Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - The Worst Shark Attack in History, the USS Indianapolis Disaster - Part 1: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

Tooth & Claw is back with another multi-part series, this time concerning the men of the famed United States heavy cruiser that was sunk during the efforts of World War 2, and the sharks who couldn't pass up the tragic but opportune feast that now floated helplessly in the ocean water. This one gets intense, so prepare for some graphic conversation and content. In the second half of the episode, the guys are joined by Dan Abbott,  an underwater cinematographer that specializes in sharks as well as one of the stars of the hit Netflix show All the Sharks. Watch here: https://youtu.be/Rn0xRUnnkN4 Ollie: Take the online quiz and introduce Ollie to your pet. Visit https://www.ollie.com/tooth today for 60% off your first box of meals! #ToKnowThemIsToLoveThem Mint Mobile: Get this new customer offer and your 3-month Unlimited wireless plan for just $15 a month at http://mintmobile.com/TOOTH   Quince: Go to http://quince.com/TOOTH for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. LMNT: Get a free 8-count Sample Pack with any purchase at http://drinklmnt.com/tooth ~~ 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

Hello everyone and welcome to Tooth and Claw podcast. We have our host, Wes Larson, with us. He's a decorated wildlife biologist. Decorated. I mean, I see two decorations right behind you. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, my studio's decorated. I guess I'm decorated.

I'd be like a private first class, probably. Okay. And then humility. Yeah, it's like the second rank, I think. Sure. You also have our co-host Mike Smith with us. Hey, he's also decorated. And I am Wes's younger brother, Jeff Larson, and I'm less decorated, but I still have a couple.

I was going to say you're both more decorated than me with all your tats. You guys are all inked up. I don't have any. Jeff, you got a decoration of a shark right behind you, which is really fitting for today. Yeah. So we're doing a three-part episode on some sharks, right? Yeah, I'll get into that in a second. But really really quickly, I just want to let people, for any new listeners, know what we do here.

We're Tooth and Claw Podcast. We have a podcast that's mostly about animal attacks, but we like to explain why they happened, how it's often the person that's at fault, and how we can prepare our listeners for time in the great outdoors and how they can avoid similar encounters with wildlife. Because we all love wildlife, and we want to make sure we can enjoy it in a safe way that doesn't harm us and doesn't harm them. That's kind of our whole purpose here is education, but also some fun stories. And today's is a doozy, dooozy of a story. Okay.

We're like kind of educate you on what not to do's. Yeah, exactly. A lot of stories of what not to do. Cautionary tales. Yeah, you were nervous if part one isn't good that no one's going to listen to the next part. Oh, that's just a nervous. That's just worries that I live with my entire life, Jeff, you know? Yeah.

That's just the pains of being anxious about producing good content for people. I'm excited about this episode. I know I've said this before, but it's true for this one. And it's true for the other ones, but it changes because of, you know, how time works. This is the episode that we've done where there's the most information out there about the topic, about the story. There are lots of books out of all the, I think out of all the stories that I've done personally, this one has the most that's been published about it, because it's a huge story.

And if you've read the title of the episode, which you probably have already, we're finally doing the USS Indianapolis, which is commonly billed as the worst shark attack of all time. And I think that's very possible. So I'm going to start us out with the... World record? Yeah, it's a Guinness World Record.

Which, you know, I sure made it worthwhile for all these guys that we're about to talk about. Was there a Guinness book, World Records representative on the USS Indianapolis, with his little clipboard, like making sure and verifying everything. It's like, I don't know. He's like, that one drowned. Yeah. And that's something we're actually going to talk about too, is that not that exactly, but the fact that this has said, like, this could be the worst shark attack in history. It's hard to know how many of these people died from sharks. And it's hard to know, you know, if like Spanish

galleons that went down in the 1600s or 1400s or whatever didn't have more it's hard it's hard to say but like this was the one that has probably been reported as the most so for now I think most people feel pretty comfortable saying this is the largest mass shark attack incident in history how many people are going to fit on a galleon because the US and Indianapolis had well you'll get into it but yeah that's yeah I don't know if a galleon's holding that but I don't know about There hasn't been like, before we were really recording a lot of history, like, they couldn't even get that many people out in the ocean at once, you know? That's a good point. All right. I want to open with the whole story. Okay. I was going to bring up the road.

No, it was arc, but. Noah's arc. That was not forget that. It was like six people, though. That's true. Insert our Bible reference sound here. A little angel noise. All right.

On an early morning in the summer of 1945, a naval officer woke up to a familiar hell. He'd been floating in the warm waters of the Philippine Sea for two days after being involved in the largest naval disaster in U.S. Navy history. The torment he is enduring at this point was beyond our comprehension. He's floating in the water and his lifejack is rubbing on his skin and the combination of really terrible sunburn, burns from the explosion of the ship, salt water and constant rubbing is producing huge infected painful ulcers all over his body. The brightness of the sun on the water has led to an enraged cornea,

and each blink of his eyelids feels like rough sandpaper dragging across his eyes. And then the thirst. The thirst is all-encompassing and maddening. He's floating on a literal ocean of cool water, and he's not able to drink a single drop of it. It's been over 36 hours without any real water, so it's pure torture. And even in the worst pain of his life, and hopelessly adrift in the ocean, he feels lucky. He'd entered the water mostly unscathed, but a lot of the other survivors weren't that fortunate. All around him, his friends and his shipmates are terribly injured. They're burned from the sinking.

Many of them have already succumbed to their injuries and are now just corpses floating in this oil-slicked water. In the first morning following the sinking, he'd found one of his close friends from the ship. And bobbing in the swells of the Pacific, they fantasized about reunite. with their families and their girlfriends when they're rescued. They talked about the meals they would eat, the soft beds they would sleep in, the warm embraces they would find half a world away. Surely rescue would come at some point. Rescue had to come at some point.

So waking up that morning, with only his head and his shoulders above the water, for the second consecutive day, he reaches out to wake up his sleeping friend with a gentle push. But when he pushes, his friend immediately flips over, like a lopsided toy bobbing in the water. even after two days of unending, unimaginable terror, the officer was so shocked and horrified by what he now saw that his brain couldn't process it.

The entire bottom half of his friend had been eaten away and his shredded torso was now bobbing upside down with his entrails spreading out into the water. Dude. Mike, you ever have that happen? Rarely. Yeah, it's terrible. Just maybe like a hot dog that you drop in the water?

Yeah. He stares at this. grotesque buoy of flesh that used to be his friend, and the feeling of quick movement under the water breaks the spell. Something big passes by the officer, and then he hears a splash behind him. He whips his head around and screams as a large white dorsal fin slices through the water toward him. Men floating nearby turn their heads and shut their eyes, and the screaming suddenly gets cut short. All right, so you may think this sounds a lot like the monologue from Jaws, because it does. Quint talks about pretty much this exact same thing happening, but this is real. This

actually happened to one of these sailors, where he reached out and his friend was cut in half from sharks. The sinking of the U.S. Indianapolis in 1945 was not only the worst U.S. naval disaster in history, it's also widely regarded as the worst and deadliest mass shark attack in history. It's a truly unbelievable story of war, suffering, survival, and courage, and it's probably our most Quested Shark stories since we started this podcast. So we're going to cover it, like Jeff mentioned earlier, in three parts. It's also kind of perfect timing for this episode. The story of the Indianapolis was made especially famous after Jaws was released in theaters and became one of the first summer blockbusters in 1975. And probably the most famous scene of the movie is when

Quint, played by Robert Shaw, launches into that long monologue about being aboard the Indianapolis and the horrors that he saw. And in my opinion, it's one of the best scenes ever put to film. You guys like that scene, right? Of course. Oh, yeah, it's the best. It makes sense how somber the room gets as he invokes that imagery. Like, as a child watching that movie, I kind of understood what was going on in the monologue, but I mean, after you do this series of episodes, I think we'll have an even deeper understanding and appreciation of like, dude, how brutal that was. It's so much worse than I ever even imagined. It's terrible. I think for some reason I had thought that it was actually like not as bad as I thought it was like Quint had oversold it and it's actually like worse than what he said and yeah anyway I that scene I think is perfect because they're so giggly and like having fun and trading stories and then when he launches into the monologue it just gets like very quiet and I like feel that reverence when I've been doing this research because this is a crazy story of survival.

Like a really crazy one. And death. Imagine like being the guy that has to tell the story after him. Yeah. Right. He's like really excited to tell his story. They're like, all right, your turn now. Yeah.

When he got dipped by like a nurse shark in the Bahamas. Yeah. Tooth and Clause brought to you by Ollie. We can be kind of picky about the sponsors that we allow on our show. And one that I'm extra picky about is dog food. I wouldn't read an ad for any old dog food that I don't believe in, and that's why I'm really excited to tell you guys about Ollie. We have fully switched our dog over to Ollie,

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and the sinking of the U.S. Indianapolis happened exactly 80 years ago next week. Plus, shark week is just starting, and there's some really popular shark shows on Netflix, right? now, including a really great show, All the Sharks, which features two shark experts that are actually longtime listeners. And we're going to be talking to at least one of them during this series. So what I'm getting at is this might be the best possible time to tell this story, and I'm really glad we're doing it now. Good.

Me too. I think all three of us, you know, when we talk about the military, we kind of have different views on lots of things when it comes to the U.S. and the military. And I think, you know, war is always terrible. but I would guess that all three of us kind of agree that World War II was kind of the last U.S. war where it really felt like a good versus evil struggle. Am I like speaking for myself there? Would you guys agree with that? I wasn't there.

