Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - The Worst Shark Attack in History, the USS Indianapolis Disaster - Part 2: The Ordeal
Episode Date: July 28, 2025After a torpedo sinks their ship, the surviving sailors of the USS Indianapolis now find themselves lost at sea and surrounded by sharks. With seemingly everything now working against them, a long fig...ht to survive now begins. Watch here: https://youtu.be/Z5F3w56-ntg Smalls: For a limited time only, get 60% off your first order PLUS free shipping when you head to https://smalls.com/tooth Cornbread Hemp: Get 30% off at http://cornbreadhemp.com/tooth and use code TOOTH Graza Olive Oil: Add Graza Olive Oil to your summertime patio party arsenal. Visit https://graza.co/TOOTH and use promo code TOOTH today for 10% off of the TRIO! Miracle Brand: ABOVE THE FOLD: “Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://trymiracle.com/TOOTH and use the code TOOTH to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF ~~ 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
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Hello everyone. Welcome back to Tooth and Claw Podcast.
If this is your first time ever listening to us, stop.
Stop right now.
Turn your phone off.
Listen to what we're about to say, yeah.
Yeah.
Turn it back on.
Go back, listen to episode one.
Now turn it off.
Short introduction with Tooth and Claw Podcast.
Two of us really love animals.
All three of us love sharks.
That's true.
Yeah.
Let's go with that.
I'm a wildlife biologist.
Jeff helped me on my Black Bear Project.
Yes.
And yeah, we talked about animal attacks.
We're really...
The Black Bear Project, we learned a lot about sharks, too.
Did?
I guess not.
I mean, we need just black bears.
Anyway, we're all here together in Montana, so recording in my parents' basement, which is kind of fun.
Yeah.
We're having great time.
Did you guys see that tree on the way up?
No, we took the other way.
No, the Dr. Sue's tree.
Oh, yeah.
No, just that one tree that you pointed out that once.
That was such a nice tree.
The Lorax would agree with me.
That was the first time I ever really met you was on that trip.
He's talking about when you just pointed at a forest.
You just pointed at a random tree and you were like to see that tree.
Yeah, the doctor's, the Lorax is going to be into that tree.
All right.
Just like me.
Okay.
Yeah, that was 2012.
And that was, I feel like I'd met you a few times, but that was the first time we really hung out.
Yeah.
You weren't really good.
in his humor for a bit on that too.
That one took me a second.
What treat?
Well, that was around when Mike would just send me photos of like ugly rocks in rivers and
be like, dude, Colorado is so much prettier than Montana.
Yeah.
I think a lot of our listeners are still trying to figure that sense of you.
Anyway.
Well, yeah, this is part two.
It is a series of three.
It's one that we've been asked to do for a very long time.
Part one was harrowing.
I almost got emotional a couple times
while we were talking about it.
And I think it's just because
when you read about this amount of mass suffering
for just like a week or two weeks straight,
this is all I've been reading about,
you just kind of start to feel like you were there,
even though I know I wasn't,
and I've never not stolen valor,
but like it's crazy how much this one has kind of gotten in my head.
You earned that valor, Wes.
Well, and like, part one was rough, so I'm just looking forward to like a nice pick me up for this.
Part two is not that.
The rescues on the way, I assume.
Sounds like a lot of people are about to get rescued.
Yeah.
Before we get into part two, I did want to do a quick correction corner.
In my notes last time, I had both Haynes and Heinz written down for the name of the doctor,
and I couldn't remember which one it was, so I went with Heinz.
I got it wrong.
Oh.
It was Haynes.
Yeah.
to Lewis Haynes. The other quick correction I had is in our sloth bear episode, I talked about
bears bread, which was that mixture that they made that they sometimes fed to their, their cubs.
I was talking to some of my sloth bear colleagues, and they were curious about that,
because apparently, like, they didn't really know about that, and I found it online, but I'm
going to put a big question mark on that one, just to go back. We're not sure if that's
a thing. We're going to look into it some more.
Mike, what do you choose to believe?
Bear bread? Yes or no?
I forget entirely what that was all about. Yes or no.
I'll say no. I would lean no at this point.
I'd lean pretty hard now. I'm a gambling, man.
Well, to start us off, I'm going to go back to the most famous
telling of this story ever, which was Quint and Jaws.
I'm going to read just a little bit of his monologue, and it's going to give you guys a
You're reading it. I'm going to read it.
I'm going to try and kind of do it a little.
little bit like him but it's gonna be hard.
Very first light chief, sharks come cruising.
So we formed ourselves into tight groups.
It was kind of like old squares in the battle.
Like you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo.
And the idea was the shark comes to the nearest man.
And that man, he starts pounding and hollering and screaming.
And sometimes that shark he go away.
Sometimes he wouldn't go away.
Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you, right into your eyes.
You know the thing about a shark is he's got lifeless eyes, black eyes.
like a doll's eyes.
When he come at you,
doesn't seem to be living
until he bites you.
And then those black eyes
roll over white.
And then all you hear
that terrible high pitch screaming.
