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NARRATOR: The picturesque coastal towns of Massachusetts typically attracts millions of visitors each year, lured by its stunning stretch of coastal waters and beautiful beaches. Its shores have remained quiet for more than 50 years. But not anymore. Jaws is making a comeback to America's northeast. And she's hungry. To fuel her bulky body she needs to feed.
And she's coming close to shore to get it. What's driving the great white shark back to Cape Cod's beaches and into our lives? GREG SKOMAL: The reason that Cape Cod's become a beacon for white sharks on a seasonal basis is the growing population of seals. It has taken seals 40-plus years to come back, it's the numbers that now draw the sharks. NARRATOR: And the numbers are high.
350 white sharks have been identified along the 40-mile coastline. And Skomal's team has tagged 203. GREG: Cape Cod is clearly emerged as an aggregation area, so in terms of densities of white sharks, there's probably more there than anywhere along the east coast of the U.S. Because as they move away from Cape Cod to parts north or south, they tend to spread out over much broader areas. NARRATOR: But we're the ones who brought the sharks back to these beaches. Decades ago, hunting and overfishing drove them away. And without their favorite prey here, the sharks moved offshore. Then, 50 years ago, we started protecting the seals,
and their numbers exploded. Today, some 30,000 to 50,000 gray seals cover their ancestors' beaches. But that success comes with a catch. The great whites are once again drawn close to shore, and sometimes, too close to us. NICK MUTO: The fishing industry here on Cape Cod is huge. It's been really the backbone of the Cape for centuries, really.
NARRATOR: Recently unwelcomed residents are causing some issues to the local industry, and it's not the sharks. Gray seals have a voracious appetite. Collectively, Cape Cod's population consumes almost 1.5 million pounds of fish every day. NICK: I don't particularly think the sharks are having a negative impact on our fisheries here. The seals are the biggest problem that we face as commercial fishermen. NARRATOR: Nick believes the seals are responsible for the decline in fish stocks.
NICK: We see problems with seals across all aspects of our job. They follow us 100 miles offshore. They'll eat the fish out of our nets, making it unsalable to us. NARRATOR: The rise in seal population is a recent phenomenon. NICK: I grew up here on Cape Cod. I was born in 1980, and I remember going to the beach as a child, and it was a big deal for us to see one seal as a kid. GREG: It really wasn't until 1972, with the passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, that we afforded seals enough protection that allow them to come back in numbers. And so it's taken almost 50 years, but seal populations have responded,
they've come back to levels that they were likely at historically. And when you've got those kinds of numbers in terms of seals around, you're going to attract a predator, and that predator is the white shark. We diminished white shark populations and they were gone for a long time. And during that same period we discovered Cape Cod as an amazing vacation resort, where we would come in and frolic in the ocean using all these water sports and recreational activities. Now we've got all these human beings with all these activities in this really small area. And that's created this perfect storm, if you will.
NARRATOR: A perfect storm that reached its tipping point in recent years. GREG: Over the course of the last 10 years, we've had a number of incidents; unfortunately one of them was fatal. But we've had bites on swimmers, we've had a kayak that was bitten. We had a surfboard that was bitten, and then we had the fatal shark attack in 2018 on a young man that was boogie boarding. If we were to plot out the number of attacks, you know, you can clearly see a trend that's happening more recently. Does it mean that the probability of a shark attack is high? No, it's not high, but it's certainly higher than what it was 50 years ago or 20 years ago.
NARRATOR: The big picture odds are that you're most likely to get injured in a car accident than you are swimming off the beaches of Cape Cod. But that doesn't stop Greg from trying to protect both the sharks and the public. GREG: What I've learned is it doesn't take a lot of shark attacks to really freak people out. The idea of being bitten by a wild animal, it is something we've tried to avoid over the course of our own evolution. And so we are inherently afraid of these events, and I don't blame people for that. NARRATOR: Greg has dedicated his life's work to trying to understand these sharks more.