So I don't know. Yeah, it's an interesting question. Like as me, in my family, I have a lot of not just brothers who served as Marines in more modern theaters of war, but also grandma. grandparents who served and grand great uncles all that stuff like it's a hard one it's a hard thing to ever truly justify war so i i struggle with it every day every time i think about it i kind of land somewhere new so yeah but it's never for lack of appreciation or respect for the people who have put their lives on the line i'd go back to the revolutionary war that's the last good one yeah where they're trying to charge for tea yeah you probably have an argument

I like I'd go to the war of Minas Tirith I think is probably the last good one good versus evil yeah uh yeah I think you know this was a war that the U.S. didn't necessarily want to be part of they got dragged into especially the war in the Pacific we weren't really planning on getting involved until after Pearl Harbor and it does really seem like there's some forces building out there that needed to be stopped and and you know some of these U.S. presidents and generals and everything recognize that. And I'm not saying that we didn't do some terrible things during World War II, and I think there's an argument for the dropping of the two atomic bombs being like terrorist acts. But I also, through researching this episode, I've learned like that we kind of felt backed into a corner in some ways, even with that.

So it's my mind is kind of expanding on World War II, but I do see this as kind of maybe one of the last kind of big military campaigns of the U.S. where it wasn't about furthering U.S. interests, U.S. interests, so much as, like, protecting the world from some evil forces. Yeah, the USS Indianapolis, well, you'll get into it, I'm sure. Oh, yeah, we're going to talk about that a lot. A pretty cool little secretive history concerning World War II. So I'm excited to see what you got. This episode, part one, we're going to call the sinking of the USS Indianapolis.

And this is really just kind of setting up the scene for the sharky part of this story. We're going to talk a little bit about the sharks, but this is kind of more about the sinking, the mission, and kind of some of the forces that were at play. So a lot of history, but I really got into it as I searched and researched and, you know, learned a lot more about this. So my main sources, I used a book called In Harms Way, the sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the extraordinary story of its survivors by Doug Stanton. I also read the book Left for Dead, a young man's search for justice for the USS

Indianapolis, and the book Indianapolis, the true story of the worst sea disaster in U.S. naval history and the 50-year fight to exonerate an innocent man by Lynn Vincent and Sarah Vlatic. And Indianapolis Peyton Manning's legacy as the quarterback of this. Indianapolis cults. Pretty boring, but we sure had some good years. Yeah, Indianapolis, sorry to all you Indianapolis listeners. kind of a boring place. I had to spend a few days there once,

and I ended up just kind of staying in my hotel room. Well, they got that NASCAR once a year. They're the center of the NASCAR world. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, there you go. All right. Shots fight.

That sounds exciting. Sorry. That's just my personal opinion. Sorry, I'm going to affect some of you Indianapolis people. All right. In 1945, the USS Indianapolis was roughly a 600-foot U.S. cruiser warship that since the attack on Pearl, Harbor had already been involved in a lot of different World War II battles all over the

Pacific. She had been used in campaigns in the Aleutian Islands, Guam, Palau, New Guinea, the Marianas, and lots of other places. She was essentially a floating city and had all of the things that the sailors would need to spend months at sea. So like laundry, dentist, doctor, all these different, like an ice cream shop, lots of different things that they would need. Yeah, to just feel kind of comfortable and, like,

they had a home on the water. She had really powerful guns and weaponry and was mostly used to attack enemy battlements on land and blow planes out of the air. So when they were like trying to invade an island, this boat would pull up and just barrage these battlements with these

big guns. So it was also a very fast ship. But when you have a fast battleship, you kind of have to make some important tradeoffs. And one of the biggest tradeoffs is the protection, the armor. And the Indianapolis was protected by three to four inches of steel, whereas battleships would often have 13 inches of

steel. So not great armor for the Indianapolis, but she was really fast. Yeah. Vibranium would have been, that stuff is so good. It's like super strong, but also light. Yeah. No wonder Wakanda has such a tight, you know, control on that. Right.

Yeah. Their Navy is probably so sick. What's the other one, Unobtainium? You build this out of Unobtainium? Avatar. Yeah. I don't know what that stuff does. I just know it's valuable.

I think it was energy source. Okay. Yeah. Was it easier hard to obtain, Wes? Another example would be the Black Pearl. And that one, well, the Inceptor was the fast one, right? Yeah, I forget what that. Well, yeah.

Let's not spoil it because that'll probably be episode three, right? The Black Pearl. The Black Pearl? Well, I don't recall it being part of this story, but I can certainly try and work it in if you guys want. Because I think it's fast, but I think it, well, none of them were very armored, actually. Yeah. All right. No, I'm glad we could, yeah.

Thanks for walking us through those thoughts. I'll strike that. Never mind. In the summer of 1945, Adolf Hitler had already committed suicide in a bunker in Berlin, and the Nazis and the other access powers in Europe had been. defeated. So victory in Europe had been declared for the allied powers. That, you know, that sneaky little Adolf just snuck in there and blew his own little head off. He didn't have the resources we have nowadays to get help. Yeah. Like what I'll speak for myself like Wes was doing earlier and

just say, I'm glad Hitler died. Yeah. But I don't know how you guys feel. It's a shame that we couldn't get him when he was a tiny little defenseless baby. But I'm glad. Mike, I think you're safe to speak for all three of us when you say that you want Hitler to be dead. I just never want to assume, but I'm glad we're all agreeing. We're all on the same boat there. But the war in the Pacific. Hopefully not the USS, Indianapolis. Hopefully not that boat.

The war in the Pacific raged on in the late spring and early summer of 1945 and after over three years of battle in the Pacific, the allied powers of the U.S., U.S., U.K., Australia, China, New Zealand, and the Netherlands, as well as some other smaller fighting forces from other countries, were winning the war. They had these strategically important islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa that had both been captured by American fighting forces, but that had led to huge casualties on both sides. And during these battles, they had learned something very important, which is that the Japanese are extremely tenacious when they are defending their homeland.

It was becoming more and more evident to the allied powers that the invasion of a Japanese homeland would lead to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dead Americans and Japanese civilians. And I think that's pretty well reported throughout a lot of World War II literature, just that the Japanese really fought hard, especially when it was for their own country. They were willing to fight to the last man, woman, and child. I will say this argument that the Japanese were going to fight to the last man, woman, and child is an argument that has historically been used as a justification for what comes next. And I just want to say that doesn't mean that I necessarily buy into that justification or think it's true. But there is a lot of information that shows the Japanese were ready to sacrifice a lot of people should we invade their homeland, which makes sense. And I think even the fighting style shows that, like the kamikaze pilot shows that they were all or nothing. The guy in the Philippines that was still like trying to fight the war in the 1970s.

Because like no one told them it was over yet. Yeah. Yeah. It's insane. We're going to talk about the kamikaze stuff and there's something in here that just absolutely blew my mind that I can't stop thinking about. So the Godzilla. Basically. It's Godzilla.

Yeah. I just can't believe it. That thing was real. Basically, the Allied powers started bombing the ever-living shit out of the Japanese mainland and every major Japanese civilian center. Not every of, sorry, most major Japanese civilian centers. We always talk about the atomic bombings when we talk about this time period, but the fire bombing of Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe,

and dozens of other Japanese cities were also insanely destructive and deadly and likely killed close to a million people, which were mostly civilians. Meanwhile, the Manhattan Project had reached its climax in New Mexico, and the atom bomb had been successfully created. You've all seen Oppenheimer. You know the story. Jeff, you want to quickly summarize the Manhattan Project for us. The Manhattan Project, that was just building the atomic bomb, right?

Yeah, that was very quick. Yeah, I mean, summary. Very concise. All right. This is a great movie. Great movie. Yeah, basically the U.S. put their strongest minds and best researchers all at work on building the atomic bomb. They split atoms in half.

Yeah. You're talking about it. No, that's what I wanted. That's what you did it. They had to wear sunglasses when they did the demo. The Trinity. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So the Allied forces decided that Japan wasn't going to give them the unconditional surrender that they desired without either an invasion of the Japanese mainland that would cost millions of lives or a show of our new atomic power. So the decision was made by President Truman to use nuclear weapons against Japan, specifically the civilian center of Hiroshima was selected as the first bombing site. Many of the main components of the first atomic bomb, which was named Little Boy, were shipped to California and then loaded onto the USS Indianapolis on the 16th of July 1945. So the mission was to deliver these materials, and it was considered

top secret. So, the captain of the USS Indianapolis, who is Charles Butler, McVeigh, the third, was just under strict orders to get these bomb components to the island of Tinian in the northern Marianas as quickly as possible. He didn't really understand what he was carrying.

None of the passengers on the Indianapolis knew what they were carrying. Oh, crazy. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. And they thought they were going to be in California for a while, and suddenly they got orders that they were leaving in like a couple days. So they're not thrilled about it.

You can just imagine them putting the payload onto the ship and be like, don't just don't touch that box. We're going to get to it. Close to it. My guys are like, huh, I wonder what's in there. That's honestly exactly what happened. But we're going to talk about that a little bit. But they're not that happy about this because their last mission, a kamikaze pilot had hit

the Indianapolis, almost sunk her. Nine of the crew had died and 29 had been wounded. So it like a bomb fell all the way down into the kitchen and like blew up all their beans. Not the beans. I watched this interview with the survivor. And he was like, man, there are beans everywhere. And he's just, I've never seen so many beans in my life. But people died.

They like had to limp back to California. And the ship after that moment felt different and broken. And they started to wonder if it might be an unlucky ship. And now they're being told that they have to head out. to the far reaches of the Pacific and abandon any plans that they might have in California. They also got, you know,

get all those beans back on the ship. It takes a while to get all your beans. Especially back then. Yeah. Less machines. They're probably still finding beans and places you never knew beans could get. You know what doesn't belong in your epic summer plans?

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But in World War II, it's like a lot of farm boys and just like kids. Back then, they had like three kids already, though. Yeah, that's true. I mean, maturity-wise, they're probably like 35 nowadays, but they're young. I'm just kidding. Yeah, they're very young. And the average age. Yeah.

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That's crazy. So as they depart California, they pick up a security detail of 39 Marines, as well as two army officers that have been heavily involved in the Manhattan Project, James Nolan and Robert Furman They're kind of disguised as army officers But they're actually scientists and engineers Captain McVeigh was aware That they were carrying some kind of new deadly weaponry

But he wasn't given the details And like I said all these men are completely unaware of their mission But they're getting like this big crate And these like lead boxes loaded onto the ship They're being guarded by 39 Marines So they know like this is something weird That we're transporting Yeah.

