Netflix crew recounts shark attack in Hawaii
Tiger sharks thought a Netflix film crew was the perfect snack while the team filmed on location in Hawaii, according to the team in an interview last week.
Netflix was shooting scenes for the series “Our Planet II” — a four-part documentary that examines how climate change impacts all living creatures. The docuseries premiered June 14, and the film crew is beginning to detail some of the more harrowing events during the 2.5-year shoot.
Crew members were on the water in inflatable boats in order to get underwater footage of tiger sharks near Laysan, an island in northwestern Hawaii, when the sharks attacked them, the show’s director, Toby Nowlan, told the Radio Times.
“This ’v’ of water came streaming towards us and this tiger shark leapt at the boat and bit huge holes in it. The whole boat exploded,” Nowlan said. “We were trying to get it away, and it wasn’t having any of it. It was horrific.”
The crew was following the migration pattern of a Laysan albatross chick for the docuseries' first episode. The large seabirds are almost entirely endemic to the Hawaiian islands. The chicks are raised by their parents for about six months before they take their first flight.
In an attempt to capture footage of tiger sharks, one of the bird’s predators, the documentarians fell under attack. Their raft was damaged but had enough air to return to land a little more than a half mile away.
“The shoot itself was very interesting,” series producer Huw Cordey told Forbes. “It took six days to sail there from Hawaii, and I believe we are the first natural history series to film the maiden flight of a Laysan albatross. They’re the longest-lived birds of all, and they take this enormous journey around the planet for years before they breed for the first time.”
Nowlan added that it wasn’t the first shark that day to confuse the crew for food. He speculated that the behavior was “extremely unusual.”
“They were incredibly hungry, so there might not have been enough natural food,” he said. “And they were just trying anything they came across in the water.”
In the face of the attack, Nowlan continues to champion the creatures. In an Instagram post, he praised sharks as “an open ocean wanderer.”
“Feel like sharks could use some better PR right now,” he said in the post with the hashtag “sharks are friends.”
While shark attacks in Hawaii are uncommon, tiger sharks are one of the more dangerous species because of their “indiscriminate feeding behavior,” according to the Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources. The department explained that tiger sharks tend to attack humans in the water more than any other species in Hawaii does.
Source: SFGATE