Working with a team of scientists from the Atlantic Shark Conservancy, Greg spends summers tracking and tagging sharks. Due to the recent uptick in shark activity, their focus has changed. GREG: A lot of our emphasis now is on trying to learn those aspects of the biology of the white shark that'll help us, you know, enhance public safety. NARRATOR: In order to do that, Greg has to get up close and personal with more than 200 great white sharks. And in the summer of 2018, that close, personal relationship got very close!
Tagging is risky business. GREG: Nice! I'm out on the end of the pulpit, which extends about 11 feet from the bow of the boat. Well, I looked down into the water, I realized that the visibility, you know, is really horrible. You couldn't see the bottom, you couldn't see anything that was swimming in the water. So, I'm looking down, and suddenly out of the water comes this gaping mouth and jaws, if you will. MAN: Oh! Holy crap! It dove right out of the water! GREG: Wide open, and I really do remember looking straight down into the open mouth of the shark, as it came out,
snapped its jaws shut, and fell back into the water. And it was a split second of my life, I mean, it really happened fast, which means that I didn't believe it happened. It came right up! It opened its mouth right at my feet! NARRATOR: Was it a predatory strike or was it spooked? Was it trying to protect itself or just hungry? GREG: When I think about it over and over again, I'm realizing that for the shark to actually open its mouth, which is like opening an umbrella underwater, it costs a lot of energy.
It didn't realize that I'm 5 feet above the water. It just sees the reflection of me, my movement, and thought it was a potential prey item. And then came up, and its momentum carried it right out of the water with its mouth wide open, and it was anticipating closing its mouth onto perhaps a seal at the surface. And of course it just slapped it shut in the air and dropped back into the water. So, I do think it was a predatory strike, a failed one, thank God. And I think it's probably my, my, hopefully, hopefully the only time I feel like a seal. NARRATOR: As the human and white shark populations grow, their interactions are going to increase.
What happened that day could have been much worse. GREG: The part that really chills me to some extent is, what it if it wasn't me on a pulpit? What if it was a surfer coming out, you know, or a swimmer coming out, or a kayaker coming out, and that shark was in a heightened state of predatory mode, would that person have been bitten? NARRATOR: People, predator and prey in the same shallow waters can create problems. No one wants to see this kind of sign when they take their kids for a swim.
NICK: It's a common occurrence for my daughter to see seals. And because of that, I won't let my daughter in the water anymore. It saddens me to know that she's not going to have the same type of upbringing that I had where the ocean was such a huge part of our childhood. It's too dangerous for her to go in the water now. GREG: Ooh! NARRATOR: Greg's tags reveal a troubling pattern in the sharks' movements around the Cape: much of the time, they're patrolling just yards from shore. In most other parts of the world,
great whites prefer much deeper water. Here, they stick to the shallows. GREG: Look at that. MAN: Right below you. NARRATOR: It's evidence that the sharks here have adapted to the terrain and figured out a new way to hunt seals. A burst of acceleration followed by a whip-like snap of the head, instead of a long, powerful run-up from the depths. And it's just one more example of the remarkable adaptability of this powerful predator. Though it doesn't bode well for a swimmer or surfer who gets too close. NICK: There's always going to be sharks in the water. It's a natural consequence of going in the water: you're going to encounter sharks. But the fact that they're here because of the seals, and we see so many of them,
I think you're going to need for them to go away for a while before people get the sense of safety back and going in the water. GREG: Boy, that's not a bad tag. I just put an acoustic tag in the shark. That's gonna let us monitor its movements, its residency in this area, even where it goes when it leaves. NARRATOR: Greg hopes that his research will help lower the present risk in Cape Cod's waters. GREG: And that really boils down to figuring out when, where and how white sharks are attacking and killing seals.
Because we think that holds the key to protecting human lives. NARRATOR: Swimmers can be warned to stay away from beaches where seals congregate. And as the scientific work continues, we may find other high-risk zones that swimmers and surfers should avoid. NARRATOR: California. Like Cape Cod, these coastal waters are home to one of nature's most perfect hunters. More great white shark attacks occur here than anywhere else in the country. GREG: What I've learned about white sharks, and we look at the various aggregation sites all over the world, is these sites are very different, you know, from an environmental habitat point of view.