They're like, those new beans have a lot of protection. Yeah. Why is they a fragile written on the beans box? Here's a crazy thing, though. As they leave the port in California, they make it about an hour out into the bay, and then the ship suddenly stops in the water, not too far from shore.

About a thousand miles away in New Mexico, the first test of an atomic bomb was happening, which is dubbed the Trinity test, which Mike just said, and the Indianapolis would only proceed onward with its mission if the test was successful. So they loaded this bomb onto the Indianapolis, but an atomic bomb had yet to be detonated and successfully tested. That's crazy. Yeah. So as Bobby Oppenheimer watches this mushroom cloud rise over the desert of New Mexico,

a small boat delivers a message from President Truman to the Indianapolis, and it instructs them to proceed with their mission and make their delivery at any cost. Only Nolan and Furman knew that they were transporting roughly half of the available uranium 232 in the United States, and then it was worth about $300 million. The journey to Hawaii was done in record time, and there they refueled and picked up world record. Yeah, it was world record. I think it might be a standing record even. That feels like the easiest test ever to like see if it worked or not. Be like, yeah, that worked.

Yeah. You mean the atomic bomb? Yeah. Because they were all like waiting to see if it would work before like they sent the ship out. Yeah. And it's the most like clear like. Yeah, that I'll do it. You probably like see the mushroom cloud from the ship.

It's like yeah. Yeah. There we go. And apparently little boy was like a certain type of fission weapon with like the it. It was really wasteful when it comes to uranium. But it's pretty much guaranteed to work. as long as it had been like proven to work. So they were really confident that this bomb would work once they dropped it.

All right. So they refuel and they get more provisions in Hawaii. Then they continue onward more than 3,000 miles to Tinian Island, which is in the northern Marianas. This journey is pretty uneventful. Once they get to Tinian, there's a lot of cloak and dagger stuff and fanfare as they unload all this secret cargo. I guess the crane operator on the Indianapolis like kind of jokingly,

the box fall a little bit, and all of these dudes were like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because he, like, didn't know that it was enriched in uranium in the box. Anyway, I do think they kind of started to get an idea of what they might have been delivering because they were allowed to sign. I read this only in one spot, though. They were allowed to sign some components, and they signed greetings to the emperor from the men of the Indianapolis. But it wouldn't be long before Japan would deliver their own message.

to the USS Indianapolis. So they set sail for Guam, where some of the men were relieved by other sailors, and then they left for the Philippine island of Leite. They're going to Leite to receive training before joining other forces in Okinawa and preparing for the potential ground invasion of mainland Japan. So that's their mission they know. At some point, they're going to be in this ground invasion. What no one knew is that they were supposed to relay this plan for the Indianapolis,

to go to Leytee, but somehow it got bungled, and as a result, the rear admiral in Leitee wasn't expecting them. He had no idea that the Indianapolis was on its way, and this would go on to be an incredibly costly mistake. Mike, you're a bit of a rear admiral yourself, aren't you? Yeah, flag bear of the rear admiral. Yep. Yep. All right. As they prepare to leave towards Leity, McVeigh asked for an escort of a destroyer, And that's pretty like typical protocol. Apparently everywhere they had ever gone, they had an escort because the Annapolis had no way to detect submarines. They didn't have surface sonar.

They didn't have any kind of way to find submarines. But they were assured that their route from Guam to Lati was in the backwater of the war, that there was no enemy presence in the area and no need for an escort. So McVeigh orders an intelligence report about enemy presence along their route. and when he gets it, he doesn't see anything too concerning. This intelligence report, and this is another big error, was actually incomplete because it should have included a report that a U.S. warship had been sunk by a manned Japanese suicide torpedo or Kaiten just three days previous.

And this is where we need to take a quick break to talk about my new obsession, which is suicide torpedoes. Yeah, I need more information on that. So they're called Kaiten, and they are man. Man torpedoes, like a suicidal torpedoist would get in it and he has a steering wheel and it launches and they are, they steer them into the side of boats. And if they miss, it sinks to the bottom of the ocean where they're crushed by the immense pressure of the water above them. Jeez. These guys begged for it.

I was envisioning a torpedo with like a saddle and the guy just riding on it like a horse. But this way makes more sense. like being in the war room of Japan and they're just like, yeah, we could just have a boat shoot these. And they're like, no, we need a way to put a person in. They're staring at a torpedo and they're just like, can we put a guy in that? Like the scientists are like, these can like steer themselves with like data. And they're like, oh, magnets. I don't trust it.

So wait, are they like, are they these torpedoes big enough for them to be. sitting upright in or they like laid out inside of a long? They're like sitting, I think, but they have a steering wheel. I, like, I need to look into them. Maybe it's like the Batmobile when he like hits the button and then goes forward. Yeah. But these, like these were a common thing in Japanese submarines. This isn't like that's a one-off.

They tried this once. Like this was a thing they employed. And, uh, yeah. We'll get into it a little bit more, but I couldn't stop thinking about that little detail. All right, so 112 men had died in this sinking that had happened three days ago, and it happened right on the route that the Indianapolis was about to take. It seems like that's the number one thing you would want on your report of what's been going on. You'd want to know that in this area.

The report also didn't include that there were some recently intercepted Japanese messages that pointed toward a lot of submarine activity on this route. So basically, they were sailing into some pretty dangerous waters without an essential. court. What did this report include? Yeah, not much. Everything is going pretty well. Everything is going pretty well. So there was some weird stuff at play, and I wasn't really going to get into this.

Yeah, this is wife's shopping list or something. I wasn't really going to get into this, but it is interesting. There was two major, like, admirals at the time, MacArthur and one other one, but they kind of had, like, divided up the ocean, and they were, battling back and forth on kind of how they should run the Navy. And because of that, there was a lot of like miscommunication that was happening during this time. So it was kind of a mess in this specific part of the Pacific.

That's really interesting. It's like, yeah, because you can't be arguing about that, you know. No, no. And the reason it was especially bad right here is because it's where these two pieces kind of met. So it was kind of like there wasn't a real operating procedure for this area. So as they sailed toward Leite, McVe is told to use this zigzag pattern of travel during daylight hours, and to continue it at night at his discretion based on visibility.

This maneuver of zigzagging the ship is actually completely ineffective at deterring submarine attacks, but it's still Navy policy. We're going to put a big fat pin in that because that's going to be important in part three. All right? All right. Jeff, you pin it for me? I'll pin it. On July 29th, around 8 p.m., McVeigh gives the order for the ship to stop zigzagging because it's a cloudy night and the swells were really large.

Around 10.30 p.m., McVe steps off the bridge and onto one of the walkways. He notices about 300 men trying to sleep in the humid air on the deck of the ship. And this is because the interior workings of the ship would get really, really hot. and a lot of the cabins were extremely hot. A lot of these men would sleep topside all over the deck with just their blankets. It was kind of the coolest place to sleep on the ship. And to try and remedy the heat in the different compartments of the ship, a lot of the doors and hatches were left open to improve airflow.

This is only allowed when threats are minimal because a bunch of open doors in a ship makes it much harder to isolate a breach if one happens. So like if you have all these hatches and doors open and suddenly like, you have water coming in, it can quickly flood the entire boat and you can't really isolate it the other way. But they're not worried about enemy subs, so they're leaving all these doors open to try and reduce the temperature aboard. McVeigh gets into his cabin and goes to sleep around 11 p.m. A few miles away and about 60 feet below the surface, Commander Hashimoto of the Japanese sub I-58 couldn't believe his luck. He'd been trying the entire war to sink an enemy ship, and he's

struck out, but he was about to make up for that by causing the biggest naval disaster in U.S. history. This dude was frustrated that he hadn't been able to sink anything yet, so he's stoked at this point. The Japanese sub wasn't the only thing following the USS Indianapolis. As they traveled across the Philippine Sea, they dumped large amounts of food waste and human waste directly into the water, and that added a lot of really interesting scent to areas that they pass through. Pelagic sharks travel wide expanses of open ocean where food is scarce,

and as a result, they can sometimes go days or even weeks without substantial feeding. So when they find a potential source of food, they can be really tenacious, and they'll follow it for a long time. These are sharks that really rely on like dead whales, on these like little pockets of food throughout the open ocean to sustain them. This is especially true of what species of shark. We've done an episode about them before. They're one of my favorites. I know it. Mike, you know it? Oceanic white tip? Oceanic white tip. Correct. They're large pelagic sharks that are known for their tenacity. They can grow up to 13 feet long. They're easily recognizable by their large paddle-shaped dorsal fin with an obvious white tip. So as we discussed in our other shipwreck episodes,

including our episode that focuses on oceanic white tips, they're often the sharks species that's implicated in encounters and bites with people that are adrift at sea. And if you're floating around long enough in tropical waters, there's a good chance that an oceanic white tip will show up. Victims of these attacks are often not able to report what kind of species was involved. And a lot of oceanic white tip attacks on shipwreck survivors can't be contributed to a certain species. But honestly, after doing this episode, I think there's a pretty good chance this is the species that's killed the most humans. I think it's like a pretty decent chance of it. I kind of felt that way when you did your first oceanic white tip episode is just like,

yeah, a lot of people just can't report what happened because they're in the middle of the ocean. Right. And they're, I mean, like with great whites, it's like, you know, a few a year. And with oceanic white tips, it's like you'll have years without any. And then all of a sudden there's like 200, you know. Right. So, yeah, anyway. It's like maybe someone eats more hot dogs than Nathan, but they're not being, like, recorded doing it, you know. And Joey chestnut?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a good. It's a good point. These are the Joey chestnut of the sharks. Uh-huh. Tooth and Claws brought to you by Quince. I'm not into chasing trends, but I do really like clothes that fit right,

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They're incredibly beautiful. I love that they have kind of this unpredictable nature to them. And they are just a really interesting species. They seem the most wild almost. Yeah. They just like know the least about human interference maybe. Yeah, they're one that when you talk to shark, people that are out diving in the ocean and around sharks a lot, this is one of the sharks that makes them nervous when it shows up, you know, like people that are really used to tiger sharks even. If an oceanic white tip shows up, they suddenly have to be very careful.

