Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Oceanic White Tip Shark Attack - A Sharky Shipwreck Story

Episode Date: March 26, 2021

Wes takes us out to the ocean to tell a tale of a shipwreck and shark attack. Jeff musters up enough confidence to feel that he could survive the situation just fine. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds                          Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, welcome back to tooth and claw. Today, we have another episode on sharks, this time, the Oceanic White Tip. It's a pretty wild story about a shipwreck that, of course, some sharks get involved in as well, so we think you guys are going to like this one. Thanks again to everyone who's given us a rating and left us a review on Apple Podcasts. And of course, a huge shout out to everyone that's joined us on Patreon. You guys are all amazing. All right, let's get to the episode.

Welcome back, Tooth and Claw. How you guys doing? I'm good. Mike? Never better. All right, yeah. We're recording in West's house today. We are.

We're in my apartment. Sitting on the floor. Feels kind of nice. I live for it. A little powwow. Mike, does your dad wear New Balance, dad shoes? No. No, not New Balance.

They're dad shoes, for sure, though. They're such dad shoes. Are they Kirkland? No. They're like brandless is how dad they are. They're kind of just brown. Walmart. Indiscreens.

Yeah. Our dad went with like Kirkland and New Balance and we like made fun of them a lot. So then he went with those white Nike ones that are like the exact same. The dad yes. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Like Jeff mentioned, we are in my apartment today.

It's a little bit of a change for us. Today we are going to talk about a story that I really like. It's not a typical attack story and that it's more of a survival story that involves an animal. and that animal is the oceanic white-tip shark. Now, a little bit of a preface here, I am assuming this is the shark that we're dealing with because it is a shark that's known for attacking shipwreck victims. And our story today involves a shipwreck.

So because that's kind of the shark that's famous for that, we're going to be saying that's what shark it is, but that's not necessarily the only shark that does that. when people shipwreck and they're floating in the water for a long time, there's a wide number of sharks that could show up and potentially attack them. But the oceanic white tip is the one that's kind of famous for that. And we'll explain why. Sharks are an animal that we've talked about are really demonized and people kind of are

afraid of them and there's all this fear of sharks. But I've always not felt that afraid of them in situations where you're like on the coast or whatever. You're swimming. You're surfing or snorkeling or whatever. But the one situation where I do think you truly have to be terrified of sharks is if you are shipwrecked and you're just bobbing around in the ocean for days on end because you run across a certain type of shark that spends its life out in the open ocean and it doesn't really come across really good feeding opportunities that often. And so when it does, it's going to take advantage of them. They're probably not as conditioned to like stay away from humans.

Right. Because they don't see them as often. Exactly. That's part of it too. They hardly ever see humans. And they just, they're not around like big seal colonies or like all these massive groups of fish that tend to hang out by the coast. They're much more like roving open ocean predators. And so when they suddenly have this kind of bonanza, they take advantage of it.

This is all reminding me of maybe my favorite cinematic trailer ever to be put out for the movie, the Nicholas Cage movie, USS Indianapolis Men of Courage. Don't watch the movie. It's a terrible movie. Have you watched the movie? I did. Watch the trailer and you've watched the movie. The trailer's like five minutes long. It's amazing.

It's an absolute experience. We are going to talk a little bit about the USS Indianapolis. I actually think at some point, I'm not going to get too into it because at some point we're probably going to do a full episode on that. But for those of you who don't know, we'll just talk about it really quick. The USS Indianapolis is considered the largest naval disaster in American history. It was a boat that went down and they had a really secret mission. so no one really knew that they had gone down.

And so these guys were floating in the water, like hundreds of men, floating in the water for days. And they ended, a lot of them ended up getting picked off by sharks. And it's famous because in Jaws, Quint talks about it and tells the story. Is that how it happens to Nick Cage? I haven't seen it. Has Nicholas Cage turned into Quint? Is that a pre-mole-Jol?

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. I think it might be. Anyway, they think that there's a good chance a lot of those sharks that attacked those guys. were oceanic white tips. In fact, some shark experts think it was just oceanic white tips that came in and attacked them. So that raises a question for me. Do sharks kind of intermingle when they have opportunities to attack and do that?

Yeah. So they are like a really solitary species, especially these oceanic ones, because they're pelagic. Do whether you know what pelagic means? You want me a guess? Sure. It's just essentially means open ocean. And an open ocean shark like this, They're very solitary.

They're roaming huge distances. But when there's suddenly, like, say, like a dead whale or a shipwreck or something where there's a bunch of food that's in the water, then they gather up, but they become very competitive. So you get these, like, feeding frenzies. Okay. What is their biggest source of food in the open ocean? Mostly, like, tuna, fish, cephalopods. So that's, like, squid and octopus and stuff.

They eat a lot of squid. They'll eat anything from, like, trash that's been dumped out to whale feces. like they eat a lot of stuff. Can anything eat jellyfish? Yeah, yeah, lots of stuff. Like sea turtles eat jellyfish. I'm certain sharks eat jellyfish. But these guys mostly, I think the bulk of their diet is going to be bony fishes and cephalopods, so squid.

So they are the ultimate opportunists. And I guess I kind of launched into the biology stuff further than I plant, but there is a little bit more that we'll go over with them. But we're going to talk about this story of there was five people on this boat called the Trashman. So, nice name. Yeah. In October, 1982, the 58-foot yacht trash man was set to set sail from Maine to Florida. It was named Trashman because the owner of the yacht had made a lot of his money in, like, sanitation. And so he named it Trash Man.

