It's the start of the annual Shark Week on Discovery, and to mark the popular feature's 10th anniversary, Discovery goes back to where it began.
That would be "Air Jaws," the whimsical name the channel gave to a group of great white sharks who live off the coast of South Africa and have developed the ability to thrust themselves out of the water, like dolphins.
Seeing a ton of shark propel itself into the air is a heart-stopping thrill by any definition. Unless, perhaps, you are the fur seal the shark is trying to devour.
The sequence goes like this. Tens of thousands of seals live on the small, appropriately named Seal Island. At night, they swim out to sea to find food. Around dawn, they swim back.
The great white hangs out in the deep. When the seals pass overhead, the shark targets one and ignites the afterburners, powering upward at speeds close to 30 mph. The idea is to grab the seal in its mouth as it crashes through the surface, then splash back down and have breakfast.
The seal is not without defenses here. It has agility and maneuverability, and in the end, about half the seals who are attacked escape. In the bigger picture, sharks catch 600-800 seals a year off the island, less than 1% of the seal population. Great whites, clearly, are into sustainable fishing practices.
In any case, the other half of the challenge, beyond shark-and-seal, is someone brave, skilled or foolhardy enough to get close enough to film it. In this case, that's Chris Fallows, and he's a full-fledged co-star of "Ultimate Air Jaws."
An internationally known wildlife filmmaker, Fallows has been shooting Air Jaws for years. It never gets old, he says, because technology keeps letting him get closer for more detailed pictures.
The shark is out of the water not much more than a second, for instance, before it crashes back in. Current technology allows Fallows to slow that image so the leap and reentry take about 60 seconds, with full clarity.
You can count the shark's teeth, he says. More important, if you are a seal, you can see what split-second evasive moves can keep you from becoming sushi.
During this hour-long documentary, Fallows also tries something new. He calls it a seal sled, and it looks like a one-man metal raft with three roll bars and an otherwise open top. Fallows lies on his stomach, trains his camera on the water and waits for the great white to burst out. Ideally, he says, the shark would be only a few feet in front of him, giving him his closest-ever photos.
Maybe, he says, he'll be able to see the bubbles that rise to the surface a microsecond ahead of the shark's mouth.
It's a "don't try this at home" moment that helps "Ultimate Air Jaws" deliver in full.
Read the full review here: Ultimate Air Jaws Review