They're a spicy, a spicy shark. All right. So who knows how many sharks were following and directly within the radius of the Indianapolis. And who knows how many of them were oceanic white tips. but it's safe to say there were already a lot of sharks in the nearby water when the I-58 submarine launched six different torpedoes at the U.S. Indianapolis just after midnight on July 30th. The suicide torpedo pilots had begged for the honor to strike the ship,

but she was so close to the submarine that no one needed to steer a torpedo. They were very confident that they would hit it with at least one of these torpedoes. So the six that were launched were oxygen-powered magnetic torpedoes. Each of them carrying enough explosive power to level a city block. They were launched in three second intervals and were now speeding underwater toward the Indianapolis, and life's about to change forever for all 1,200 men aboard. At 1205, the first torpedo slams into the bow of the Indianapolis

and all hell breaks loose on the ship. The massive explosion launches boys 15 feet into the air and some were immediately blown in half. The second torpedo hits seconds later on the midship. fuel tank was hit and thousands of gallons of burning fuel erupt into the passageways of the ship and they melt and burn everything in their path including screaming human bodies. Sea water starts pouring into the ship. And this is something that's important.

These torpedoes didn't hit like the propellers or anything. So even though they've hit the ship, it continues moving and they have these massive holes. So it's essentially like sucking water into itself as it's moving. It's really important that if a ship gets hit by something like this, it stops, and they didn't stop. So they're sinking really fast. Yeah. Interesting. It lists to the left, and everyone aboard knew that they probably only had minutes before it would start sinking.

But the torpedoes had to completely destroy their communication within the ship. So all they could do was yell to each other, which leads to a ton of chaos. Yeah. This is going to get pretty gnarly, just so people know. Like if you don't, if you can't hear about burning and violence, you might just want to skip ahead a little bit. Captain McVeigh literally gets thrown from his bed in the attack and now he's on the bridge, desperately telling men in the radio shacks to try and get out a distress signal. The bridge is the, what is the bridge?

That's where the captain, like, hangs out and, like, steers the ship and they have all the controls and stuff. Okay. Yeah. So, he's joined in the bridge by some of his officers. like any of the officers would know to kind of meet up there. And one of them is gunnery officer Stanley Lipski, who'd been so badly burned already that his hands were melted down just to his tendons

and his eyes had been burned into two blackened holes. He was completely blind and he felt his way by memory up to the bridge. Already a hundred men had just simply been vaporized, burned, or drowned and many others were stumbling around in the darkness with their skin on fire, coughing for air. There was nearly an inch of blood on the forward deck, and men were slipping and falling in it as they tried to escape the flames. The ship was moving, and because of that, it's scooping up all this water,

it's flooding really fast, and sailors had to make the impossible decision to close and lock hatches while there were still men trapped behind them and screaming, trying to get out. But they had to do this to try and stall the sinking. So there's all these terrible stories of them, like shutting hatches and hearing men screaming behind them, knowing that they were going to drown.

Eight minutes after the first torpedo hit, McVeigh makes the call to abandoned ship, and he just starts yelling it out to everyone. Boys start jumping from the ship, and most of these early jumpers had life jackets, but the ship was listing so heavily to one side now that the jumpers on the high side have to jump like 60, 70 feet to get down to the water,

and on the low side they only had to jump a few feet to hit the water. So it's kind of crazy, like, depending on what side of the ship, ship you were on is a very different experience. There were a lot of life rafts on the Indianapolis, but in this chaos, only 12 of the 35 life rafts make it into the water, and they're missing a lot of the life-saving provisions and survival gear that was supposed to be on them. In part two, we're going to get into what they actually had in the water, but one lucky break is that the Indianapolis actually had a lot of extra life jackets.

So they were able to get a lot of life jackets, but it ended up. up that only about half of the men ended up with them when they jumped in the water because a lot of them just panicked and jumped in without life jackets or life belts. Another really crazy thing is there was huge amounts of black oil leaking from the boat and the oil

that they had was like this thick molasses kind of tar. So everyone that jumped in the water would land in this oil first and it would completely smother them in this sticky black blanket as they came back up. It got in their eyes, their ears, their mouths, and their throat.

So they would start just like vomiting and they wouldn't be able to clear their eyes of all this oil. So it was like that was just another kind of insult to injury. Yeah, because oil just kind of sits on top of the water and like stays pretty thick. It doesn't like dilute very fast. No. So they're just jumping into this pool of oil essentially. All right. So we talked about those Marines that were responsible for guarding the components of the bomb.

Some of them had stayed on the ship to help, like, guard the jail on the ship and a couple other things. One of these Marines, when he jumped into the water and this oil, he came back up and he turned to see the still spinning propeller rising out of the water, and he was watching men jumping off the boat, hitting the propeller, and being sliced in half or screaming as they were thrown hundreds of feet out into the sea. Oh, my gosh. The doctor on the ship, Louis Hines, who will be talking. about a lot in the next episode, woke up to screaming from the cabin next to him. It was coming from the ship Dentist, and he was being burned alive in his cabin, which was fully on fire. Hines ran from his room knowing there was nothing he could do for his friend. He then had to climb through a

porthole and use a rope to make it up onto the deck, and when he got there, he wasn't prepared for the scene that he saw. Men in various stages of being burned alive were stumbling around. One approached him, and this is what he reported, he said his arm were held high with ribbons of burn flesh hanging from them like wings. He was screaming, don't touch me, don't touch me. And a breeze caught these streamers of flesh and made them ripple in the wind. And he had to grab a life jacket and try and put it on this man who was just screaming as he tried to do this. He also strapped a bunch of men that were in pain into cots to give them some morphine to try and calm them down.

And then the boat suddenly listed even more and he watched hopelessly as these guys. cots with men on them rolled down the deck, splashed into the water, and the cots and the screaming sailors sunk immediately. They were like tied to the cots. Yeah. That is probably a bad idea. Bad move, yeah. He finally had to stop trying to help the wounded because the ship was sinking so fast,

and he jumped himself from the ship after securing his life jacket. In the Radio Shack, men had succeeded in getting distress signals out. But what they didn't know is that these signals had been heard. by U.S. dispatchers and were quickly dismissed as Japanese interference or pranks because when they would get any kind of like distress signal, they would immediately ask for a reply for confirmation and if they didn't get a reply, they would do it in like code. They just thought it was the Japanese trying to mess with them. So because they didn't get a reply from the USS Indianapolis and because it wasn't where they thought it was, like they didn't know where the ship was necessarily,

they just dismissed it, filed it away, and no one heard about these distress calls, which is crazy. Yeah. All right. Captain McVeigh really thought long and hard about going down with this ship, but when it was completely apparent that the ship was sinking no matter what, he too put on a life jacket and jumped into the water. He was full of dread thinking about the men that he had just lost and the repercussions should he survive this ordeal. but as he watched the last bit of the Indianapolis disappear under the dark night water, what he didn't realize is that in a lot of ways the boys that had in a quick, albeit painful deaths, during the sinking, were in many ways more fortunate compared to the almost 900 boys

that were now floating in the tropical waters of the Philippine Sea. Many of those 890 men were bleeding, vomiting, shitting, and pissing into the water as they writhed in pain and shock. and those bodily fluids slowly spread out into the water column, along with the oozing scent of blood and death from the dozens and dozens of corpses that were also floating in this dark tropical water. The sharks that had been following the boat in the area were already gathering in numbers to investigate the almost overwhelming amount of scent in the water,

the splashing and thrashing of the men as they struggled to stay afloat and conscious further intensified the interest of these large sharks circling around and below the men. Almost 30 minutes after entering this water, a petty officer second class was cleaning to one of the floating rafts, noticed one of his shipmates struggling to stay afloat a few meters away. It's a cloudy night. There's only a sliver of moon,

so it makes it really hard to see exactly what was happening, but he swims over to this fellow sailor so he could drag him back to the raft. As he gets closer, more details come into focus, and this petty officer sees the man in the water, water, moving in quick, jerky motions. And he realizes that the sailor is face down and dead, and only his life jacket was keeping him afloat, but somehow he's still moving, or something was moving him. Oh, man. The petty officer pauses in the water to think about what to do next. He turns back to look at the raft and the other men clinging to it. The raft was feeling a lot further away than he

wanted, and then a large splash brings his attention back to the drowned sailor, but the man was gone. Lifejacket and all had been pulled underwater by an 11-foot oceanic white-tip shark. It and the hundreds of other sharks that would arrive in the area would go on to torment these men in the water for the next four days. And in part two of this series, we're going to go over the absolute hell that the men of the Indianapolis experienced while adrift in the Pacific ocean. Oh, can I sit part two out west? It's crazy pretty much any other group of animals, like 900 humans can take it out, especially like soldiers, you know?

Right. But then like... In the ocean, we're just... Sharks, it's just like, you... No chance. It doesn't matter how many humans there are. You can't, like, gang up on a shark. Yeah.

We're going to talk about some of their attempts to stop these attacks in part two, but they're totally futile. It's crazy. Part two is going to be kind of wild. Like how many, just the level of death that these men had to experience and witness and not like good death. This is like screaming, hearing your friends being ripped apart by animals 10 feet away kind of death. It's not pleasant. But it also, it's just like a story of courage too.

Like I watched these videos like of them interviewing the survivors. This is probably like 20 years ago. Most of these men are dead now. But it made me cry. They had to witness some terrible, terrible stuff. And it's hard to even imagine having that kind of trauma through your whole life. You said about 900 survivors are now in the water. Yeah.

890 is what they guess. So about 300 people died or 250 people died. From that initial. No, 300. Because there's about 1,200 on the boats. about 300 died with the ship. Yeah, man. Already, just like the worst thing that's ever going to happen to you.