Just comparing the west coast of the U.S. to the east coast, we see dramatic differences in the coastline. They develop hunting strategies that work for them in those specific areas. It's the same white shark, it's the same species. NARRATOR: Rather than the more lateral attacks in the shallows of Cape Cod, the Pacific's deep channels and dense kelp forest allow the sharks to strike from below. These dramatic differences in their predatory tactics is largely linked to the habitat in which they live and in the behavior of the seals that they're hunting. And where predator, prey and human meet, there can be collateral damage.
There have been 29 attacks in the last 10 years in California. With many of those taking place near what scientists call the Red Triangle, which is not only a premier feeding ground, but also the world's leading site for great white shark attacks. Eric Larsen was on his board near San Francisco's Davenport Landing. ERIC LARSEN: We were out there, it was pretty beautiful, it was a very calm, sunny day. NARRATOR: In the early hours of the morning, a great white begins to hunt. PETER KLIMLEY: A white shark in California are cryptic, and they move close to the bottom, and they see something at the surface moving, and they strike it.
NARRATOR: The great white targets Eric and streaks toward the surface. ERIC: I could feel the water rising under me. It's a very unusual sensation. NARRATOR: Shaped like a torpedo and swimming at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour, the great white shark has a unique ability unlike any other shark to breach the surface of the water. ERIC: The great white shark just clamped me. The shark had the whole leg in its mouth. NARRATOR: The massive beast violently pulls the stunned surfer into the cold, turbulent water.
Eric has only precious seconds to act. ERIC: The only thing I could think of to do was to rip the right arm loose, and I thought, "Okay, I'll hit it a few times." PETER: The white sharks, they think it's a seal or a sea lion, and they carry it down, and they're moving it in their mouth, and they're trying to decide whether it is a seal or a sea lion, something worth eating, and if it's not, they release it. ERIC: The shark said, "Oh, man, I'm bugging out." And I could see my board right above me. I thought, "Okay, great, I'll just swim up there.
I'll get on it and I'll make it to shore." NARRATOR: The bite has left Eric with life-threatening injuries. ERIC: I could feel I was getting very weak. And I thought, well, if I sit here very long I'm pretty likely to die. I thought, I need to get help right away. Finally, a young guy comes out of his house and sees me and he went in and called the, called for help. NARRATOR: Within minutes, Eric is airlifted to safety. After a long recovery process, Eric's experience illustrates why California is a top state for shark attacks.
ERIC: If you were trying to put on a costume that would make you look like a seal from underneath, you know, split-toe boots, webbed finger gloves, short board, it's all adding up to, you know, bite me, bite here. In retrospect it was possibly a very stupid thing to do. NARRATOR: The seal population here in California has tripled in the last five decades. A new survey estimates more than 250,000, with colonies stemming from popular breeding grounds. GREG: There's a great relationship between the number of seals and the number of white sharks observed. And a lot of that work was documented
out at the Farallon Islands off the coast of California. And when you've got those kinds of numbers in terms of seals around, you're going to attract a predator. And that predator is the white shark. PETER: They pick out these seals and sea lions. It's unfortunate that sometimes surfers are in the same place that seals and sea lions are. I think what's important is that you stick to a beach, stay away and don't swim near the seals, that's, that's gonna get you in trouble.
NARRATOR: Of all the 29 attacks in the last decade, only two were fatal. And in almost all of the attacks, the white shark was the culprit. White sharks are opportunistic hunters, which means they will attack any prey in sight. JONATHAN KATHREIN: The day I was attacked was a lot like today, it was quite overcast. I was out at Stinson Beach in the late morning. NARRATOR: Unlike Eric, Jonathan swims in an ideally safe situation. He waits for waves in five feet of water on this crowded beach.
JONATHAN: The water around here is generally not that clear, so if something's swimming past you, you really would have no idea. As I was paddling, my right hand hit something, only this deep underneath me. I hadn't seen anything in the water. At this point, I'm paddling hard. NARRATOR: What Jonathan hit was a great white shark. PETER: It's a sudden movement is what triggers it, they go up after it. So that's what you want to avoid. JONATHAN: A 12-foot great white shark came up on my right side. And it bit onto my right leg, I couldn't get my arms around it enough to hold on to.