But actually, the five people that ended up being on this boat for this trip weren't owners of the boat. They had just been hired to move the boat from Maine to Florida. Now, Deborah Scaling Kylie is going to be our main character. we're going to call her Debbie from now on, but she had extensive sailing experience. She was the first woman to complete this yacht sailing race around the world. She was 24 at the time of this voyage, and she really was just very comfortable on a boat in the water. She was kind of a bit of a badass. This lady, I watched a lot of this information came from a show that I saw on Discovery Channel.

I think it was called I Shouldn't Be Alive. But then I watched, I listened to a few podcasts that she was on. No, sorry, she wasn't on it, told her story, and I read a bunch of articles. and then she actually wrote a book too, which I didn't have time to read. But, and then on that note, a lot of these stories differed quite a bit, one from another. So if anyone out there knows this story or knows this person. Or if she wants to call in. Well, she's dead, so she's probably not going to call in.

That'd be pretty cool if she called in. It would be cool if she called it. We're on the floor. We could have a little say on. I have a pretty big scoop. Anyway, the captain of the boat was this guy John Lippeth, who had a lot of sailing experience as well, but he was kind of, he was kind of an idiot. I guess he hung her out on this town in Maine

and was like super drunk all the time. And Debbie, when she got contracted to be on this boat, she got a little nervous because this guy just seemed not that great of a captain. And he actually, she was going to quit and leave, and he pressured her into going. He said that if she didn't get on the boat, then she would never sail again.

Like he would make it his life's mission to make sure she never sailed again. So he was kind of a bully, is the vibe that I got. And then he brought his girlfriend Meg, Meg Mooney, who didn't have any sailing experience. She was just kind of along for the ride. Now, Brad Kavanaugh was a friend of Debbie's. He was a pretty good sailor, and he was coming along as well. And then the final person was this guy, Mark Adams, who's British, and he was a total wild card.

He lied to Debbie about owning a boat or about to own a, he was about to own a boat, and he lied about all this stuff, and he was kind of just like a dickhead. he wasn't that nice to her at least. Who knows how he was in his personal life, but her experience with him wasn't that great. So that's Mark. Okay, so the journey started with like perfect weather. The crew's making great time.

Debbie and Meg were kind of bonding. Meg's again, the girlfriend that came along. But when they were like a few hundred miles off the coast from North Carolina, they started hitting a tropical storm. And when this happened, Debbie was asleep and she woke up and went upstairs. And Mark was at the helm. the boat's getting knocked all over the place and he's just blackout drunk

yelling and like hollering and just like having the best time but he's totally drunk so like Captain Dan in Forrest Gump kind of exactly yeah so Debbie took over and she like tried to control this boat for like 12 hours after that and then she got

exhausted and went to bed and then she got woken up by Brad who was like hey we're sinking because at this point this tropical storm had become a full-blown like huge tropical storm. They were on 30 foot waves and they had just rolled off a wave and like gone into an actual free fall and all this gear and stuff broke out the windows in the boat and the boat was filling up with water. So she was sleeping through that. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. It's like one of the accounts

made it seem like she was cognizant for that and like conscious and another one said she woke up to like chest deep water. So I don't totally get it. Okay. But it did say that she had been like manning the helm for 12. hours before this and she was just totally exhausted. Anyway, in all this ruckus, Meg had gotten hurt. She had been like tethered and her tether came undone and she fell into all this rigging and the rigging cut her leg really badly. So her leg had been cut wide open.

Uh-oh. Sharks are going to smell that. Yep. Jeff. Jeff knows where we're going with that. Also, while they were in trouble, John had called the Coast Guard and had said, hey, we need to come in. This is before the boat had started to sink. And he was like, hey, we need to come in.

in to Wilmington, North Carolina, and the Coast Guard was like, yeah, you should come in. And then John realized he didn't have any of the charts or maps or anything that he needed to get in. So the Coast Guard said they'd send help, but it would take five hours to get there. And they didn't have five hours. So they start going down. Coast Guard doesn't show up. And like I said, this huge wave picked up the boat and sank them. So as it was going down, Mark managed to unhook this canister that holds all their survival gear,

plus a survival raft. And meanwhile, Brad unhooks this 13-foot rubber dingy. And they both get these things in the water right before the trashman starts to sink. So Mark hits the water with the inflatable life raft and the survival gear, and it inflates and blows away. So Mark is, again, like the wild card. Mark.

Like, no one really likes them that much. And everything they needed blows away. In that raft, they had emergency beacons, they had water makers that they could convert seawater to freshwater. They had food, they had fish hooks, they had all sorts of gear to keep them alive. In the other hand, the rubber dinghy that Brad had saved was completely empty. It was just a basic rubber dinghy. So they all held on to this rubber dingy in the water, and it's floating upside down.

When it had gotten knocked into the water, it was upside down. They're all holding on to it, and they watched the trashman slip below the surface. And Debbie remarked that that was the most alone she's ever felt in her entire life. So the thing is... What's the most alone you've ever felt? Oh, that's a good question. Probably up on the Arctic, like in the Arctic, doing polar bear work. There was one time when I was up there and it was like the middle of winter and it never

got light and it was just, it was good for me, but I felt pretty long. Yeah. How about you? I don't know. Yeah. That's a good answer, though. Anyway, so it was 40 degrees outside, but the water temperature was 76. So they decided rather than like flip this boat over and climb in and have the wind and everything

hitting them, they would just tread water and hold onto the side of it. And then Debbie suggested that they should like swim under and up into the little cavity and hang out in there so that they're blocked from the wind. So that's what they did, everyone but Meg, because Meg was so hurt and so tired that she couldn't bring herself to swim up and under. So she just held on to the outside. And they did this for like 12 hours. They're just treading water.

