New Zealand scientist Riley Elliott gets up close and personal with All the one sea Monster shark most of us do our best to Prevent
Each summer, there is one thing guaranteed to make headlines as we flock to the beach in droves: shark strikes.
From closing calls to lethal encounters, any interaction between mankind and these monsters of the deep sends shock waves through our communities as we respond in primal terror.
And, each year, the amount of attacks would appear to be rising — even out of summer, as evidenced by lots of shark talk landing in our information feeds over the last few months.
It is the inevitable side effect of more of us moving into their habitat, says scientist, surfer and shark specialist Riley Elliott, with the actual question being not these attacks are happening, but their frequency isn’t even higher.
“Every yearwe have more toys and more power to go and play in the water… and, ultimately, we’re placing ourselves increasingly more from the domain of the apex predator,” Elliott informs Foxtel magazine. “And if you put individuals in an apex hunter’s environment, you’re likely to get interaction.
“To be truthful, [when] people say to me,’Why are there more of these annually?’ I say,’Mate, I can’t think how few there are! ”’
That misconception of the shark’s place in the world can lead to tragedy, which
Is why Elliott hopes that events such as Discovery Channel’s yearly Shark Week
— returning to screens this month — will help educate people about the realities of the misunderstood creatures he is so intrigued by.
In Great White Double Trouble, for example, he and shark attack survivor Paul de Gelder set out to find the facts behind one of those shark world’s great mysteries: why more attacks occur on Australia’s east coast, yet those on the west coast tend to be deadlier. “Over a decade,there had been something like 88 shark attacks, but just a handful of those were fatal, whereas on the west coast of Australia, there were still roughly 20 shark strikes but the fantastic majority were deadly.”
Just why this is the case is the reason for much debate.
“We’re attempting to explore when there was something bizarre going on. Were those on the west longer predatory, more competitive and more powerful, or was there some thing we could find out about what’s happening with populations of sharks to provide us greater insight?”
Elliott’s eye-opening adventures are far from the only highlights of Shark Week 2020, with a series of global experts and celebrity enthusiasts lined up to direct us through the fascinating world of these formidable beasts.
Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson takes audiences into the waters of Grand Bahama to go toe-to-fin having an improbable sparring partner in Tyson vs Jaws:Rumble on the Reef. Will Smith pulls
It’s a varied mixture of programming, Elliott agrees, but with one common goal: to help us know more about these remarkable creatures.
“The good thing about Shark Week for a scientist like myself is the fact that it [gives] you a very distinctive platform to really go outside and do research which otherwise would not be happening,” he reasons.
“All the displays draw in a wide audience which then may see the programming that has more science inside and they learn something. And I think I’d rather that occurred than individuals just having no comprehension of sharks in any way.”
ACROSS THE DITCH The waters of New Zealand see plenty of shark Actions, Also
The fantastic whites of Australia might catch the spotlight, but as two documentaries out of New Zealand provethere are a variety of things happening beneath the waves.
In Mako Nation, Riley Elliott heads out to meet one of the world’s most elusive sport fish, the mako shark, also creates a discovery that will change how the world views .
“We recorded the strongest, most high- pressure shark bite in history using a mako,” he shows. “The most powerful sting of any shark species — it’s second only to the saltwater
Crocodile regarding any animal’s bite ability!”
In Shark Lockdown, Jacinda Ardern’s spouse, fishing presenter Clarke Gayford, discovers an unexpected side effect of individuals spending more time indoors during the COVID-19 pandemic: sharks are coming in greater quantities than ever.
Exploring the Foveaux Strait — between Stewart Island and the South Island — he found bees of all ages and sizes taking advantage of the fall in fishermen, surfers and animal watchers by exploring their seas en masse.
Are they leveraging the lack of competition to take over new territory, asks Elliott, or even simply reclaiming space they had to themselves?
“Perhaps when we go away and let the sharks do their own thing, they reunite to situations that might have been historically natural to them,” he ponders.