I saw the gills and I grabbed onto those. When I did that, the shark let go, I came up to the surface and I started swimming in. Now with my leg attached but badly damaged. The lifeguard saw me swimming up to the beach, unable to stand, unable to get up on shore. I lost a lot of blood, and they called a helicopter before I was out of the water. And those minutes made a big difference.
NARRATOR: Like Eric, Jonathan's great white let go realizing Jonathan wasn't food. But why was the shark there and why did it attack? PETER: I think if you're on a sandy beach, if you're swimming on a sandy beach, a pretty safe place to be. So why an attack at Stinson Beach? Well, they move from a seal colony with all the rocks, and they may move along a beach at some point, and may end up seeing something at the surface and strike them.
JONATHAN: The injury required about 600 stitches before the doctor stopped counting, so it was a long recovery. NARRATOR: Although deadly, the great white shark is an integral part of the marine ecosystem. JONATHAN: The obvious question is when somebody hears about a shark attack is wouldn't that survivor rather have sharks wiped out, and then they wouldn't have to worry about shark attacks? And because the answer is no so much of the time, I think the science has finally meshed with the people who are advocates for the sharks, and it's made a big change. PETER: I take pride that I've spent my life trying to change people's minds, but I do think people are less afraid of them now.
NARRATOR: North Carolina is no stranger to sharks, including spinners, sandbars, blacktips, sand tigers, and many others. Some are more likely to attack humans than others. With 34 attacks in the last decade, North Carolina is one of the most dangerous shark states in the U.S. Donnie Griggs was headed for a day of fishing, when something unusual caught his attention. DONNIE GRIGGS: We saw a whole bunch of birds, and I drove up to where the birds were and just saw all these sharks in the water.
And so we got out and I started videotaping it and, you know, the more we watched it, the more amazing it was. They're just feeding, man. NARRATOR: With his cell phone, Donnie captures this footage of something rarely seen. A shark feeding frenzy. DONNIE: I mean, it felt like there was at least 100 sharks in the water. I've never seen anything like this in my whole life. NARRATOR: It turns out the sharks Donnie was filming were spinner sharks-- a fast-swimming migratory species responsible for 16 attacks on humans over just a seven-year period.
CHUCK BANGLEY: Those sharks are actively feeding. They are keyed in on attacking something that's kind of small. You don't want them mistaking your foot for one of their fish they're actually there after. DONNIE: And we just all stood around, just, I mean, blown away that we had a chance to watch that happen. NARRATOR: Spinner sharks move closer to shore during the spring and summer months. They hunt ferociously. Targeting schools of fish, often spinning and leaping out of the water in pursuit of prey. Finely serrated teeth are designed for grasping, not cutting.
This may explain why most encounters with humans result in puncture wounds and are rarely fatal. CHUCK: Where a surfer might think an area's sharky just because they're seeing more sharks in that area. What I'm looking at is what brings the sharks into that area, especially large active species like our local spinner sharks. NARRATOR: Carson Jewell entered the water near Masonboro Island. CARSON JEWELL: At sunrise, we were on Masonboro Island, which is like a, it's like a preserved island.
There's no, there aren't any houses, there aren't any people. I bodysurfed, and my very first wave bodysurfing, I was lying down, my hands are out in front of me. NARRATOR: Carson was surfing during the summer in murky water, and during prime feeding time for sharks. CARSON: At the very end of the wave in probably two and a half feet of water, I felt something hit my, hit my hand and wrap it up, and just kind of wrestling me a little bit. CHUCK: The shark made that decision that, I'm hungry, this thing is pretty close to me, close enough that it probably can't get away if I launch myself at it right now,
and then it went ahead and turned on the attack switch. CARSON: I didn't pull my hand out, I just stood up and I didn't know what the damage would be, and then when I came up, my artery was punctured, and the back of my hand right here was flapping off basically. NARRATOR: Carson and his friends were on an isolated island and miles from help. CARSON: My buddy from Asheville put a huge beach towel on it. Wrapped around and put a lot of pressure on it, kept the tourniquet on, and we had to walk 10 minutes maybe to get to the boat, something like that.