And then Meg was getting into such critical shape that they decided to flip it over so she could get on top and rest because she was having. a really hard time treading water. So Meg gets into the dingy and so did some of the other crew, but Debbie and Mark decided to remain in the water because the water was warmer and they just felt like that was a warmer place to be. Now water does make you colder a lot quicker, even if it's warm water. Hypothermia can start a lot quicker in water because it's denser. But they were hanging out in the water and Mark starts complaining. He's like, hey, stop kicking me. And Debbie's like, I am not kicking you. And Mark's getting like, pissed.

at her. And it's starting to really annoy Debbie. So she's like, I'm going to look under water and see how far away he is just to figure out like what's going on. And she looks underwater and she said when she looked underwater, she saw hundreds of torpedo shapes. And she's like, oh, fish. Oh my gosh. And like they were fish, but what she didn't realize is that they're sharks. And one of them swam up to her at like as she looked under her and she's like, oh, there's a ton of sharks under here. She says there's hundreds of them. And they, like Jeff had mentioned, had been attracted by all this blood and pus and everything that had been leaking out of Meg's leg for hours and hours. So she and Mark immediately jump into the dingy. And as soon as they jump in, she said everyone just looked out in like stunned

silence because there was just fins everywhere. What time of day is it? So I believe it's still night at this point. But this whole thing's going to be over the course of five days. And I'll try and say when it was night or when it was day. This summer, serve up the cookout classic. six Oscar Meyer hot dogs and Heinz mustard. Grill up a dog, add classic yellow mustard, or loaded Chicago style. We all know it's not a cookout without Oscar Meyer and Heinz. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's,

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Savings may vary by state. Fuel restrictions apply. Seasite for details. So at this point, they're worried about a wave dumping them over into the ocean again. So they had this idea to tie a rope to some plywood that they found and put that in the water to kind of act as like a rudder or an anchor so that a wave wouldn't be able to easily flip them over. So they do that and they throw it in the water and as soon as it hits the water, a shark bites it and starts running with it.

And it's ripping their raft through the water. They said it was really scary because they're just flying through the water behind the shark. And so they're like, also, this has to be a pretty big shark to tow our 13 foot raft. With all of them in. Yeah. Maybe that shark was just trying to help it. Yeah, it might have been like, hey, I'll take it to shore. It's like, these other sharks are going to eat you.

I got to get you out of here. So on their second night, they saw some lights from boats, but they had no way to signal or get their attention. It had been about 40 hours at that point since any of them had had any water. And they finally got a little bit of luck that night because they had a tiny little rainstorm that let them at least wet their palates. Weren't they in like a tropical storm? Yeah. It wasn't raining a lot. There was like seawater splashing in.

And at that point they were just trying to like survive. They weren't trying to get water. Now the sharks were unrelenting. They're bumping the tiny craft. terrifying them all the time. Sometimes they'd go away for a little bit, but then they'd come back. Do they try to bite the raft?

Not usually, but there are records of sharks biting rafts. I saw a video once of a great white biting an inflatable raft, and it sank it that people got out in time. Really? Yeah. But again, these are probably, there's a good chance we're dealing with Oceanic White Tips. And again, a thing about them is they are just relentless.

They don't often get really great feeding opportunities. where they're going to be able to eat their fill. So when they do, they're just going to follow it and follow it and follow it. And like Jeff mentioned, these aren't sharks that have a lot of contact with people, so they're not really afraid of us. They're mostly just curious. So they're really going to follow these people for a long time. They are one of the most widespread sharks in the world.

They live in subtropical and tropical waters. They tend to live on the surface, but they can dive down up to 600 feet. They're relatively slow moving, but they can have really short, fast bursts of speed and they're really opportunistic. Like we mentioned, they'll just eat just about anything that they can find. Now, when you look at an oceanic white tip, the thing that really kind of defining characteristic is this white tip on its fins. They have paddle-like pectoral fins. So their pectoral fins are the ones that stick out from the side. They're really big in paddle-like, and those are white-tipped as well. And then they have a really big rounded dorsal fin that has a white tip on it. They're really

cool looking shark. So a lot of shark scientists will say this is one of the most dangerous sharks in the ocean. But the thing is, is the shark records don't typically include shipwreck victims, shark attack records, excuse me. So they, the official records out there, there's only a handful of Oceanic White Tip attacks because they haven't attacked that many people that are just snorkeling or whatever. Right. Why don't they include them? I don't know. I think it's because it's really hard for them to actually number them. For example, like the USS Indianapolis, they're not sure what species of shark ate those people. And then they're also not totally sure how many people died before the sharks ate them.

You know, there's a lot of factors that goes into shipwrecks. They go into shipwrecks. But if you do include shipwrecks, they're probably going to jump up to the top of the list of most dangerous shark. In fact, Jacques Cousteau said they were the most dangerous shark in the ocean. Okay. On day three, the crew is extremely frustrated that the Coast Guard hadn't showed up. they're starting to suffer from extreme dehydration and hunger.

