![]() ![]() It's a shallow water area on the Little Bahama Bank in the Bahamas. Tiger Beach - although it's called a beach, it's nothing close to a beach. It was the first time I had ever been to Tiger Beach. ![]() It's in the Bahamas, right? You want to just describe it? You know, I know from some of my past research a shark sometimes will kind of show off or show some dominance by opening and closing its mouth.ĭAVIES: I know from reading about you that you do a lot of research on tiger sharks near a place called Tiger Beach. And it was probably helping enable the shark to funnel water in its mouth and over its gills, or maybe it was some sort of communication. It wasn't, like, trying to bite me or anything. It was opening its mouth, but it wasn't in pursuit. You know, it was certainly thrilling, but it was more of a sense of kind of awe. HAMMERSCHLAG: You know, I wasn't afraid, actually. You know, come so close that it had to rotate around to eyeball me, swam circles around me, and kind of moved back off into the dark water because it was evening at that time.ĭAVIES: When the shark approached you, were you afraid? It swam off only to come back and do that all again. Then it rotated back and opened its mouth - and I was looking through its mouth down its, you know, gut and seeing its gills from the inside - closed its mouth again. So they're - it was so close that it had to rotate around to kind of eyeball me up and down. One peeled off, but the other one moved right in towards me and came so close that actually, it couldn't even see me from looking dead on because like all fish, they kind of have the eyes on their - side of their head. And I had never seen one before so - you know, I was a bit younger and more excited and I guess green.Īnd I put on my snorkel gear and grabbed my camera, ran to the back of the boat and pretty much just cannonballed into the water and saw these huge two tiger sharks approaching me, 3-and-a-half-foot-wide heads coming close. I went into the shower to kind of wash up, and I heard someone yell tiger shark. We were actually looking for sharks, so we were baiting them in, trying to get close. And I was on a boat - a live-aboard, meaning you kind of live and sleep on the boat. I mean, it was a beautiful late afternoon, early evening in the Bahamas. I'd like to start with an experience - and this is something that you mentioned in a TED talk - of an encounter with a shark about 10 years ago. He spoke with FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies.ĭAVE DAVIES, BYLINE: Well, Dr. His work is featured in two of the episodes of The Discovery Channel's recent Shark Week. Hammerschlag has some tips on how to stay safe around them, and he'll explain how we're much more of a threat to sharks than they are to us. The tags he implants in sharks transmit information about the health and behavior of these predatory animals. He's caught and tagged more than a thousand sharks for research and has studied and filmed some of the largest of the shark species, the great white and tiger sharks. He spends a lot of time on and in the water. ![]() Neil Hammerschlag is a marine ecologist at the University of Miami, where he directs its Shark Research and Conservation Program. GROSS: Our guest today is a real-life Hooper of sorts. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks. RICHARD DREYFUSS: (As Matt Hooper) What we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It's summertime, when a lot of us head to the beach and try not to think about the man-eating sharks we've seen in movies like "Jaws." Remember Hooper, the shark expert played by a young Richard Dreyfuss? ![]()
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