“I want to try something that my mum really doesn’t want me to do,” confesses Bertie Gregory a bit cheekily at the start of this special kicking off Nat Geo’s annual Shark Fest which runs on the channel until July 18. The wildlife filmmaker, known for close encounters of the animal kind, is in South Africa to dive among great white sharks without the usual protective cage for Sharks Up Close With Bertie Gregory.
Gregory is taking the risk because it’s the best way to see the ocean’s celebrity predators behaving naturally as they hunt seals underwater. “The thing I’m most scared of is an ocean without sharks because they keep the whole ecosystem in balance,” the adventurer says. “The vast majority of the time, sharks want absolutely nothing to do with us.”
The toothy swimmers prove him right, at first eluding the team. “Everyone thinks that when you are trying to film a big, dangerous, scary predator, that you are constantly on the edge of running away,” Gregory shares. “That’s not true, especially with many species of sharks. You’ve got to sneak up on them and do everything on their terms.”
The search itself is still awe-inducing. “I want the viewer to feel like they’re on my shoulder,” says Gregory. The film crew captures dawn boat scouting trips, underwater camera drops, dives with other species including ragged tooth sharks, and Gregory’s visit to the beach patrol where he gets a safety lesson that his mother would love: “It’s not about managing shark behavior, it’s about managing human behavior.”
Much of the fear of great whites was fed by the movie Jaws, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of its release on June 20. Gregory has no hate for the blockbuster. He says, “I often see conservationists looking back on Jaws and going, ‘That was terrible.’ If the film was made today, then I’d have a problem with it. In TV shows, in movies, I see sharks being portrayed in the same way that they were 50 years ago. That is what I have a problem with. We’re better than that now.”
In this doc, premiering on July 5, Gregory eventually finds a great white, but things don’t go as expected. If you’re still hungry after watching, stick around for the premieres of two six-part series, Investigation Shark Attack (9/8c), which explores shark behavior from their perspective, and Super Shark Highway (10/9), to learn how the famed finsters and humans can coexist.
Sharks Up Close With Bertie Gregory, Premiere, Saturday, July 5, 8/7c, National Geographic