Yeah, I'd be pretty frustrated. I mean, frustrated isn't the word I would, I guess. I'd want to, it's how I feel. I'd want to talk to their manager once they got that. I'll give them three more days to show up, then I'm really going to start to lose my patience. I'm going to write them a strong letter. Anyways, so like I mentioned, they're all really dehydrated and hungry.

And then the grossest thing is that all the water in the bottom of this raft is starting to like fester because they're all just peeing into it and then there's blood and pus in it from Meg's leg and so it's like getting totally rancid she's in agony and all infected and stuff but because they're sitting in this water they're all getting staff infections too so they all have open wounds and sores on them that are itchy and gross and they're literally just soaking in this mixture of urine blood and pus and seawater yeah it's really gross and Debbie

realizes at this point, Meg is dying. Meg has blood poisoning. Everything's really infected and she's dying, but there's really nothing they could do to help her. On night three, between the dehydration, starvation, and infections, they're all starting to get a little delirious. Debbie and Brad are, they've like made this promise to each other that they're going to make sure they take care of each other, but they wake up to see both Mark and John frantically drinking seawater. Oh, no. Now, are we supposed to drink seawater ever? Is there ever a time when you drink seawater?

If you get thirsty enough. You drink it? If you're low on like sodium content. It's got to be so hard not to. Like, I'm sure they knew that you can't. Yeah. But it's like if you're just surrounded by water and you haven't had it for that long. But like, no, you don't drink sea water.

It's a death sentence. If you drink seawater, your window of how long you can survive. suddenly goes down to like 12 hours. Yeah. You're not going to make it longer. Especially if you're already really dehydrated because that salt just sucks all the extra liquid and water out of your body. So it just dehydrates you to a really high level.

And it leads to all sorts of organ failure and neural failure too. So your kidneys shut down, your brain stops working. So if you drink salt water, you're going to dehydrate quicker, but you're also going to go insane. And that's what happened to Mark and John. So within five or six hours, both of them have completely lost their minds. John is totally hallucinating and he's delusional and he keeps telling everyone that he can see land and he's insisting that he just needs to go get his car.

And so like he keeps telling him like, I see land. I'm just going to go get my car. I'm going to go hop in my car. And they're all like, no, you can't see. We're in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. But he won't stop and this goes on for hours and hours. And suddenly he stands up and just jumps off the boat. wordlessly just stands up, jumps off because he's decided he's going to go get his car.

And as he's drifting away from the boat, Meg's weakly calling out to him, because this is her boyfriend, and her calls get cut off by, they said, the most blood-curdling, shrill scream that any of them had ever heard in their lives as he gets ripped apart by sharks. Oh, geez. Yeah. So they all see, like, the blood boil up, and he just, like, immediately gets killed by sharks. Didn't quite make it to the car. Didn't make it to the car. I kind of feel happy for the sharks, though.

Yeah, they're getting... They've been waiting a while and haven't gotten any food yet. It's true. Yeah. And by all accounts, John and Mark weren't that nice to Debbie at least. Yeah, they totally deserve to get eaten violently by sharks. They don't. I shouldn't have said that.

I shouldn't have said mine either. Meg is like, at this point also like very close to dying. And Mark, who is also going crazy, starts coming on to her and saying like, hey, are we going to have sex or what? And she's like, no. Like, obviously not. And then he's like, hey, I got to go to 7-Eleven for some beer and cigarettes. And he jumps off the boat as well.

When he jumped off the boat, he was hanging onto the side. And the sharks grab him and pull him under the boat. And so both Meg, Debbie and Brad, all three of them, felt Mark getting ripped apart by all these sharks underneath them. So they could literally like feel him. him like, scratching at the boat and, like, feel all the sharks bouncing around and they could hear him screaming and everything underneath the boat as he was getting ripped apart. Because all there was was this, like, plastic or rubber bottom, you know?

Yeah. And so she says that it was like, by far the most horrifying moment of her entire life, hearing and seeing Mark get ripped apart by sharks underneath the boat. And this happened for it took, they said it felt like ages, but it could have been like hours because the sharks kept just coming in and eating any little scrap. it was left over. Dude. Yeah.

So again, these are the ultimate opportunists because they just really don't get big paydays like this that much. So on the fourth night, Meg starts moving her hands around in the air. And they talked about it like she was tracing lines in the air. And they're all getting a little creeped out. And then she looks at Debbie and Brad and starts speaking in tongues. And her last words were, I'm taking three souls and leaving you to tell.

And then she died. So they woke up. Yeah. Whoa. Yeah. I don't know that. Yeah. I mean, she lost her mind, but they woke up and she was dead. And they actually debated quickly if they could eat her. And she had been infected to a level to where they were like, nah, we don't think we can. So they decided to like remove her clothing and jewelry to hopefully give to her family. And then they put her naked body on the side of the raft and had like a mini funeral and then gently pushed her in there. And then they both kind of ducked under this little thing on the raft where they could get under. out of the sun and close their eyes and their ears so that they couldn't hear any shark activity with her. Oh, man. So they're both starting to get really sick, Debbie and Brad, because they're sitting in this festering water, and they decide that they have to empty out the water.

And they hadn't seen any sharks for hours. Do we know how long they've been in the raft? This is day five. Okay. They haven't seen any sharks for a while. So Brad stands up to pull on a rope and try and flip the raft over, and he slips and falls into the water. and Debbie at this point is kind of losing her mind too

and she just won't help Brad up. Now he's totally conscious and he's in the water trying to get out and he's so exhausted he can't pull himself out. But finally he has this sudden surge of adrenaline because he's afraid the sharks are about to get him and he managed to get out of the water back into the boat and as he falls into the boat and like sits up, he looks out and they see a big Russian cargo ship on the horizon.

