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A film crew almost made its own real-life “Jaws” movie when tiger sharks swarmed in inflatable boats and attacked photographers off the coast of one of the Hawaiian Islands.
The crew was in shallow water near Laysan, an island in northwestern Hawaii, capturing footage for the Netflix docuseries “Planet II” when the 15-foot-tall sharks changed their plans.
“The original idea was to do an underwater shoot with the tiger sharks waiting in the shallows at Laysan, but the first day the tiger sharks were around, the crew got into these inflatable boats and two sharks attacked them” , series producer Huw Cordey told Forbes.
“It was like something out of ‘Jaws.’ The crew panicked and basically crash-landed on the sand.”
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A tiger shark eating tuna in February 2018 in Fuvahmulah, Maldives. (Andrey Nekrasov/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
The crew’s producer/director Toby Nowlan told Radiotimes.com: “This ‘V’ of water came rushing towards us, and this tiger shark jumped to the boat with some big holes in it.
“The whole boat exploded,” Nowlan said. “We tried to get him out, and he was having none of it. It was horrific. That was the second shark that day that attacked us.”
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Nowlan told the outlet that a shark attack was rare and theorizes there wasn’t “enough natural food, and they just tried whatever they came across in the water.”
Tiger sharks are known as aggressive “garbage” predators that will eat essentially anything, according to Oceana.org, a global organization dedicated to protecting and restoring ocean life around the world.
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Oceana.org specifically lists information about tiger sharks around Hawaii, which are known to regularly eat green turtles and Hawaiian monk seals, but scientists have seen tiger sharks munching on webbed feet in confusion.
“Finally, tiger sharks have been known to bite humans, and their fairly large size occasionally results in fatalities, especially in areas where large numbers of people use the ocean recreationally,” according to Oceana.org.
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5 TIGER SHARK FACTS PROVIDED BY OCEANA.ORG
A tiger shark at Tiger Beach, Bahamas. (Andre Seale/VW PICS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
1. Tiger sharks can grow up to 18 feet (5.5 m) and 2,000 pounds (900 kg), making it one of the largest shark species.
2. Tiger sharks are named for the distinctive, gray vertical stripes or spots that cover the sides of their bodies.
3. Tiger sharks are known to eat almost anything, including other sharks, fish, seabirds, dolphins, sea turtles, rays and crustaceans. They have also been found with many non-food items in their stomachs, including metal objects, plastic, burlap sacks, and other garbage.
4. Female tiger sharks have 10 to 82 embryos and give birth to an average of 30 to 35 young per litter.
5. Tiger sharks live in shallow coastal waters, but have been seen at depths of 350 metres.
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Cordey told Forbes that the encounter with hungry sharks changed the crew’s plans.
Instead, the crew followed a single Laysan albatross chick for six weeks and captured the seabird’s first flight.
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“They’re the longest-lived birds of all, and they make this huge journey around the planet for years before they first breed,” Cordey said.
So the shark attack worked for the series, which premiered on Netflix on June 14. It features wildlife from around the world and addresses major issues such as climate change that directly affect animals.
Chris Eberhart is a crime and American news reporter for Fox News Digital. Email tips to [email protected] or on twitter @ChrisEberhart48