I also I had to stop two times from being faint. NARRATOR: Luckily for Carson, he makes it to the hospital, but with little time to spare. CARSON: I imagine that I lost about as much blood as you can lose before you need blood put back in you. If I had been there with nothing and no one, I probably would have died. CHUCK: One of the best things you can do is kind of learn to read the water where you're about to go in. Swim in broad daylight, get into a group, try to stick to clear water, and try not to swim near any actively feeding fish.
NARRATOR: In 50 years, only one shark-related death has been reported along North Carolina's coast. CARSON: You're almost 100% chance of going home without getting bitten by a shark. NARRATOR: Scuba divers from around the world come to Morehead City, the graveyard of the Atlantic. Lured by its world class wrecks, and so are large schools of sand tiger sharks, often within arm's reach. ROBERT PURIFOY: We just dive and the sharks are there and we're there. And there's no need for any chain mesh suits, no shark protection devices.
We don't use any of that. CHUCK: What's actually really shocking is even though we're in the top five for attacks in the United States, how rare attacks are compared to the number of people using our water and the number of sharks using our water. NARRATOR: South Carolina is one of the fastest-growing states on America's East Coast. Shark attacks are also on the rise. There's an underwater empire here that creates the perfect storm for shark attacks. DANIEL ABEL: It doesn't surprise me that South Carolina is among the top states for unprovoked shark bites.
We have a lot of these highly productive estuaries, and in these estuaries sharks find safety and food. NARRATOR: But what's good for sharks along this rich stretch of eastern coastline can prove dangerous for humans. DANIEL: When you enter the water here in South Carolina, you're entering a wilderness that belongs more to the sharks than to you. NARRATOR: That makes South Carolina the third most dangerous shark state in the U.S. In 10 years there have been 46 unprovoked attacks.
Unsuspecting beachgoers play in waters only two feet deep. What's luring sharks so close to the shallows? NARRATOR: For Ty Bretz, water conditions turn a relaxing day on a South Carolina beach into any parent's worst nightmare. TY BRETZ: The day I was bit by a shark, we were at the Isle of Palms with my daughter Brianna and my daughter Hayley. The water was much more murky than normal.
There was a rainstorm the night before. DANIEL: In murky waters like in the waters Ty was in are very confusing to an animal. NARRATOR: The combination of sharks closer to shore and murky beach waters may be the reason a shark was perilously close to Ty and his two little girls. Muddy waters cause the shark to blindly rely on other senses to find its next meal. DANIEL: What an animal does is it hears, it smells, it detects physical vibrations.
NARRATOR: The vibrations that attracted this shark may have been caused by the innocent splashing of Ty's young daughters, Brianna and Hayley. TY: They were playing in the waves, and as I looked down in the water, I saw something move around by my youngest daughter, Hayley. DANIEL: The fact that Ty's daughters were splashing in the water may have contributed to the presence of sharks in the area. As I said, sharks have well developed acoustic senses. So they have mechanical senses, they can feel vibrations,
they can hear sounds in the water very well, and they may be attracted to low-frequency kinds of sounds, such as kids in the water would make, or maybe an injured fish might make. NARRATOR: Ty rushes towards his daughters, but this quick movement could have been the very thing that got the shark's attention. TY: As I walked towards her, that's when my right foot felt something very painful. The shark's teeth dug in, almost to the bone, but left, it left obviously abruptly after it did it, and I saw about a 3 to 4-foot shark in the water
leaving, going back out into the waves. NARRATOR: The details of Ty's attack are important for Dr. Abel. He's zeroing in on which sharks are most likely responsible for these shallow attacks in South Carolina. DANIEL: Ty's situation, when he saw this shadow in the water, he lunged towards his daughters, and then the animal was apparently attracted to him. That's conceivable because predominantly the sharks that we think are most responsible are this very robust, beautiful, fast-swimming shark called the blacktip shark. TY: First thing I did when I got bit was to bring them to try to get them out of the water.