Whoa. And they call to this cargo ship and the guys come out on the dock or on the deck and they're like yelling at them. And they show up and throw out a life ring and they get on it and they save them. So that's how they get out of it. Can you imagine that first drink of water you get after five days? Probably hurt. Yeah, probably.

Yeah. It kind of hurts it in the middle of the night when you get up thirsty. It kind of hurts. Yeah. Like even last night, I remember my throat felt very dry and I took a gulp of water and I was just like, oh, that just tastes so good. I know. And, yeah, you can't imagine. But Debbie, so Debbie actually went on to be a motivational speaker.

She wrote a book called Albatross, the true story of a woman's survival at sea. Unfortunately, she died in 2012 at home. Her family didn't release the details of how that happened. She was 54. Yeah, the sharks finally got her. Brad continued to sail his whole life, but he just admitted that he was never the same. He always kind of woke up in a cold sweat and never really felt as comfortable as he did before this incident. Okay, so that's the story.

One thing that I, in all of the shows or podcasts or articles that I read, one thing that really bothered me is even though some of them were written by scientific-minded people, they really made it seem like these sharks were just vicious, bloodthirsty killers. And you really can't blame a predator when it's an open ocean predator and there's blood in the water and they're following this thing that smells like it's dying because it's bleeding, you know, for them to take advantage of that. It's just them acting naturally. It's what they do. Yeah, sure. And every single one of them use this phrase that I absolutely hate, which is shark-infested waters. That's their habitat. They live in the ocean. It's not infested with sharks. It's not a virus. They're not bad for it. That's where they belong. That's where they live. If anything, the ocean's infested with humans, sharks belong there. And we're definitely entering into their realm when we go sailing around the world or when we do these kind of things. It's just the real. that you take. That doesn't say like, oh, you know, these people died and who cares. But what would you say instead? Instead of shark-infested waters? Yeah. I would just say waters.

The ocean. But like if there's an area with more sharks. But it's not, like, where they were, it's not like it was like a really high sharky part of the ocean. Yeah, it's just the ocean. Yeah, it's subtropical water. There's going to be sharks. It wasn't too sharky.

Yeah. I mean, there are parts of the world where there's lots of sharks. Yeah. But I would just say like high population, you know, high density shark area. That rolls off the tongue a lot easier. It doesn't. It doesn't. And I get that these like magazines and TV shows and everything are trying to sensationalize.

But I feel like it's with sharks that they do that the most. Yeah. You know, if it's like you're in Africa, they're not like lion infested Savannah, you know. Bear infested mountain. Right. It's just, it's shark infested waters. And it's also the one eco-scented. system that we're really not at home in at all. We don't belong in the ocean. So to make it seem like

they're the ones infesting the ocean. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Anyway, I'll be honest, I didn't know too much about what to do. I actually reached out to a shark scientist on this one, a friend of mine that I follow. Her name's Corey Garza. She works with a lot of different kinds of sharks. So I'll talk a little bit about the advice that she gave me, I guess when we get to that category. I'm kind of jumping ahead. But do you guys have any questions about the story? So what's the longest someone's been shipwrecked? Okay. Yeah. So there's this guy, his like boat blew out to sea in Mexico, like 2000 something, 12 or something. And he was floating for like 460 something days. I read the book. Like shipwrecked. He didn't want to be

out there. No. The book is called I think like 435 days or something like that. Oh my gosh. And he, like, thrived. He was doing great. He caught sea turtles and, like, drank their blood for water. Mark wasn't there to let all their goods supply. Exactly. Well, no, he didn't have much either.

He just was really calm. He actually had a buddy with him, and the buddy lost his mind and, like, committed suicide. Whoa, interesting. And then he didn't even eat his friend. He, like, dumped his friend. And then he just, yeah, he drifted all the way from Mexico to the South Pacific. That's crazy. Fed on sea birds and sea turtles.

And, like, he just. They did pretty well. They, uh, one thing I forgot to mention, they're not necessarily like a huge shark. The maximum size is 13 feet, which is big,

but they're in typical sizes like seven to 10 feet. So they're a large shark, but they're not like tiger shark or gray white shark size. They're, I mean, they're not like huge. So, uh,

we'll go on to our categories then. What would Mike and Jeff do? If you are floating in the ocean, we're going to say you're in a shipwreck scenario. What are you guys going to do if you're, you've got sharks coming in. You want to start? What I would try to do is establish the rule that you don't pee inside of the boat.

Okay. Other than that, Yeah. Yeah, that's a good rule. Yeah, when they kept bringing that up, I was kind of like, really? It's probably because Meg was just indisposed. Yeah, she probably couldn't get up and pee or anything. But, I mean, I'd toss Meg.

That's what I would do. A big mistake. Oh, what? Really? Jeff, what are you doing? Well, so I was just thinking about. that shark that dragged them when they threw the rudder thing out. Yeah.

So I'm going to try to lasso a shark with a rope, and then I'm just going to throw little chunks of whatever I can in front of it, so it keeps going. If I have to. I can't have, man. That's dark. That's not a, I guess, not a terrible idea. And then I'll just have the sharks drag me to land. Okay.

Do you think you could lasso a shark? Um, yeah. Give me enough time. There's that confidence. We all have that dream trip. We've been wishing we could go on. But too often, life or usually price gets in the way. That's why Priceline is here to help you turn your dream trip into reality.

