Radiolab - The Cage

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

This is episode two of Swimming with Shadows: A Radiolab Week of Sharks.Jaws spawned a thousand imitators: sharks in tornados, sharks in avalanches, sharks that battle giant octopuses. Hollywood has officially turned sharks into monsters of every shape and size. And yet, somehow, there will always be more.But drop below the surface, into the cold, quiet blue, and another creature appears. One that has survived mass extinctions, outlasted ancient predators and pre-dates Mount Everest, the existence of trees, even the rings of Saturn. A shark that is somehow even more remarkable than sharks in tornadoes.Today, we go visit that shark. Special thanks to Andrew Fox, the entire team at Rodney Fox Shark Expeditions, John Long whose book The Secret History of Sharks inspired our obsession with sharks, and Greg Skomal, whose wonderful new book on his life studying white sharks is Chasing Shadows: My Life Tracking the Great White Shark.EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Rachael Cusickwith help from - Pat WaltersProduced by - Rachael Cusick and Simon Adlerwith help from - Pat WaltersSound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloomwith mixing help from - Jeremy BloomFact-checking by - Natalie Middletonand Edited by  - Pat WaltersEPISODE CITATIONS:Videos - Loved learning about all the different kinds of sharks there are? Check out even more Jaida Elcock’s videos on sharks.Book - The Secret History of Sharks by John Long Chasing Shadows: My Life Tracking the Great White Shark by Greg SkomalSignup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail] support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Oh, wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You are listening to Radiolab. Radiolab. From?

WNYC. See? Yup. This is Radiolab. I'm Lulu Miller. I'm Lotta Fnaser. And I'm Rachel Cusick. We're here with day two of our week of sharks, inspired by the 50th anniversary of the movie

Jaws. And today, we're here with day two of our week of sharks, inspired by the 50th anniversary of the movie Jaws. And today we're gonna jump in the water with them. Well, I am. You two get to just sit in your cozy little offices. Fair, fair, fair point, fair point. But before we get into the water, I think we should actually start with the onslaught

of shark movies that were inspired by Jaws. All right. So there are 180 or so monster shark films. Wait, 180? With our monster scholar from episode one. No way. There are at least 180 that are listed on the internet movie database. Jeffrey Cohen.

I definitely know Sharknado. What else is there? You know Sharknado, but do you know Sharknado 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6? Oh my god. Where in part 6, they return back in time to Sharknado 1. Well of course. So I mean that deep blue sea. We are stuck in the middle of the ocean.

Open water. How big is that thing? The Meg followed by a cheap remake called Jurassic Shark, which is not nearly as good. The Reef, Ghost Shark, in that one, even if you kill the shark, you're not done because its ghost will come back and get you. They've tasted human flesh! Two-headed shark is exactly what's advertised. No!

Double the trouble. Followed, of course, by three-headed shark in 2015, five-headed shark in 2017, and then six-headed shark in 2018, at which point it looked like a starfish with all kinds of shark heads on it. Oh my God. There's almost every kind of shark movie, and what I love about the whole shark genre is that it looks to free the shark from the constraints of being underwater

so that sharks can be everywhere. There's sky shark. Sharks, what they can fly. Avalanche shark. They swim through the snow like other sharks move through water. Beet. I can make it, I can make it.

There's about sharks in a supermarket. Where are they in a supermarket? Well, the supermarket does flood. Oh. No way. It's just movie after movie like this. There's something. So, Jaws like kicked off this world, like this universe of shark monsters, taking them

out of their world and like dragged them into ours. And I kind of just wanted to go do what Rodney told us to do yesterday, like go and see it for myself. I mean, I know this works for your guy, that seeing it made him less afraid. But like, I mean, I think you're gonna go down there and see like, oh, this thing is bigger than me. It is capable of completely

tearing me to shreds. Like, there is a possibility that you're going to get down there and just be more afraid of it. Yeah. But I think I actually want to know. So I hopped on a plane to this town in South Australia called Port Lincoln, informally known as Tuna Town. It's this little fishing town and that's where Rodney's cage diving boat leaves from. Okay. We got the shark on the side and everything.

Got to the dock, we drop our bags, we do some paperwork, basically like sign away our lives. And then we set sail. Where we will spend the next four days looking for great white sharks. Is there a lesser white shark? Well, so this is actually, it's a good question. No, there's not. It used to be like the white shark all along. And then once they started becoming scarier and scarier around the era of Jaws, we started calling them great whites to add fear to them. What? They just add it it's not like actually the scientific name. Yeah no so

all the scientists now you'll hear them just say white shark because they're it's like rebranding the shark. Huh okay so you're on the boat. Yep. And how many people are there? I think it's like 15 passengers plus the crew. Okay. I come from France, Paris. These people are from all over the world. Switzerland, Lausanne. New York City, best place owners. I'm from Japan. And they're all so excited to see a white shark.