And it's just like it's just not even really started yet for more so. Yeah, that's the thing is like we have roughly 900 people in the water. And I think they end up pulling out like 316. So, yeah. It's crazy too thinking about that Japanese submarine commander. Just like how like knowing. like what happened with the war? Like he was probably a hero for like three years.

And it's just like, and now he's like known as like a terrorist almost, you know. Yeah. Well, no, it was funny. In this documentary where they interviewed all these survivors, they also interviewed his daughter and granddaughter. And they were both just kind of like, yep, he got them. Really?

That's the craziest thing about war is like on every side. It's not just a Japanese. phenomenon, but like, you're looking for any way to, like, carry your weight and do your part. And, like, your part resulted in the worst thing that's ever happened to a thousand plus people. It's just, it's, I'm not trying to, like, moralize or grandstand on any kind of point here. I'm just saying, like, it's true. Like, this was a celebration for them. Yeah.

And a terrible. Yeah. Especially interesting because Japan is, like, such a ally now. And it happened like pretty quick afterward. Yeah. He really had the smallest window to be like celebrated. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. At some point we'll do the Ramri Island story, which is all about a Japanese platoon on this island where they think hundreds of them were killed by saltwater crocodiles. So that's a story we'll get to at some point. That one sometimes reported as the biggest mass death ever from an animal inflicted on humans. So yeah. So you said white tip, these oceanic white tips are one of your favorite sharks. What does that mean? It's like, where on the list?

Because one of could be carrying a lot of weight. I would say, so my list is fluid, and you guys know that. Yeah. When you do an episode, they definitely climb up. The top two are always going to be great whites and whale sharks. But I would maybe put oceanic white tips at three right now. Whoa. Oh, okay.

I wanted to say quickly, thank you to everyone who suggested this story. We've gotten a lot of suggestions for it over the years. It's kind of activated me in a different way than a lot of our stories has. It just, it's fascinating. I can't consume enough about it. Even in my spare time, I'm just watching little YouTube videos and stuff. So I do recommend reading these books. I think it's a really interesting little sliver of American history

that wraps around so many different facets of our, of our shared history. Or wait until maybe someday we write a book and it has a little chapter about it. Yeah, it probably will. That's a good point. I think we'll write. So don't read any of Wes's books that he recommends wait until we write one and it might have something about it. Yeah, just go watch Love Island and just wait.

Yeah. You guys got any questions or comments before we, move on to our categories? No. I feel like I've been commenting a lot since we ended. Okay. Maybe I don't. Maybe this is a question for another time, but.

So did Nicholas Cage, is he a pretty good stand-in for the role he was playing? Do they look similar? He's playing Captain McVeigh, I believe. We are going to, so Mike's referencing a movie called Indianapolis Men of Courage or something like that. I kind of think we should review that movie for a, subscription episode during this series because it's not very well reviewed

and I think it's pretty hokey but I kind of really want to watch it so yeah of us seen it I saw the 10 minute long trailer that's what I was going to say the trailer like feels like he watched it it's insane I have watched I watched this shark week special called Ocean of Fear

that was quite good that does a lot of reenactments I've never watched a trailer where I got like so invested in the trailer itself that a plot twist in the trailer was like as effective as any plot twist I've ever seen anywhere else. I was like, wait a minute, what? We're in a courtroom now? What is going on here? It's such a weird phenomenon these days of trailers where you feel like you kind of just got the whole movie. Yeah.

That one is like the number one all time for that. I need to watch it. I don't think I've been seen the trailer. It was unbelievable how much the trailer showed. It's like watching Return of the King. It just like, it ends, you think, but it's like, no, we're just getting started here. We got like three more places to take you before this trailer. I hope you like cuddles and beds because you're about to get a lot of them.

It's just whoever made that trailer was the most indecisive person. And it's just like, you can't keep all of this. All right. Well, I think with that then we will move on to our categories. Tooth and Clause brought to you by Element. Me, Wes and Mike, all love Element. We take it on all of our trips. Give it to all of our travelers. They all end up loving it. It's the best. It's great. You stay hydrated without sugar, food dye, or any other dodgy ingredients found in popular electrolyte sports drinks. Each serving delivers a meaningful dose of electrolytes. used by everyone from professional athletes, special forces, Olympians to just every day, moms, exercise enthusiasts, heavy sweaters, sauna sitters, or if you're like me and you just want a dynamite, no sugar margarita. I love it, especially like on a hot day, nothing makes me feel more hydrated than element, but I drink it year round. The new lemonade flavor is delicious. You

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Yeah. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on, Dan. Yeah. Dan is currently in a show on Netflix called All the Sharks. It's a show that all three of us have watched. Really fun show. We're excited to talk to you both about the Indianapolis and about the show a bit.

Cool. Yeah. So the first category is one for all of us. It is your favorite World War II movie show or a show. or other media. Wes. Yeah. You want me to go first?

No, I... No, actually, I'm going to go first just to get... I've been emotionally compromised today. I'm sorry, Dan, this is like the first time we meet, and I'm going to probably start crying, because I watched the trailer for Grave of Fireflies. I don't know if you're familiar with it, Dan, but it's a studio Ghibli movie about...

I can't like... I haven't cried in so long. This is like, this is really intense. Just from the trailer, but it's the story about two young Japanese children. Gosh, this is too heavy. But it's brutal. Go watch it once and never watch it again. It's probably the most powerful statement, like anti-war film I've ever watched

because there's just like no relief, no relent from depression and tragedy. So, yeah, let's raise the spirits now before I start crying. Definitely adding that one to the list. Yeah, it's well-timed because we were talking about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that's what that film revolves around, and it is. I agree with Mike. It's an intense one. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Good answer. Yeah. I got to go with just saving Private Ryan. I know it's kind of a basic answer, but that was kind of the first movie where I think I realized, like, oh, war is really, really, bad. Like, this isn't fun for these guys. There's not, like, a ton of, like, valor and, like, it's just kind of dirty and bad and awful. So it really opened my eyes to that reality. So I got to

pick that. First R-rated movie as ever allowed to watch. Yeah. Oh, really? Nice. Yeah, I'll go, Banda Brothers, the TV show. It's a great big. Really well done. Yeah. Dan? I think mine was probably going to be saving Private Ryan as well just for its iconic first intro sequence. But I know it's cheating because it's the wrong World War, but the shout out to 1917 just because of the technique that it's filmed in and like the continuous shot, I've never seen that in a war movie. And that must have been an absolute like, yeah, so difficult to pull that off. Yeah.

You don't, actually, you don't often get a movie that's kind of marketed on a gimmick, like the one shot kind of thing. lives up, it like kind of surpasses even the hype around the gimmick itself. Like, it's just a really solid movie, even without the one shot thing. Yeah. 20 minutes in, I was like, how did they do this? Yeah, I literally was texting my, I was literally texting my dad going, you're not going to believe this, they're still the same shot.

That's insane. But the detail that that involves, like they had to wait for exactly the same weather for each time they were shooting. Like, if it got too sunny, they had to stop and wait for the clouds to come back like it's incredible. That's crazy. Yeah. I'm gonna switch mine.

I forgot that I always forget this is a World War II movie, but Glorious Bastards is mine. Oh, yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. Well, Dan open the door. We don't have to stick with World War II, it turns out. You can know what else.

I'm going to go with that. Right. Brave fight. Braveheart. Right. Lord of the Rooms, that last fight. All right. The next category, because the USS Indianapolis story was made famous because of Quint's monologue

and Jaws, I wanted to ask you guys what you think the best monologue ever was, or the best ever monologue in a movie. Can I jump in straight away with Deep Blue C? Yeah, yeah. Deep Blue C. Samuel L. Jackson just before. I won't even say it in case people haven't seen it. Yeah, you can see it.

That is one of the best little. monologues because you know what's coming. Yeah. So we have a, our community, we did a movie watch along on our Discord server. I'm a small plug for them, but they just watched that movie. And a lot of them, for them, it was their first time seeing it. Oh, brilliant. And when that moment happened, I got like 30 messages in my inbox.

Just like, what the hell is going on? Like, what is this really how this is happening? It's so funny to me that like, that movie lives on, but still hasn't quite been spoiled in that way. So it's really exciting to see that. I feel like most movies, when someone's about to die like that, it like cuts out, kind of like the camera pans back. So you kind of are like, oh shit, something's about to happen. And in that movie, they do a really good job just like maintaining the same frame. Yeah. It's pretty shocking when the shark grabs him. I picked the Christmas monologue from Gremlins. So Phoebe Cates, where she suddenly goes into the,

this long talk about how her dad got stuck in the chimney and that's how she learned and like died and started smelling terrible. That's how she learned that there was no Santa Claus. I forgot about that. Oh, man. That monologue, if I'm ever even close to that and that movie's on, I wait to hear that part because it's so good. That's funny.

What's yours, Jeff? I mean, I kind of, I thought this interview was later, so I still had my answer. Okay, I'll go out. You can think. No, I'll do just like, it's not a fun answer, I don't think, but it's like a sincere one. The closing monologue in a river runs through it where he's just like talking about how he's like rivers haunt his life. Like it's, but and just like how he's drawn to water, it really connected with me. Yeah.

Yeah. What's nice. Thanks for being sincere for once. Dude, I actually might. So at the end of Blade Runner, Roy Batty's monologue, famous 42-42 word tears in the rain. The attack ships off the shoulder of Orion. I've always wondered what C-beams glittering near the Tannhouser Gate. I wonder what that looks like, but at the same time, I don't ever want to see it because, like,

nothing can compare to the imagery that conjures in my brain. Yeah. But, like, it's such an amazing moment. It's such a short monologue, and then he releases the dove. He's got the spike through the hand. It's just like a beautiful moment. I know that movie doesn't do it for everyone, but I absolutely love it. Great.