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Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. for this day. So there's actually this tribe of people in like the South Pacific. They hit these two paddles together in the water. And then one of them has a loop on it.

And when the shark gets close enough, they put the loop over its head and like twist it. And they catch sharks that way. Oh, interesting. It's really cool. So it's not impossible. All right. So again, both of those ideas are, did you have an idea?

Not really. Not pee in the boat. Yeah, not pee in the boat. Okay. That's a good idea. I guess they're both okay. From talking to my friend again, Corey, she gave me some hints.

What she said was that if you're shipwrecked, the most important thing, and this is pretty obvious, is to get on whatever you can to get out of the water. So if there's floating debris, if there's a raft, whatever you can get on to get out of the water, you're going to want to do that.

So where they were treading water for like a really long time, they're taking a pretty big risk. One of them could have gotten attacked before they got into that dingy. So you want to get out of the water. She mentioned, again, that oceanic white tips are really persistent

and super curious. So one of the things that her and her partner do is they, the two of them do lots of tours where they'll take people out in the South Pacific to swim with sharks. And they're typically swimming with these sharks that are somewhat easy for them to dominate where the people that are doing this tour are Corey and I can't remember her boyfriend or husband's name, but they'll like, they know the shark's behavior well enough that they can push them away and kind of do what they need to do to control that situation. But she mentioned if Oceanic White Tip ever shows up, they just get everyone out of.

of the water because it's just a shark that you can't dominate because they're so persistent that they just keep coming and keep coming. So they get everyone out of the water. Yeah. And then she mentioned that if you are shipwrecked and you have to be in the water and you see one coming, like the best thing you can do is to be able to keep eyes on it. So if you have a mask or something, if you're lucky enough to have a mask in your shipwrecked, keep eyes on it because then as it's coming in, you can like try and push it away or something. And they're like taking people out to see tiger sharks. Like, that's the one they're usually swimming with.

So they're much more concerned about an oceanic white tip than a tiger shark. Okay. She said that the most important thing, like, if you can't do anything, is to avoid splashing, to not move at all and to not, like, create any bubbles or, like, whitewash or anything, because then you look like you're an injured animal. Oh, okay. And then if you can, grab something and use it as a barrier between you and the sharks. So if the shark's coming in, you have something to push it away with.

And then as we mentioned before, if there are more than one shark, they do tend to get a little bit more competitive and kind of riled up. So if there's more than one, you're in more trouble. Okay, so we're going to do our next category. We've done a shark episode and we picked our favorite shark from pop culture. So I'm going to change this one up a little bit. I'm going to ask you guys, what's your favorite shark from a movie that isn't Jaws? Jeff?

Yeah, I'm going to go with Deep Blue Sea, the shark that is. eat Samuel Jackson in the middle of his big monologue. Just a really shocking moment. Yep, we have the same answer. You can I pick the same one. Mike? So I'm going to break the rule a little bit. I couldn't think of one that I like so much I needed to bring it up.

So I'm going to talk about a shipwreck movie that I think everyone should watch. It's an early Hitchcock movie called Lifeboat. Huh. And it's great. It's classic Hitchcock, one location, effortlessly compelling, engaging. Yeah. And I think everyone should watch it. I love shipwreck movies.

Yeah. I think they're great. What's that Robert Redford one that came out a few years ago? Oh, it was called All Is Lost. That was kind of a good movie. Anyway, okay, we'll move on then. And Mike, you want to do our cage match? Yes, I do.

Okay. So the cage match. As always, it's a hypothetical situation where we match up the animal of the episode, this being, what's it called? Oceanic White Tip. Oceanic White Tips Shark. in a fight scenario against all the other animals that we've talked about thus far on the podcast. Let's just, for this, for the sake of this one, let's say all the other animals that spend

time and water. Or water animals. Sure. So compared to what have we talked about so far. So we've got the Great White, the Orca, the orca, the alligator. Hippo. I think that's it for ones that are like hanging out in water. So who'd win in the five?

Moose dive. That's true. Put in the python. Okay. the reticulated python yeah they can go in the water yeah but they don't really reticulated pythons don't spend that okay fine put it in there would it would it beat the python uh i think so i think it would just swim up and like do little bites until the python bled out python can't move fast enough in water well they move pretty fast in water but i also don't think it

could like turn around the python's so long that the shark could just like nip at its tail or whatever until well let's give the python like one out of ten it'll it will in one out of ten times. It's like, it munched the python's tail, like, when you're eating a fruit by the foot. Just to munch all the other. You know, of our aquatic animals, I'm going to say that the only one this could possibly be is the alligator. I think if there's an alligator floating out in the middle of the ocean, oceanic white tip could probably kill it. An alligator that got shipwrecked?

Yeah, or one that just decided for some reason to go out in the middle of the ocean. But the Great White's beating it for sure. the orca definitely and the hippo too i think this is and again like you're not going to see those matchups a hippo and an oceanic white tipper never going to share space but if they were i would say this one the only one that it might beat is the alligator okay and the python cool okay jeff do you have some listener questions yeah okay from cm chilling west tell us about your frozen eye Oh, okay. So once, when I was doing polar bear work, I was out on a day that was way too cold.

It was like negative 67 that day. And with the wind chill, it was probably negative 100. And we were out and I felt some air hitting my face and I thought I was going to get frostbite on my face. I was on my snowmobile and I had a helmet on with a visor. But I thought there must have been a crack in it or something. And it was hitting my face. I'm like, oh, man, I'm going to get a little bit of frostbite. and then suddenly I couldn't see.

