Members of a Netflix crew filming a nature docuseries offshore from Hawaii were attacked by two tiger sharks, according to reports.
The film crew were attempting to get some underwater footage for an upcoming episode of the Netflix nature series, Our Planet II, which is narrated by broadcaster and biologist Sir David Attenborough, but things didn’t quite go as planned, according to the Radio Times.
The crew were especially frightened by the attacks because they were using inflatable boats, not wood or metal hulled crafts.
The attacks were unexpected and violent, according to producer/director Toby Nowlan.
“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 of one of the attacks. “We were trying to get it away and it wasn’t having any of it. It was horrific. That was the second shark that day to attack us.”
The crew intended to get close to tiger sharks, but not that close.
“The original idea was to do an underwater shoot with the tiger sharks waiting in the shallows at Laysan,” producer Huw Cordey told Forbes.
“But the first day the tiger sharks were around, the crew got into these inflatable boats — and two sharks attacked them. It was like something out of Jaws,” Cordey added.
The crew were fairly close to land and had to make a frenzied rush to solid ground before their inflatable boat collapsed.
“Suffice to say, they didn’t get any underwater shots,” Cordey drily added.
Nowlan insisted that the behavior of the sharks was “extremely unusual” in how aggressive they were.
“They were incredibly hungry, so there might not have been enough natural food, and they were just trying anything they came across in the water,” Nowlan said.
According to Newsweek, Hawaii’s population of tiger sharks has increased recently and four attacks have occurred this year already. One man lost his foot near Oahu in April, likely from a tiger shark bite. And in December people on shore watched as a woman disappeared never to be seen again near Maui. It is suspected that a tiger shark was the culprit.
Even as the shark population has grown, attacks are still low in number. There have only been 187 unprovoked attacks recorded since 1837 in the Hawaiian Islands.
The three sharks that have been involved in the most attacks on humans include the great white, the bull shark, and the tiger shark.
In January the first shark attack of 2023 was recorded in the Mexican state of Sonora where a diver was gruesomely decapitated by a great white.
The next month, a 16-year-old girl was killed by a suspected shark attack while she was swimming with Dolphins in Australia’s Swan River.
Also, just over a week ago, a Russian man on vacation in Egypt died after being brutally mauled by a shark as beachgoers watched in horror in the waters near one of Egypt’s Red Sea resorts. The shark was later caught and killed and the tourist’s remains were found inside.
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