The Jaws Strikes Back program, part of Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, is set to air on August 11.
The one-hour program is slated to start at 9 p.m. EDT.
In the program, marine biologist Greg Skomal and the REMUS SharkCam team travel to the remote Pacific island of Guadalupe to film the hunting behavior of the largest great white sharks on earth. The camera specifically follows three huge sharks as they hunt giant elephant seals.
Skomal and his team spent about a year on the island with the camera, which enables tracking of sharks at depths of 300 feet.
“We wanted to test the new tool, sharkcam—the drone if you will—in a place where we could really run it through the riggers of following sharks and where we had good visibility,” he told Entertainment Weekly.
They also wanted to solve a mystery:
“Whenever you have white sharks and seals together, usually you see white sharks attack and eat the seals. Certainly Discovery Channel has covered that extensively on Shark Week numerous times. But Guadalupe is a place where you just typically do not see that kind of behavior. We’re wondering: there’s seals there, there’s sharks there, what is going on? Where are these attacks occurring? Or maybe they’re not occurring at all….How do white sharks behave around Guadalupe Island after they leave the boats that are chumming them in? Are they going and attacking seals at night? Are they doing things at depths? Or are they just going away and ignoring them? Those were the questions we had.”
Part of the program shows the team tagging a shark, and then the sharkcam tacking that shark, dubbed Johnny. But then another shark attacks the drone.
“We tested it in Cape Cod for Shark Week 2013, and had great success. I think all of us were really surprised, including the engineers, that the darn thing worked and was able to actually follow a fish. That was really the first time we were able to follow a large marine animal and film it using a drone,” Skomal said.
“The engineers get a little bit nervous, a little overprotective, so I figured I‘d have a little fun with them. I was teasing them. I said, ’Look, these sharks might eat this thing,' and never anticipated it in Cape Cod. The sharks ignored it.
“We took it to Guadalupe, and it came back after one track, and it was all scratched up. We said, ‘Whoa, what the heck is going on here?’ My teasing had come to fruition. I was really quite surprised, not only at the fact that white sharks were attacking it, but that it wasn’t actually the white shark we were tracking. These were other animals that were in the area and viewed the drone as a prey item, and then attacked with incredible force and great vigor.”
Several other programs during Shark Week tackle “jaws,” with some linked to the popular movie.
Air Jaws: Fin of Fury has already aired twice, showing filmmaker Jeff Kurrand his team embark on a world wide mission to track down the missing “mega-shark” Colossus.
A program set for noon EDT on Tuesday, Blood in the Water, reveals the true story behind the bloody shark attacks of 1916 that inspired the movie “Jaws.”
At 6 p.m. Tuesday, I Escaped Jaws will air.
“These are the harrowing first-hand tales, many caught on camera, of people who stared into the jaws of a shark and survived,” according to the Discovery Channel.
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