Once we got back up to the boardwalk is when I noticed how much blood there really was. NARRATOR: Ty and his daughters survived, and after months of rehab and skin grafts, Ty is lucky that he didn't lose his leg. DANIEL: When they bite people, they sense immediately that this is not a prey item that's on its menu. These bites rarely do much damage, bite and then release. TY: My thoughts are that the odds are still very low. That you can still be in the ocean and come out fine. Listen, but you're in their environment.
Whether it's estuaries close by or the warmth of the water, or the murkiness of the water, I'm just much more aware of where I'm going and when. NARRATOR: Hawaii. This tropical paradise lures more and more people to its picture postcard beaches, and into the domain ruled by over 40 species of sharks. One species clearly dominates the Hawaiian coastline: the tiger shark. With 72 recorded attacks in the last 10 years, Hawaii is the second most dangerous shark state in the U.S.
Hawaii's oldest and northernmost island, Kauai, draws the attention of beachgoers and surfers like Mike Coots. MIKE COOTS: It was early in the morning, and it was the start of our surfing season here in Hawaii. And I remember it smelling really weird, like a foul stench in the water. And we were really excited to get out there, and it could have been the stinkiest day of the year, and we weren't, it wasn't gonna stop us. GEORGE BURGESS: Smelling a fishy smell when you're in the water should be an indication to anybody entering the water that there's an increased chance of encountering a shark.
NARRATOR: Mike and his friends enter the surf not knowing that a large tiger shark lurks just below. MIKE: We got out there and all my friends caught a wave right off the bat really fast, and I was out there with a stranger, a guy I hadn't seen before, and as soon as we both started making that initial motion to catch it, a shark came up vertically and just grabbed onto my leg. GEORGE: It will come up generally from behind and below. The surfer has no understanding that there's a shark there, and all of a sudden the animal breaks the surface and grabs.
MIKE: I didn't see the fin from far coming, I didn't see any splashes in the water, any signs of distress. It was a blindsided attack. I saw the real square nose and it was like a table, like completely square, and that's a telltale sign of a tiger shark. It basically came up like a submarine and grabbed onto my legs and started doing this rag doll, violent shaking back and forth.
PETER: The tiger shark has a tooth that looks like it's got a cusp here, up here, and then it comes down here, and it's serrated like that. And then on the other jaw it's the opposite, and so they move back and forth and they cut it like butter. NARRATOR: Curious in nature and aggressive when provoked, tiger sharks have been known to stop at nothing to complete a hunt for food. MIKE: And I was trying to get a better grip on my feet, and I, out of total instinct, punched it in the head, and as soon as I hit it, it let go.
GEORGE: The tip of the snout is a tender place on a shark at least initially, and so if you can pop a shark at the tip of the snout, the reaction is a startle, it might work once or twice, but after a while it will soon realize that it's bigger and stronger than you. NARRATOR: In contrast to the great white, which dominates the California coast, Hawaii's tiger sharks are highly unlikely to swim away after biting a human, which makes an encounter even more frightening. MIKE: I got back on my board, and I started paddling faster and faster, and this, this weird feeling started coming over me, and it was a shaking in my right leg, and it kind of just went through my body, and this spasming, weird, crazy shake,
and I thought, "Okay, that shark is getting me, and he's finishing me right now." And I looked over my shoulder and what it was, was it was my leg severed off completely. A surgeon couldn't have amputated it off any cleaner with a scalpel, it was completely gone. And that was at a moment that I knew that I probably wouldn't make it. And luckily a little wave came right then and I caught it all the way up to the sand. NARRATOR: Mike's fast-thinking friends on the beach made a tourniquet and beelined it to the hospital. Mike lost his leg but he made it.
GEORGE: We can't get into the head of the shark, but if it had wanted more, it would have come back. So for whatever reason, the one bite was sufficient for its needs, whatever its motivation was, whether it was feeding, whether it was aggression. NARRATOR: 284 miles away on the Big Island of Hawaii, James Kerrigan and his wife tell a similar story. MARY JO KERRIGAN: We had gone to the beach for a barbecue. JAMES KERRIGAN: It was hot and sunny and attractive, and the water was very, very clear and calm. MARY JO: Decided to get into the water and swim across the little corner of the bay.
