “Maybe a hammerhead? We’re going to see a hammerhead!” I say. I’m half joking, because that would be extraordinary and unusual to say the least to see all three of these species here within a few days.

But I’ll be darned if we don’t see just that — a great hammerhead — the very same afternoon. Topside cameraman Athol Foster was snorkeling off the reef at North Horn when he saw a hammerhead swimming below him. “It came up within couple meters of the surface and it circled around. It showed a lot of interest in me.” he says. “Had I been on my own and had no researchers telling me about sharks for the last several days, I probably would have been scared. I was sort of caught between both worlds, where you think, shoot, it could be really scary but I wished it would come closer.”

Soundman Cam McGrath was the only one already in Scuba gear, so he jumped in with a underwater camera and got about 20 to 30 seconds of good footage. As more people got in the water, the hammerhead seemed to get a lot more agitated. They kept most people out of the water so they could get some footage and by the time I was able to jump in with my snorkel and mask, it was gone.  Athol said it left by heading from the deeper water into the shallower Osprey reef shelf. But what an amazing stroke of luck we’ve had!

Images: Richard and grey reef; Pinger ID tag; Bait box frenzy; Sanjayan, Richard and Mike in kiddie pool with whitetip shark.

Photos: Cat Gennaro/DCL/Courtesy Wendee Holtcamp