It was like someone had poured milk over my eye. And so I pulled over and we carried this little sled behind us that we could actually get in to get out of the cold. And so I got in that and took my gloves off and reached up and touched my eye and it felt like it was like rock hard. And then I just held my palm to it for probably like 30 seconds and it thawed out and I could see again. And then it twitched for like two and a half months after that.

Pretty crazy. Yeah. And everyone was like, oh, you can't freeze your eye. And I was like, no, you definitely can't. What can definitely happen to me. But, yeah. Okay. From Hey, Drew, Beebe.

What's your favorite animal defense mechanism? Do you guys have any answer to it? I got three. Okay. Whoa. Why don't you do yours first? So I was thinking between a skunk, a porcupine, and a roly-poly. Okay.

I think it's cute how you call them porky pine. Well, that's what I'm going with. Porky pine. Porky pine. I guess I'm going like pokey pines. Pokey pines, porky pines. So it's porky. I don't know where we're going.

No, but that's just like why it's like, like I just think they're pokey. They're pokey. Yeah. Okay. But that's what I'm going with. Okay. Mine is a horn lizard and they can shoot a little stream of blood out of their eye.

Oh, yeah, that's cool. It stops animals because they, like, freak out, I think. I'm going to go with Armadillo. I think that's kind of. cute. Yeah, rolling up. Yeah. Okay. All right. I like them. Yeah. Good question, Drew. Yeah, I like that one. From Destino Hoffman. Is it true that you can evade a crocodile by running in a zigzag pattern? I've heard that before. I don't think personally that's what I would do. I think I would just sprint.

We talked about it. Crocodilians, alligators, and crocodiles. They can be pretty fast on land. But if you just run away, they're not going to like full on chase you. So I would, just run away. I wouldn't try. I want to worry about doing the zigzag. I just get out of there. Okay. From Brandon Dodle. Your favorite food? Breakfast foods.

I'm going to go with Belgium waffles. Why'd you pick breakfast? Do you just want to do breakfast? No, I mean, that's just my favorite thing to eat. And I think that's my favorite of the breakfast. Jeff? I either like a big, medium, rare steak with barbecue sauce or

spaghetti with garlic bread. Okay. I like this Indian dish called Mali Kofta. That's probably my favorite food. So culture. I just love it. It's so good. It does sound good.

Okay, from Teddy. Lots of Ys. Yeah, and these. How long do you have to get to the hospital after a venomous snake bite? So obviously it depends on the snake, but maybe you could just give like a couple different snakes and how much time you would have? Yeah. If it was like a cobra, you would have like less than an hour, a common Indian cobra, spectacled cobra. If it's a black mamba, you have like less than 15 minutes. If it's a rattlesnake, you probably have

hours, if not. I mean, the thing is like the second that venom hits your bloodstream, regardless of the snake, it's going to start doing its work. So if it's a rattlesnake, it's a hematoxic venom. So that venom is going to break down the blood system in your body. And you're going to start to see bruising and you can lose limbs and stuff or fingers. So the quicker you get to the hospital, the better. But a rattlesnake probably isn't going to kill you. Grandpa got bit on the leg by a rattlesnake and never went to the hospital. And his leg turned like black for like a couple weeks. I'm going to tell that whole story when we'd do a rattlesnake episode.

He died, though. He did die. He did die. Yeah. But how many years later? Who knows if it was related? As far as like neurotoxic snakes, which is like cobras, coral snakes, that actually affects your nervous system and it has a whole different kind of effect on you.

And those are usually the ones that act quicker and will kill you a lot faster. But it really just depends on the snake. Okay. And then we're going to go to two Patreon questions. Okay. How would the eight main species of bear rank from least aggressive? to most aggressive. Okay, I'm going to ask you guys,

what do you think the least aggressive bear is? Least aggressive. Coala bear. Black bear. No. Coalas aren't a bear. Asiatic black bear? No.

They're probably the most aggressive. Panda. I would probably say it's giant panda. Oh, really? Yeah. They're not aggressive? No. So giant pandas are probably the least aggressive.

Next, I would probably put spectacled bears because they just really haven't attacked many people, then sun bears, then probably. American black bears, then probably polar bears, then Asiatic Black Bears, then Grizzly Bears, and then the most aggressive is probably Sloth Bears. That was least to most. Most to least would be Sloth, Grizzly, Asiatic Black Bear, Polar, American Black Bear, Sun Bear, Spectacled Bear, Giant Panda. Yeah, Spectacled Bears wearing your glasses, is that what? That's like, that's what Padding

is. Paddington is his spectacled bears. He wears glasses. I still haven't seen it. His aunt does. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. They're called spectacled bears because they often have a pattern that looks like glasses on their face. Yeah. Okay. And then. Andean bears their other name. From Joanna. Okay. What's the difference between a lizard and a reptile? Uh, there is no difference. They're one and the same. A lizard is a reptile. Reptiles include lizards, crocodilians, snakes, turtles, and tuataras, which are like a kind of an ancient relic. Yeah. So that's our listener questions.

Our next category is how are we messing things up for them? Again, we're not, right? We are. Oh, we are. Sharks? Yeah. Yeah. Really?

Yeah. Okay. Jeff's being a little facetious right now. But the thing that really affects sharks are long lines and then just direct catches for shark fin soup. So long lines, commercial fisheries will put out these long lines where they catch tons of big fish with them. But sharks are attracted to them and they eat these hooks and then they end up dying. And it's bycatch. They're not targeting them. It's messed up.