Well, since we have, you know, someone that knows sharks much better than any of the three of us on the show, I do want to ask, Dan, a couple of questions. That reminds me saying. I want to make sure we ask a couple questions in between some of these categories. And one I had for you, Dan, was just a little bit about, I want to hear a little bit more about what types of sharks you think might have shown up once. these men were floating in the Philippine Sea and kind of what makes those specific species of sharks special. Yeah, well, the one that you definitely will have been talking about is the oceanic white tip. And I think the reason that one gets the most publicity around this incident is because it's one of the most well-known pelagic sharks. And pelagic sharks are the ones that are ocean wanderers,

always traveling, always moving. So oceanic white tips for sure. But definitely there would have been things like tiger sharks, possibly oceanic black tips, bull sharks, all the ones that spend their lives just completely out in the deep blue because they're the ones that are constantly on the lookout for food. They were probably blue sharks. So yeah, all the ones that we would class as pelagic species. Okay, great. And as far as their behavior in a situation like this, what would you expect to see, especially from some of these large? larger species like the Oceanic White Tip or a tiger shark, what are you expecting when they're around such an intriguing source of potential food like this? I've worked with a lot of different

pelagic species. In fact, tomorrow I'm guiding a blue shark snorkeling trip off the coast of the UK. And that's a pelagic species as well. And the thing to remember and to know about them, that I often think it's helpful to think of it in their shoes, as it were. So if you're an animal that relies on finding food in the deep vast ocean, you have to inspect and check out everything. Everything could be a possible food feeding opportunity. Not always, but it's worth going and having a look. So every pelagic predator is on the, is traveling through the vastness of the ocean, just looking for those possible feeding opportunities, which is why when we do things like snorkeling with blue sharks, for example, just that little bit of scent that's in the water that we put out is enough for them

to come and investigate it because it could be a feeding opportunity. So when you have something like a shipwreck or a situation where there's lots of smells going into the water, probably lots of splashing from people that are freaking out from suddenly being in the water, all these sorts of things are what sharks are looking for that could be a potential feeding opportunity. Now, the thing that I will see about the oceanic white tip that is perhaps a little bit different to things like blues, oceanic black tips and species like that, is there a very bold species. Bull sharks get that reputation, but oceanic white tips are very similar in that they won't really hesitate to go and have a look. And we see that a lot with

some videos, especially in places like Egypt, where there's divers in the water and the oceanic white tip is just coming right at them. And that's because they don't really have that timid nature. They're a very bold species. And that makes sense as to why they would be going in the investigating people that might be in the water. Yeah. Jeff would be the oceanic white tip of the three of us then. He's bold. Just constantly sniffing people.

And I'll eat anything. Yeah. Every feeding opportunity matters. You'd get like one point in all the sharks competition because you're just always everywhere. You're like not a rare sighting. I'd be a hundred point shark, I think. That's true. Yeah, they have to go to your basement to find you.

All right. Well, that's really good to know. Yeah, I think I have some friends that work in Moraya or these places where they're out in, you know, looking for humpback whales or out in the open ocean looking for different pelagic animals. And I know from them, like when an oceanic white tip shows up, it's kind of like everyone needs to pay attention to this shark and keep eyes on it just because of what you just explained, that they are super inquisitive and not that timid. And so it can, it's not that they're necessarily, you know, like they're not bloodthirsty predators. It's that they are more likely to come into close contact. And that's when you do kind of have these more tricky situations. Totally. And it's worth, it's worth noting that people go and snorkel and dive with them every day. It's not a species that you have to quickly get out the water from. It's just one, as you say, to be more alert, keep your eyes on it in the same way that if you're diving with bull sharks, a tiger shark.

something like that. It's just the one that's perhaps going to be a little bit more pushy and a bit more bold. Personally, I love those species because it means you have to be really sharp and on your game. But definitely not the one you want to be around if you're floating around 900 other people in blood and vomit and human waste. That's kind of a scary shark to have. You'd want to be by whale sharks. That would be a lovely experience. All right. So the thing just to add, I think with the Oceanic White Tip especially,

especially as we're kind of looking back in time a little bit with how many sharks there might have been around and things like that, is just how fast this particular species has disappeared. And there's really interesting visual representation on that because there's a movie that Ron and Valerie Taylor did in the early 70s called Blue Water White Death, which is like the original shark document. entry the first time people went swimming with these animals without a cage and they're surrounded

in South Africa by oceanic white tips. Now you couldn't see an oceanic white tip in South Africa. Like it's literally in that period of time when they when they've disappeared from that area. In fact, in some parts of the world it's 98% decline from the species, which is quite incredible. Yeah. And I guess, you know, with the finning industry, this is an animal that has large fins. so I'm sure it's targeted by some of those boats. And then also these pelagic sharks, I think, are especially susceptible to some of the fishing techniques that they're using to catch sharks. So that makes a lot of sense. As far as behavior goes, I know you wanted to mention that just contact with humans throughout their life can also be a factor in these sort of things.

Yeah, completely. I've spent lots and lots of time with an oceanic black tip species in. South Africa and they're kind of like black tip sharks that you find on the reef but slightly different in that they're the ones that are traveling in the ocean they're kind of similar I guess to oceanic white tips in that regard and there's places in South Africa where you can dive with them pretty regularly and they're really used to divers an amazing dive site called Allowol Shole which I've spent a lot of time time diving there and they're really used to divers so they know what the

deal is they know what the baited situation is like they know the divers are just there to just kind of swim around and they don't really they don't really pay any attention to them and then interestingly I was on a film shoot filming a shipwreck in Dubai in April and it took a long time for us to see our first shark even though we knew they were there because we had seen them on the drone and it's because they had never seen people it's not normal for divers to go out that far we were quite far offshore and so they were behaving in a completely different way exactly the same species, but not coming close to us. And then every now and again, when you'd be doing your five meter safety stop, you would turn around and there'd be one like right behind you.

And it's just their way of like, like we said before, that way of, I'm not sure what you are, but I need to go and check it out just in case it's worth it. And again, that's the pelagic behavior of this kind of species of shark. It is impressive with sharks when you're diving. Because like the ocean's just so open and you have like such a like 360 degree view. And then they can still like sneak up behind you. Oh yeah. So like easily. And it's just like how are you just like right next to me without me noticing?

Some species are really good at it. That's actually something we've brought up a couple of times. And maybe I just haven't been listening very carefully. Sorry, Wes. Okay. But the fact that these sharks, they have such an extraordinary sense of. smell or just detection of things that are also in the water. Do you have data that shows like, I know for the USS Indianapolis, it's a little exceptional circumstances, but like how far are

you expecting these sharks to be able to sense and then approach these people that are in the water? Is it miles or? Probably. Yeah. It depends on what senses they're going to be using. I mean, I was having this conversation with someone yesterday. We talk a lot about the whole one drop of blood in the Olympic size swimming pool kind of stats. But that gets, it's a little bit more complicated than that because it depends on what blood it is. Sharks aren't tuned in to focus on human blood, for example. In fact, they couldn't care less about our blood.

Oh, okay. I've done tests with people who are deliberately making themselves bleed underwater and they couldn't care less about this person. But what I will say is, I think we often overlook the sound. Like, their hearing is incredible. and they're probably hearing the sounds of splashing. They're picking up on the vibrations in the water as well, but I would say the sound is usually the thing that they'll pick up on from great distances.

When you've been in the water, anyone that's been scuba diving, you'll know how far sound travels underwater. Like you can be hearing whales a mile away type thing, several miles away. So they will be picking up a lot on the sound and the vibrations, the splashing, And then, yeah, just that they'll be smelling it. Like, it's not like they're completely oblivious to it.

They'll be smelling it, but they won't be registering. Oh, look, there's a feeding opportunity. It'll be, oh, I'm not really sure what that is. Maybe it's worth going and having a look. Maybe there aren't enough data points on this either to give a clear answer, but would an explosion of a torpedo on a ship? Would that attract sharks, or would that be kind of a frightening sensation to them? That's a good question.

There's probably only one way to test that, Mike. Yeah, it probably does a bit of both. Anything in the immediate area might get a little bit spooked and try and get away. But yeah, that shockway is going to travel quite far and they'll definitely be picking up on that. And this story seemed to eventually have brought some shots in. Yeah, the one test we can rely on. We mentioned that these big cruisers like this, they're dumping lots of food, they're dumping human waste. So they probably just kind of have a train of sharks behind them anyway that are somewhat interested in what they might be.

And then, yeah, I'm sure kind of what you said, Dan, like these really loud noises probably scared off some of those immediate vicinity sharks. But the ones further away might have been like, oh, what was that sound? Was that a whale that just died? Was that, you know, who knows? Yeah. It's not fun. I don't mean to laugh. That's not.

Yeah. Following boats is something we know oceanic white tips will do. And there is a study, I think there was an oceanic white tip that was following a fishing trawler for like 48 hours, something crazy like that. So if they think there's an opportunity there, they will stick it out. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And then I think one other thing that I kind of just wanted to clarify that you mentioned is, as these men are floating in the water, I think what we're going to see in episode two a bit more of what I know we're going to see is that the sharks at the beginning are just kind of curious.

but the more time you spend in that water, the more time you're sitting there, the more comfortable those sharks are going to be getting closer and closer. And then after a while, they might start doing these exploratory bites. And then they realize, okay, this is actually something that I can eat. And that's when things get pretty terrifying for these men. Yeah, for sure. And of course, a lot of them are going to be injured already because of the torpedo and the boat. and a lot of them are going to be in a pretty bad way,

so it's worth going and having a look for these animals, yeah. Yeah. Well, Jeff and Mike, I wanted to ask you guys, what would you do? What would Jeff and Mike do? You've just been torpedoed. You jumped off this boat, and you're in the water. What are you doing? I mean, you can't let him sneak up behind you.

Okay. So I'll be spinning. You're just spinning back and forth the whole time. Yeah. Like, I think, W. UWE sting whenever he sneaks up behind someone, like, they're done. Yeah. So you just need to watch you back.

That's all you're focused on. Splashing around a lot, just going back and forth. Yeah. Great tactic. Mike. I'm doing the Titanic move where I hog a whole flotation device to myself and no one else is allowed to get on. That's good. Stay out of water.