I want to see the great white shark. Which was just like a fascinating little world for me to drop into. I'm passionate with sharks. Because you know, like most people hope they never see one. I want to meet the apex predators in their natural state. There are these two brothers who love sharks more, you or me. Who were so into sharks. I think I do yeah. They were competitive about it. I love them but he adores

them. The older one said that when he was in kindergarten he did a presentation about sharks. And I even wrote it wrong on the board with a CH, so it just said sharks. Because I didn't know English, but I knew a lot about sharks. And he ended up getting in trouble because he had taken these books out of the local library. And I was so amazed by the shark pictures in the book, so I cut out the pictures with the scissors. And I was like looking at the pictures in my room and being so obsessed with them. That's amazing. You just picture like the exact silhouette.

Yeah exactly. So from Port Lincoln we sailed for hours, like four, five, six hours to this remote group of islands called the Neptune Islands. There's a wild rough sea bumping against the rocks. I will describe it as rough. Yeah, very rugged, like dark blue water, dark gray rocks. It seems sort of barren, but... You feel that there's something around here.

It's a feeling, you know? As soon as we anchored there, we noticed this intense smell, which is actually coming from us. I think that's called chum. It's like minced up bits of fish guts I noticed this intense smell, which is actually coming from us. I think that's called chump. It's like minced up bits of fish guts and skin and heads and stuff. The crew is throwing buckets of fish parts off the back of the boat. I have a hat with a ribbon on it that says Master Beta.

I just saw that white thing. What was that? All of a sudden, these colors start flashing across the water. What? White and gray and silver. And they look like little sharks if you don't see their mouths. But... No sharks.

They're not sharks. No shark. We're sharkless. Which is kind of the point. The bait is supposed to attract the smaller fish, which attract the sharks. But... A day went by. Are we seeing anything?

No, not yet. Not yet. And then another day. She's literally nothing. Yeah, I see nothing. I see water. And there was just nothing. It's wild to me. You're pouring like blood, meat, flesh, fish, corpses,

all this stuff in, and it's like days. Days. I would be like, oh, they'd be there, and they'd go doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, you know, and they'd be there within 34 seconds. I know, I know, but that's not what happened. So two days have passed out of four and we haven't seen a single shark. And so there's just this cloud looming over the boat. And so we go to bed that night and we're like, we really hope that tomorrow, like we'll see one.

No, I'm sorry though. I'm sorry. I need for the rest of us who aren't in this deranged epicenter of the world where you wanna see sharks. I love knowing that you poured gallons of blood into the water and didn't see the sharks. This is the best story ever.

It's great news for you. Yeah, it's really, it kind of like, you're in the sharkiest waters of all waters, and they're not coming. And so, like, the next day, bright and early, the first cage goes down, because they send the cages down, even if they don't see a shark on the top, just in case there's something down there.

So, I'm up on the top of the boat next to the skipper, because he's the one that controls the crane. And then suddenly, he pauses. I don't know if she just said five pulls there. He feels five pulls on this string. Oh, I thought it was five. The string that runs down to a cage they've lowered 60 feet to the bottom. And the people down there, they'll pull on the string to communicate with the surface.

Five pulls for a shark, so hopefully it is one down there. And eventually the skipper winches the cage up. Okay guys, can you report back? We did, we saw a white shark. And they had actually seen the shark. They were so excited. They were so excited. And then all of a sudden it was my turn. Like the crew was like, get your stuff on.

It's go time. Okay, and how does that feel? I'm a little bit confused. I'm a little bit like, I'm so happy that we finally have a shark around. Like it had been so long. But then I'm also kind of nervous when the reality of it set in like, oh, it's actually down there. It kind of feels like what you're in a line to just go on like a terrifying roller coaster

and you've just seen all of these people with like shocked smiley faces like tumbling off and then you get buckled in and there's like no turning back like it feels both exciting and terrifying Is anyone in the cage with you for people fit one of them is a dive master so you're with someone at all times And once the four of us settle into the corners of the cage our dive master signals to the skipper We're ready to go down And once the four of us settle into the corners of the cage, our dive master signals to the skipper, we're ready to go down. So we get dropped down like we're taking an elevator deep into the ocean.

And as we go, it gets darker and darker and darker, and you can see less and less because you're getting further away from the sun. And eventually we get down to around 60 feet and the cage stops moving. And all I can see is this barren sand of the ocean floor. And above it is just this abyss of blue. I was bracing. I was just like so much fear building of what's going to come out of that blue. And like, when is it going to come out and which direction is it going to come from?