He actually had me all concerned about stepping on sea urchins. So I was looking out for sea urchins, never thinking that we'd be worrying about a shark in the water. NARRATOR: But right beneath them in the same bay lurking just below the surface, an eight-foot tiger shark is suddenly drawn to James and his wife. With highly developed electroreceptors along the snout, tiger sharks have an astonishing ability to detect even the slightest heartbeat and movements from miles away. JAMES: We were just doing sidestroke, and my right leg was down in the water, and the shark just came up from behind and grabbed on my right leg.
I mean, I remember the initial feeling of being pulled under, and I remember coming back up and swimming into shore, but it's just, it was very hectic and very rough at the time. MARY JO: You could see a lot of the blood in the water. So we realized pretty quickly what had happened. JAMES: This scar goes right down to here, which is where you could see how big the shark's mouth was. LAWRENCE PEEBLES: You can tell the size of the shark by the tooth imprint. They've all been around three quarters of an inch, an inch, which indicates that they're about eight-foot sharks.
NARRATOR: With tiger sharks hunting so close to shore, some theories suggest it could be related to an increase in one of the main food sources in Hawaii. LAWRENCE: There's been a big program to protect turtles now. But turtles are also shark food, so because there's been an increase in turtles, we've seen increase in sharks. NARRATOR: Tiger sharks are atypical. Their behavior toward humans is unpredictable. PETER: Tiger sharks have a catholic diet.
They'll feed on almost anything, ranging from small fish to other sharks. GEORGE: Their stomach contents reveal things such as whole suits of armor and, you know, halves of horses, and all kinds of garbage as well as the occasional human body. What we do know is that they're a large predator and they're the big boy on the block. NARRATOR: Which is why Hawaii is the second most dangerous shark state in the U.S. for shark attacks. But when it comes to crowning a state number one, it's not even close. The warm waters, populated beaches, and strong tidal flow in this state create the perfect storm. With almost 1,200 miles of coastline, a population doubling almost every 40 years, Florida is, hands down, the most dangerous state in the U.S. for shark attacks.
STEPHEN KAJIURA: Florida has a reputation as the shark attack capital of the world, and it's, it's deserved. NARRATOR: In the last decade, people in Florida have been attacked 236 times. That's more than the other states combined. STEPHEN: If you contrast, say, Florida and California, for example, California's also a big state with a lot of coastline, but their coastline is still small compared to Florida, and Florida has a lot more people in the water. You can couple that with the fact that California doesn't have this large population of migrating sharks that hug the shoreline. In California, you've got a few larger sharks, like white sharks, for example, but they're certainly not in the same abundance
that we have things like blacktip sharks down here in Florida. NARRATOR: The mysterious reasons behind the heightened numbers of attacks starts with Florida's unique, fingerlike shape. It's essentially surrounded by sharks. STEPHEN: Around here in South Florida, we have maybe about a dozen or so shark species that are found close to shore here where they have the potential to interact with humans. NARRATOR: One of the biggest is the bull shark. It's considered even more dangerous than the great white or the tiger shark.
They have a preference for warm, shallow lagoons, bays, and river mouths that connect to the salt water; places where people swim every day in Florida. And like a bear on land, they are highly territorial and aggressive. In the shallow waters of Jacksonville Beach on the Atlantic coast of Florida, a bull shark stealthily approaches Chad Renfro. CHAD RENFRO: I just went out, you know, on that day to go surfing, and you can't really see much, you know, once you get about waist deep in the water, so.
NARRATOR: Finding prey not just by eyesight but also through sensory vibrations and pressure changes in the water, the shark targets Chad's movements. CHAD: Just kind of came out of nowhere. NARRATOR: The bull shark sinks its jaws deep into Chad's foot. CHAD: Initially, you know, you just feel that strong clamp, and I mean, at first it's painful, but you're just, you know, worried about what was gonna happen next. As soon as I, you know, got on the shore, I looked down, and, you know, you could see basically the top of my foot was all, like, sliced open.