And then, of course, fleets that are actually fishing for sharks for shark fin soup. And as we mentioned before, sharks are probably the animal that we're going to talk about that's been persecuted the most by humans. And we mentioned on our Great White Shark episode, we're losing up to 100 million. sharks a year. And Oceanic White Tips are actually one of the species that has been hardest hit. And that's because they're out in the open ocean where a lot of these fishing vessels are, and they're really attracted to any kind of food they can find. So they're a pretty easy catch for them. And there's scientists that have worked with them that say, like, between, there's one study that was between 1992 and 2000. So in eight years, they estimate that the global population of

oceanic white tips dropped by 70% in eight years. Yeah. And then another study in the Gulf of Mexico, kind of in that same period, thinks that the Gulf of Mexico population dropped by 99%. So they're really just getting wiped out. They're in a lot of trouble. And they're a beautiful shark. Yeah, they look really cool.

They're so cool. And they're just such an impressive animal and that they just wander these huge expanses. And it's like they're finding food in the desert, you know? it's really hard to find food in the ocean ocean open ocean and they're really good at it so their current iucan status is critically endangered they're yeah they're in trouble i just really like how pelagic they are yeah good good job mike what's like the best thing people can do to help them so the best thing you can do to help sharks is to make really smart seafood choices so if you're getting seafood from places that do these kind of long lines

fisheries where they are just killing any animal that decides to bite the hook, you're paying into this system of killing sharks. Like a very direct way, obviously, is if you're buying like shark fin soup, but also if you're buying unsustainable seafood, you're part of that problem. So if you eat seafood, I actually have stopped eating seafood just because I have found it so hard to navigate figuring out if it's sustainable or not. But if you decide you want to eat seafood, make sure you get it from sustainable. sustainable sources.

Make sure you know how it's being caught. If it's long-line fisheries, there's a good chance bycatches sharks. All right. Yeah. So where can you find them throughout tropical and subtropical oceans all over the world? All right. And finally, do we like this animal? I'll go first.

I have, as I've mentioned sharks are some of my favorite animals. Oceanic White Tips are a top five shark for me. I love them. I think they're beautiful. They're probably the species. Like, I've seen great whites in the wild now. They're probably the next one on my list that I would be most excited to see. Yeah, I like them a lot.

I really like sharks. I would say this is in, like, my top half favorite sharks. I don't know a ton about them. I think the more I would learn about them, the more I'd like them. But yeah, I'm going to put them at, like, let's say 83. Okay. It's pretty good. Oh, yeah.

They're a beautiful shark. Yeah. I wasn't aware of their specific existence until today. Yeah. But seeing that picture, I mean, I like them regardless. Yeah. I like sharks of any type, really, but they've got really cool fins. I kind of, one thing I really like about them is like what Corey said,

is that there's all these sharks in the world that people are getting really used to, like, figuring out how to swim with and be around, and that this is just one that you can't do that. Yeah. Like when they see them, when they show up, they get out of the water because it's a shark that you really can't predict. and I really think that's cool. I love that. It's a shark that acts the way it was like born to act. Right.

It's a hunter. Yeah, I think it's cool. And if you want to see one, just go in the open ocean. Yeah, just splash around. Just go crash your yacht. Just go join a long line fishery. Yeah, don't do that. Don't.

That's terrible. That's an awful joke. I'm sorry. No, it's fine. Again, we don't want to demonize any animals on this podcast. But if we did, it'd be this one. It wouldn't. sharks are an animal that get a lot of hate from a lot of people

and I think there's a lot of people out there that would just rather they didn't exist and I'm definitely not one of those people and I think if you are one of those people you should take a long hard look at how you feel about the planet yeah sharks are cool we'll make some stickers that say sharks are cool yeah more sharks we will do a shark sticker at some point okay well that's it for the story thanks so much guys Don't forget if you are interested in our Patreon, you can log on to our Patreon.

I think Mike has a list of a couple new people that we have on there. Yeah, we want to shout you guys out for sure, just because you guys are helping us out, growing to bigger and better things. So we want to thank Elena, Aaron, Jennifer, Kirsten, Kelsey, Jaden, Megan, Josh. My guy, Master Monty, too, who was actually the guy that asked the bear question earlier, friend of the show. And he's your guy. Yeah, I've known him for a while.

He's a neat, he's a neat dude. Yeah, he's a friendly guy. And he gave us money. Cool. That's nice. He loves some money. He's my guy now, too. Yeah, he's all our guy.

You're our guy. Two more. So we have Hallie and Brianna. Cool. That's it for the new patrons. Again, you can just find that Patreon by following the link in our bio on our Instagram, which is the tooth and claw podcast on Instagram. I got a big Patreon episode ready for it.

Like I'm in charge of it. I'm doing March Madness-style bracket. We're getting pretty excited for it. I mean, I don't take notes. I got five pages of notes here, so. And I wish you guys could see those notes special. A lot of scribbles. Couldn't find a pencil.

If you want to listen to that. Just imagine a six-year-old making five pages of notes. Of just cool animal notes. If you guys want to listen to that, it'll be available for people who subscribe to our grizzly and tiger tier of our Patreon model. So great. Go ahead. Yeah.

And again, as always, don't forget to leave us a rating and a review if you're like in the podcast. And thanks so much for listening, guys. We really enjoy making it. All right. We'll see you later. All right. Say no.