All I can hear is the sound of my breath, which was very heavy. And then I hear this scraping sound. And it's the dive master scraping this little metal knife against the side of the cage. And the sound is supposed to get the sharks interested to come closer, but it kind of feels like a dinner bell. And then I feel a tap on my shoulder, and I look over to the left behind my shoulder, and it's the dive instructor,

and she just puts her hand in the shape of a fin on top of her head, kind of like to signal shark, and then points into the corner. And as I turned, I remembered this thing Rodney had told me. Don't just look at their heads, at their teeth, because everybody's frightened of their teeth. Look at the rest of the body. And then, out of the darkness, it comes truly out of the darkness, swims this white shark. this white shark.

It was a young one, so it was smaller. Six and a half feet, gray top with this scraggly white line and belly halfway through it. Little black tips on the front fin. But the thing that's most striking about it is the way it moved. No thrashing or darting like in the movies. Just sort of floating. You know, they fly like airplanes, or airplanes fly like great white sharks. They have to dip a wing to turn.

And their moves seem to be incredibly deliberate and relaxed. White shark researcher Greg Skomal. They don't do anything that's going to waste their time. The shark, it kind of felt like it was orbiting us. Like it kind of fades in and out of your view and comes, goes in and comes out and goes beneath you and then it kind of comes towards you. It's just like wow. It's beautiful. You're looking at a prehistoric beast millions of years old. Like it was carved by time to be exactly where it is. where it is. Sharks are 465 million years old, you know.

They've been on Earth for such a long time. This is John Long. Strategic professor in paleontology at Flinders University in South Australia. Now, that amount of time is hard to wrap your head around, but John helped me. They're more than twice as old as dinosaurs. They're way older than trees. Flowering plants. They were around before Everest was even a mountain. All of the continents that we live on today, they looked nothing like they do. They're even older than the rings of Saturn.

And I mean, over these eons, sharks had to survive all five of Earth's major mass extinctions. Volcanic eruptions, a massive asteroid, ice ages. Outcompete other major predators. Gigantic pliasaurs with banana-sized teeth and walking whales. And along the way... They just absolutely exploded in diversity. So that today... Sharks fill so many different niches.

According to Jade Elcock, a shark researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, They are all over the place. There's sharks in the tropics. There's sharks in the Arctic. I mean, a bull shark was found so far up the Mississippi River, it was in Illinois. There's all these different versions of sharks carved in their own bizarre ways. It almost makes the white shark seem boring. If you love the white shark, no hate to you.

I also love the great white shark, but sharks are incredible. They are diverse. I'll just go through a bunch of them. But take it from the top. I mean, some sharks only get to be about eight inches long, while the largest whale shark was almost 62 feet long. So just the sheer difference in the size range. We have glow

in the dark sharks, like lantern sharks, that glow on their bellies. There's a shark species that spews bioluminescent goo from pockets near its fins, likely for avoiding and confusing predators. No way! The rigged shark can snap its teeth together to make kind of a clicking sound, while the swell shark will swallow a bunch of sea water, blow up like a big sharky water balloon. And that makes it more difficult for predators to eat it. And of course, the Greenland shark can live

literally hundreds of years. I'm sure there are Greenland sharks in the ocean right now that were alive during the time of Alexander Hamilton and the time that the musical about his life was written. Isn't that wild to think about? Hundreds of years. And there's even a shark that might help us survive one of our greatest threats. That's tomorrow. Okay, we just got back and we saw our first sharks. We tried to kiss it but it was too far away actually. But keep an eye out. This episode was reported by Rachel Cusick and produced by Rachel and Simon Adler.

It was edited by Pat Walters and fact checked by Natalie Middleton with mixing help and sound design by Jeremy Blue. And one more thing. We want to give a huge thanks to everyone who supports Radiolab, especially right now. Everyone who's a part of the Lab, our membership program. Your support makes big projects like this possible and we are so grateful. And if you aren't a member yet or are thinking about giving more, this is the perfect time to take the plunge.

Because if you join or re-up now, you will receive a really cool gift. A limited edition Week of Sharks hat designed by the awesome Maine-based artist and surfer Ty Williams. It's so beautiful and fun and it gives you a chance to show the world you support public radio in the form of Radiolab. And support Sharks. It's available to everyone who joins the lab this month, even for as little as seven bucks a month. You can join at radiolab.org slash join. Existing members, check your email for details and thank you so much. Day three of the week of sharks. Coming up tomorrow. See you there.

["The Last Supper"] Hi, I'm Jamie and I'm from Minneapolis. Here are the staff credits. Radio Lab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soran Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bretsler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gabel, Rebecca Lacks, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nianusambandham, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Niesen, Sara Kari, Sara Sandbach, Anissa

Vizza, Ariane Whack, Pat Walters, Molly Webster, and Jessica Young, with help from Rebecca Rand. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Anna Pujols-Manzani, and Natalie Middleton. Hi, I'm Daniel from Madrid. Leadership support from Radiolab Science Programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Temple Tull Foundation. Fundational support from Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Slough Foundation.