NARRATOR: Female bull sharks can grow up to 11 1/2 feet long and reach 500 pounds. Their bite is unequaled at over 1,300 pounds of force. CHAD: Basically three fourths of a tendon was gone and then severed a nerve. And then I had 86 stitches, 36 stitches on the inside and 56 on the outside. NARRATOR: His attack illustrates how commonly bull sharks are found close to Florida's shores in the same space as beachgoers. And in Florida, there is certainly no shortage of people going to the beach.
NARRATOR: In Florida, residents enjoy miles of shoreline. It's the rising influx of tourists that are adding to the shark attack statistics. 2018 saw a record-breaking 127 million visitors to the Sunshine State. STEPHEN: Florida has always been the shark attack capital of the world. There are more bites in Florida than all the other states combined. And Florida counts for nearly a third of all shark bites in the entire world.
It's due to the large number of people who come down here to visit. Sharks are here at the same time that people are here. You have both of them in the water, and Florida has an awful lot of coastline, so you have a lot of opportunity for people to be in the water with the sharks, and that simply leads to a greater number of bites. NARRATOR: And even though there are millions of people in the water, the concept of safety in numbers doesn't apply here.
COLLEEN MALONE: There were four of us in the water, it was about 12:30. People were starting to come in, it was a really, really nice day. NARRATOR: Like Chad, Colleen was also swimming at Jacksonville Beach in Duval County. Colleen watched an ideal day take a frightening turn for the worst. COLLEEN: We just stood kind of in a line, and I see this movement in the water. And I look over and I see these two fins emerging out of the water.
I screamed and started swimming away as fast as I can. NARRATOR: Colleen's frantic swimming is no match for the intense speed of a shark lunging for food. COLLEEN: I see this shark come up out of the water, take my foot, hear this awful crunching sound. I was terrified. Got to shore as fast as I possibly could. It was a little nip, but it could have easily taken my foot off if the shark wanted it to. NARRATOR: Fortunately, Colleen, like Chad, had statistics on her side: 99% of all the people attacked in Florida escape with their lives.
Florida's warm waters attract sea life from both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. They're here to mate and feed on large schools of fish, often coming very close to shore. STEPHEN: The blacktip sharks are adjacent to the beach where the people are, and they're in groups of literally thousands. And so you have a much greater opportunity for these human-shark interactions with blacktips than you do with any of the other species. NARRATOR: This past summer, 10 people were bitten off the coast of one Florida beach, and it created a bit of hysteria. STEPHEN: When something unusual happens, it gets the attention of the media, and it ends up with this disproportionate representation
of what's actually happening out there. It's important to remember that humans are not a natural part of the shark diet. The sharks are not out to get you. When people are bitten, it's typically because they happen to be in the wrong place the wrong time. NARRATOR: As the population of humans is expected to increase to over 9 billion by the year 2050, the U.S. will likely remain a hotbed for shark activity.
STEPHEN: What we've seen is that the number of shark attacks has generally been rising for the past couple decades, but that rise is not due necessarily to a rise in sharks, it has more to do with the population of humans that are going to the beach. So with more people in the water, you just have a higher probability that someone's gonna get bitten by a shark. DANIEL: The ocean is a wilderness. We don't have the expectation that we're gonna be safe when we're in the water. But on the list of things that can happen to us negatively in the water, shark bites and shark attacks are very, very, very low.
STEPHEN: There's certain general common sense rules when it comes to avoiding these negative interactions. I mean, think of it from the sensory biology of the animal. They are perceiving the world through their eyes, through their nose, through their lateral line, their electroreceptors. You wanna try and minimize your stimulus, so you don't mimic a prey item to any of those senses. NARRATOR: Humans have shown a deep fascination for these majestic creatures throughout history.
Some even speculate our attraction to sharks will continue to grow. PETER: I do think people are less afraid of them now. I believe that the shark-human interaction is on a positive note now. They've become an ecotourism attraction. People go there, they wanna see the sharks. Captioned by Side Door Media Services