Yeah. I would work. See? It's a good move. Dan, so now I want to ask you, you know, God forbid you find yourself adrift in tropical water. You know, there's all this stuff in the water with you. What is like the best case or kind of what's the best thing a person can do to avoid getting bit in this kind of? Yeah, I mean, and that's a very extreme scenario, of course.

But typically when we're talking about shark bite prevention, the things that I would normally say to people is usually sharks are ambush predators. so if they think they've been seen typically they won't really won't do too much so yeah Jeff you're all good and and also when you're if you're being squared up to by a shark the thing that they're going to be looking for is

is this an opportunity that I can take full advantage of and not get damaged myself like not get injured myself like there's a reason great white sharks breach on seals and not just swim up them slowly is because seals fight back and they can't risk any injury to themselves. So if you are being squared up to by a shark, the one thing you want to try and do is convince it that you are not its food. And it's quite simple kind of saying that, but what most of the

time a shark's food does is it swims away. So if you don't do that, then it has to rethink a little bit about what you are. In fact, I know some of my close friends who swim with things like white sharks, tigers. If they want to keep the shark around, they'll swim towards it and the shark actually kind of has to rethink oh this is definitely not what i thought it was so i'm now going to have to reprocess my relationship with whatever this animal is maybe they'll just swim away and kind of lose interest and so yeah well that's true with like land predators a lot of the time exactly you know like it just throws like they have to kind of be like wait a second you're supposed to be yeah yeah scared to get away from me yeah absolutely we start losing

self-esteem and kind of mentally trying for them. Talk to someone. Yeah, therapy. And I know we've talked about this a bit with our other sharks, and I want to take the advantage of having someone that knows so much about them on the show. But one thing that I've told people in the past is if you can get anything between you and the shark. So if you have anything long that you can kind of have in between you and the shark, you

don't necessarily want to like poke it with it and antagonize it, but just having that kind of separation built in between you and the animal is also something that can be pretty effective. Yeah. For scuba divers, there's a common one, which is they say, give it the tank. So if something's coming up, that'd be quite quickly, you can spin around and then it's going to hit the tank and, yeah, there you go. Jeff, you're all over it. I typically, typically have a large camera in my hands. So that's my barrier, which makes things a little bit easier. Get a good shot, hopefully. But yeah, that's also true because they'll do a lot of, especially like the phallagic species, the faster ones like we're talking about the white tips, the black tips. They all often dummy charge.

Like they will come at you at a pace just to see again how you react. If you freak out and start splashing around and swim backwards, then they might be much more interested in. But if you hold your ground, even start swimming towards them, it's amazing how quickly they'll cancel their dummy charge. Like Jean-Claude Van Damme in Bloodsport when he cuts his hat off and doesn't even flinch. And he's like, oh, this guy, he's got. Exactly the same as that. He's got potential. We were all thinking it.

Yeah. One thing we talk a lot about on our show, like, we try not to sensationalize or vilify these sharks. Shark encounters and attacks that end fatally are exceedingly rare. But have you ever had a close encounter yourself or a brush with a shark that ever was even close to like you being concerned? I've never had a moment with a shark where I felt like this is going south, but I've definitely been in situations, conditions, environments where it's been really sketchy,

but that's usually not really the shark's problem. So, no, I have a few friends who are scientists that have been bitten like here and there, but always doing their scientific research, not because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time type thing. Yeah, I've been bumped hundreds of times by sharks in low visibility from all sorts of directions, but I've never felt that there's been any risk in that way. Is it just a question of being in the water at the wrong time, like during maybe a feeding frenzy or some kind of compromising situation?

Yeah, for sure. Okay. I think, I mean, so the one of the species I've worked the most with is the Great White. That was my first shark I worked with in South Africa, and you hear a lot of things going on around that area over the last, over the years. The way I like to put it is there's not really such thing as a dangerous shark, just dangerous situations, and that's usually your fault. So people do, well, before they closed Guadalupe down,

people do swim with great white sharks without a cage in beautiful clear water where the shark can see you a mile off and see exactly what you are, or more specifically what you're not, which is you're not a seal. And then the shark's behaviour towards you is going to be very different. Whereas if you take the same species in South Africa, where you're swimming around a seal colony at dawn, where the water is murky, the light is low and you're making lots of splashing on the surface,

not on the same eye line, then that's a much more dangerous situation, and that's because that's the context in which they hunt. So, yeah, there's definitely a lot of behaviors that you can look at with a lot of big predatory sharks that you can kind of identify why it might be a dangerous situation or not. Interesting. Great. So now, you know, we're going to talk a lot more

about the Indianapolis next episode and the third episode, but I did want to get into, Mike, did you have something else before we, okay. I had something on Mike's, what would you do? Okay. Okay. With like the Titanic. So you said there's a few life drafts, right, Wes? Yes, they do have some life rafts.

But I'm going to explain exactly what they look like. They're not what you're picturing probably. Well, I'm just wondering in Titanic is like women and children first, but in World War II is primarily men on that boat, right? Yeah, just men. Yep. So then did any of them, were any of them allowed on the life rats? They all were holding it.

You mean they were all just waiting for women to board? In case the woman showed up, they left them open. I do the Billy Zane thing and grab, like, one of the small soldiers and be like, I'm a child. Everyone's just like, where'd that kid come from? I was like, that's where my thought started was like, you got to grab a kid to get on the lifeboat. But I'm like, oh, they can't do that. Yeah.

But then I was like, oh, but they don't even have to wait for like other people to get on first. Right. Yeah. There's a free for all. All right. We'll get into that, though. That's a good. Good line of front now.

There was kind of a hierarchy with these rafts. But yeah, anyway, what I was saying is we've talked, we're going to talk a lot about Indianapolis. But I did want to take advantage. of having you on the show, Dan, and talk a little bit about some of your more recent work, specifically all the sharks, which I just want to say really quickly, I really enjoyed because I think often with these shark programs, we see, you know, Great Whites, tigers, kind of, you know, the usual customers with the typical kind of storyline. And something I really liked about all the sharks was this focus on finding lesser-known

shark species and race species. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, and it really kind of accentuates just the variety of species within this order of fish. And yeah, so I really enjoyed it. I thought it was very educational. I thought it painted sharks in a really good light. It shows people just out swimming with tons of tiger sharks that are, you know, relatively unconcerned because they, again, know, know their behavior and know how to, you know, act around them. So my first question for you was, what are your?

your top three species of shark that you haven't seen that you really want to see. So in if we were doing a hypothetical all the shark right now, all the sharks, these would be your highest value sharks in your life. Interesting. The one I've not managed to see yet that I really, really want to is a miko. Oh, cool.

I've done a few dives where they do sometimes turn up and they haven't. So that would definitely be one. and then I think just go rogue and say something like a six-skill shark which is like a deep sea species that you find in a lot of places I actually was on a project I just came back yesterday in the Mediterranean where they're filming six skills on deep-sea brubs which are cameras that you put down on the sea floor and kind of just wait and see what happens and last year was the first time they've ever filmed one alive in the in that part of the Mediterranean which was really cool to see it. How many points do you think it'd be worth? Oh man, it'll be off the scale.

So just for anyone wondering, if you don't know, all the sharks, it's kind of like Pokemon Snap, where you go and try to take pictures of sharks. Good way of describing it. A certain amount of points for how rare a shark is in those particular waters. So it's genius to me. I thought it was such like a, such a good conceit for a show. Yeah, it's from the very beginning, like when we were first getting involved in the pre-production stuff, the thing they wanted to avoid was the sensationalism around seeing sharks, which I think they have held true to really, really well. And that was a really important aspect of me being involved in it as well. And now you've got kind of audiences getting excited about seeing this like tiny little cat shark in South Africa that no one's ever going to make a documentary about because they're not that interesting except for now because they're worth points.

Yeah. So the concept is a clever one. Yeah. And yeah, and we saw some species that we probably weren't expecting to. We missed out on seeing species that we were perhaps expecting to see in certain places as well. I'm trying like really hard not to give anything away for anyone that hasn't seen it yet. Yes, there's obviously a lot going on in the trailers and things. Wait, I have a question about the show.

I don't mean to derail the question, but... I go for it. So how do you guys... How's the audio work when you're like scuba diving? Did I explain that? Like how? Yeah, we're wearing full face masks. So you're able to talk to each other?

We can talk to each other, yeah. Sarah, my dive buddy, she's, she likes to talk slightly more than I do. So I would say I was listening more underwater. But yeah, so you do have the ability to communicate and kind of you still have to work within the parameters of scuba diving. You still have to be close to each other and kind of do all those kind of, uh, the things that you normally do when you're scuba diving, but you do have the chance to talk to each other. And the boat can hear you as well.

And they can talk to you if they want to, but usually they just leave us to it. Okay. Yeah, so, but typically we'd try and formulate our plan before we were getting in the water. They basically left all of that up to each team. So we have our own boat. We have our own skipper.

And they basically say, here's the area that we're going to be working in. You have two days. See you later. And it's completely up to us how long we spend in each place, how many times we dive there. We had to do our research, like, what species are we likely to find here and like what depths are we looking at and that, all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, it was all on us to try and find some of these species.

That's great. So you've said short finn maco or maco shark. Yeah, Miko. Sixgill. And then what's your third? It will be amazing to see a Greenland shark. Oh, yeah. That's another great.

They're just like otherworldly. Yeah, that's a million point. shark there too. Yeah. But actually another one that's just come to mind. I have seen them, so I guess it doesn't count, but only very briefly in Scotland is a basking shark, but more specifically in Ireland at the end of summer, it's only recently been kind of documented properly using drones, is you get hundreds of basking sharks all spiraling in this incredible courtship behaviour, which it seems to be island is like the best place in the world all of a sudden to see that, which is really cool. Cool.

Amazing. Mike and Jeff, I want to ask you guys the same question. Your top three kind of high-d-d-d-new sharks. I want to get in that courting circle, too. Maybe join the fun, you know. Greenland was the first shark that came to mind for me. We did see Great Whites. If there was some way we were in a cage, we went cage diving in Australia.

Maybe I'm cheating again. But if we could be outside of a cage and see them, I think that takes that experience to another level even. So Greenland, Great White, and I like those Threshers. You got, well, I don't want to spoil anything again, but Thresher Sharks for sure is my number three. Yeah, I'd probably Tiger Oceanic White Tip. I especially like those two in like the context of the show where, and as Dan was telling us earlier, like they have a lot of confidence and they'll like get up to you. So I like the idea of seeing like a big shark up close. You know, I haven't seen a lot of sharks.

I'll just do basics. I'll go bull shark for my third. All right. Yeah, I think for me, I've yet to see a tiger shark in the water. So I'd love to see a tiger. Oceanic White Tip. And then one that Dan works with quite a bit, blue shark. I really want to see a blue shark.

I just think, I think I always just assumed they were named blue shark just out of like convenience. But then I've seen some photos where I'm like, wow, this is a really blue. Yeah. They're really blue. Yeah. Like electrical blue. I'm looking at a picture right now. That's incredible.

They're gorgeous. It's fast become, I think, probably my second favorite species after the Great White because of how much time I'm spending with them and literally taking people who have never seen sharks before in the water with them. And they're probably like, I think they're the coolest shark. If you've never seen a shark, they're probably the coolest one to see because they're so curious. They're so inquisitive.

They look beautiful. Yeah, it's a phenomenal species. Cool. Do you have a favorite moment from the show from all? the sharks like a moment that really stood out for you? It was really special being back in South Africa because that's where I used to live where I worked with the Great Whites for so long. So just being able to be back and see some of these small species again was really amazing. But I would say probably seeing the epileps sharks in Australia on Heron Island. I've known of this

species like since I was a kid. I never thought I would see one in real life until that moment. And we saw eight in one night. They're just phenomenal. Like they're not much to look at when you just kind of see them at first glance. They're not very big. And then when you start seeing them walking, it's unbelievable. Yeah. It's a species that can literally crawl out of rock pools over the coral reef and into another rock pool at low tide.

It's phenomenal. How? Because you obviously have a big passion for diving. So like how much to. the competition aspect of the show start to like, what was the balance of like wanting to get points or just like wanting to see cool sharks? It was so hard. It was so hard. Yeah.

I mean, I won't give away too much about like locations that we're in and stuff. But the idea of leaving a location that I've dreamt about as a kid to go somewhere else because there might be more points is ludicrous to me. I like that you kept that mind frame. Yeah, but what I will say is Sarah was really good at that. Like she almost completely disconnected from the emotion of being in these amazing places. And it was like, no, no, no, we need to get the points. Even if it's just this tiny little... Well, even in the first episode, I saw that with you guys where you were like, no, I want to go out deep.

And she's like, I don't think... Yeah, that happened a lot. West would only care about the points. He'd be like, he'd be opening the air on other people's boats so they couldn't go down. I'm taking pictures of the same shark like eight times. But yeah, you literally do see that in a few episodes, especially the ones towards the back end of the series where Sarah is kind of like trying to convince me to leave this incredibly magical place

just because there might be more points available somewhere else. Yeah, and I'm like, it's all quick in the edit, of course, but that process for me was sometimes a few hours. It's like, I need to think about this. Yeah. There was a moment where someone got a picture, they thought they saw a shark and it ended up being a turtle and they were really disappointed. And I was like, well, I mean, it's still pretty cool.

I'd still and just take a pick. Yeah. But that's the crazy thing is suddenly these sharks aren't just, wow, you're seeing a shark. Now they've got points attached to them. So you're literally pushing turtles out the way left and right because they're not worth anything to you. And other species as well. Like we saw whales in most of the places that we went to. And normally that's a, wow, that's an incredible thing.

Now, no, they're not worth points. That's great. Yeah, so I also just wanted to ask you kind of, you know, obviously after being involved with this kind of show, I'm sure as someone who loves sharks at the level that you do, you have to be kind of picky about what types of productions you want to be involved with because you don't want to be part of one that's going to paint them in a negative light. So I want you to kind of explain what you like so much about all the sharks, like what you see is the main benefit of a show like this. Yeah, I think they've taken the drama away from the sharks and put it on the competition. So what I really like is there is still drama, but it's nothing to do with the fact that you're in the water with a shark. And as we've already mentioned some of these species, like we saw bulls, we saw tigers, we saw some really big sharks.

But it was never a moment of this is a really dangerous situation for us. It's a, wow, this is an amazing species. This is how many points it's worth. and now let's talk a little bit more about how this species survives and adapts to the place that it lives in. Yeah, I think we all know Shark Week does what it does and that's kind of what works for them. Most people probably watch Shark Week and know that it's not actually as dramatic as they're making out, but you've got to get ratings. So we totally understand that.

But I think, yeah, it is really cool to see that there is the chance to do shark shows that take away that sensationalist. style away from just the fact that you're swimming with sharks and actually make it something really cool like seeing sharks that we're not used to seeing cool yeah i think that's what i loved about it i know mike and jeff really liked it too i think you know if they want a what was what was your favorite species my favorite species from the show i just like him so much so the great hammerheads in bimini i've seen them there and um i know it's like at the right time of year it's pretty much a guaranteed sighting there, but still, they're just such a, that huge dorsal fin, and I just love them. So the Thresher too, I know I don't want to spoil anything again,

but that was pretty cool. That thing haunts my dreams. Yeah, I bet. I love that moment. It's the moment I was like, all right, I'm in. Just taunting you. Yeah, yeah. But that's another, that's another amazing demonstration of knowing your species and knowing your location, because where that happened, and I won't explain completely what it is, is so close to the island, and yet that depth is where you're seeing threshers. So just knowing that that's the likely place that threshers are going to be because of the kind of depths that they swim at is like, yeah, it's all, again, really important part of it. Yeah.

Well, tell the producers that there should be a tooth and claw team for season two. Oh, yeah. We'll put that forward. Well, I think, I mean, this concept could work with all kinds of things. Like imagine all the bears. Yeah. There's a good point. There's a couple that would be very high points.

But yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that is a good concept. Yeah. Not koalas. All right. Well, the final question I had for you, and I know you're very passionate about sharks, about shark conservation. I just kind of wanted to ask you, what would you want tooth and claw listeners to know about sharks in general?

If you could give them one message about sharks, what would have? be. Yeah, I think, I mean, the main things you guys actually, you cover really, really well in your in your episodes is that these aren't animals that we need to be particularly worried about when you're swimming around in the water. What is amazing to me now that everyone has drones is we see all the times that sharks are literally swimming underneath surfers, people swimming and do absolutely nothing. Like, they are around us far more than we think they are, especially white sharks. Yeah. Especially white sharks, yeah. And they really couldn't care less. sharks are really not interested in us.

And then the important part, of course, to know is that they really need our help. White sharks are very frequently missing in South Africa. We talked about also the oceanic white tips down by 98% in certain parts of the world. The blue sharks I'm taking people swimming with tomorrow off the coast of Wales is the most overfished shark on the planet. These animals are really needing our help. And yeah, that's a big struggle. And that's one that I talk to people about most of the most. days is how do you actually help a species like that? Just knowing where your food comes from

is often one that is a good one. But yeah, for me, it's the most fascinating animal on the planet. It's one of the most mysterious. It's one of the most misunderstood. And it is absolutely the most beautiful. Yeah, we elect Jeff President. That's how we help them. Yeah. That's my whole platform. You get my vote. It's just sharks. Yeah. I liked what you said about, you know, Good seafood choices. But I just also want to say, I think what you're doing with programs like this or the other educational stuff you're doing is a big step forward too because I think, you know, when

dolphins are being slaughtered or whales are being slaughtered, people are up in arms because these are animals that they love and feel a connection to. And I think it's taken a while for people to build that same kind of relationship with sharks, but I do think it's happening. And as that happens, I do think we'll see people be much more kind of in, involved and upset with what's currently going on with sharks. So, yeah,

kudos to you for, for pushing that forward. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Quickly, we're going to give Oceanic White Tips, our claw rating,

being this is our first episode of this series with them. We have done them before, but yeah. Dan, how often do you listen to tooth and claw? Are you, like, pretty regularly listening? I actually started listening to you guys quite a long time ago.

Cool. All right. So you know all about our ratings and everything. Perfect. You guys would send me to sleep in a good way. All right. I'll go first. Everyone knows that this is probably expected for me.

This is a 10-cloth animal. One of my favorite shark species. So it's an automatic 10-claw for me. This is, I'm a little more precious with handing out tens. All sharks are going to be at least a 9. I think this is a 9-claw shark. Absolutely amazing, though. I love sharks. I always will. And yeah, again, nothing personal all you sharks out there. Nine's a good. That's a good. Yeah, it's a good rating. Yeah, especially for you.

I'm pretty sure we did rate them. We did. Yeah. Yeah. Mine's a eight, but it's just because I haven't seen them. And I honestly, like, photos of them are great, but I feel like they're a shark you have to experience to really gain the appreciation for them. Like, not. that you can't appreciate them without seeing them, but just like, to get them to that 10 out of 10. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Understandable. Mine's clearly going to be a 10.

Right. But I do agree with you, Jeff. I do agree with you because, yeah, sometimes you can't really fully appreciate it until it's looking you straight in the face. I have a feeling any shark, it'd be hard to get, Dan, to get below a nine. Maybe. What would you rate? What would you rate a nurse shark? Yeah, maybe 8.9 maybe.

All right. White tip reef shark, probably around there too. They were one of my favorites, actually. Yeah. If I think of one that's less than the nine, I'll let you guys know. All right. Okay. Perfect.

Well, thank you, Dan, for joining us. This was really fun. And again, if you want to see Dan on Netflix right now, go watch all the sharks. And you do want to see Dan. Yeah, you do. Yeah, star of the show, in my opinion. Thanks again, Dan, and everyone will be back soon with part two of the USS Indianapolis story. It is, without a doubt, one of the more harrowing four days I've ever heard of anywhere in history.

So it's going to be a pretty crazy story. Buckle up. And that'll be coming out next week. Thanks, Dan. All right. We'll see you guys. Thanks, guys. See you.