The ocean turns red
in spite of all the pounding
and the holler in.
They come in and they rip you to pieces.
All right.
That's what we're going to talk about today.
I will say this one,
that part of it
specifically I have a hard time with
because when you do get close to sharks,
they actually have really beautiful eyes.
Yeah.
You think so?
I do, yeah.
But they are pretty lifeless.
I don't think they're lifeless.
Like for fish?
How close are you getting?
Pretty close.
Like a lot of them look completely dark, but then when you get up close, you see, like, they're blue or they have like...
You're saying compared to other fish, their eyes are more full of life.
Yeah, I think so.
I would agree with that.
When we had the Great White swim close up to us in the cage, when they got really close, and forgive me if I'm anthropomorphizing here at all, I kind of sense to almost like,
higher intelligence.
Yeah, a real essence of life behind the eyeballs.
So Quint, we take issue with that.
That's all we're saying.
Right.
It was amazing.
He's the best, yeah.
I think it's, I think it works.
You think it's perfect?
I don't know of perfect.
What I'm saying, but.
It's pretty close to perfect.
There's a few things he gets wrong.
Like he said that there was 1,100 people on the boat, and there wasn't 1100, there was
1,200.
What do you say to that, Jeff?
A couple other things that he got a little bit wrong.
Well, I don't think there's 1,200 exactly.
It wasn't.
There was 1,190.
Yeah, so round down.
All right, fair enough.
Okay.
Where we left off, the Indianapolis had sunk, and roughly 300 men had died in the minutes
between the moment the torpedoes hit, and the ship disappeared beneath the water.
So for this next section, for part two, I really struggled with how to tell it,
because there are so many books with so many good stories about different people that were involved in the tragedy.
and I think we would have to do like a 10-part series
to really get into the dynamics of everyone that was involved
and to go over their individual accounts.
So what I settled on is kind of more just giving an overview
of what was happening in the water
and the different things that were kind of affecting these men
as they floated.
It's not so much going to be like a story following our characters.
It's going to be more like,
this is what was happening to these men
with some little vignettes throughout.
I mean, an alpha.
A male would have done the 10-partner.
Yeah, well, I guess I'm not an alpha then.
I do want to get into our sources again.
In harm's way, the sinking of the USS Indianapolis
and the extraordinary story of its survivors by Doug Stanton.
Indianapolis, the true story of the worst sea disaster in U.S. naval history
in the 50-year fight to exonerate an innocent man by Lynn Vincent and Sarah Vlatic.
And then left for dead, a young man's search for the justice for the U.S. Indianapolis.
And I forgot to say that author's name when I did that last week.
That author is Pete Nelson.
So I used all three of these books pretty extensively,
but then I also watched a lot of YouTube videos.
I listened to some other podcasts,
but these were my three main resources.
You think anyone's ever going to retell this story
and be like, I listen to podcasts and it's you?
Like you listen to other podcasts?
podcast to get your information?
Yeah.
Do you think someone's going to do that with this?
Probably.
At some point.
Less is like a tertiary source.
I feel like we've had people with like YouTube videos do that.
Yeah.
Sure.
That's kind of cool.
Yeah.
We're sources now.
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slash tooth all right so there's about 890 men that are left in the water but I think that something
a lot of people don't realize is just how spread out those men actually were because the Indianapolis
was still moving as she was sinking and these men are spread out over a distance of about two to three
miles. So right when they go in the water, they're already way spread out. It's dark when they
went in the water. Most of them are covered in oil, so you can't really even see faces or anything.
So it's really hard for them to find each other in the water. And a lot of the groups that we're
going to talk about, they kind of formed over time. But a lot of these men when they first went into
the water wondered if they were the only survivor of the ship, including the captain.
Oh, that's crazy. Because they were so spread out. Yeah. Whoa. Yeah. Over the next five days,
nearly five days that they would be adrift, they would spread out over a distance of more than 20 miles.
Five days is great. What? Yeah. So I think we tend to picture this as this big group of like 900 men.
It is a 20 mile stretch of 900 men. That's terrible. Yeah. Just to be isolated out there. Oh,
yeah. And they're being acted upon by something called the leeway effect, which is basically the
relationship between the exposed body surface, the ocean current, and the wind. So what it means is that men that
were floating and mostly underwater, like they just have life jackets, would be heavily influenced
by the ocean current and not as much by the wind. People in rafts were on top of floater nets
would catch more wind and less current. Because each group was affected differently by wind
and current, they continued spreading out from each other and it was thought that they drifted
about 24 miles per day. It's like those TikToks that just say physics and then show you a bunch
of clips of like different things. So that's...
It's just physics.
Yeah, exactly.
It is physics.
Something, just to, like, kind of paint more of a picture for you guys, though,
there were some really big groups.
Like, the group that Dr. Haynes was in was thought to have almost 400 men.
So this was, like, almost half of the men that went in the water were in that group.
There was another group that probably had over 200.
I don't want to be in the big group.
That's what you think.
But you actually might be wrong.
Yeah.
There's a lot of material that went into the water.
We mentioned that briefly.
So there's lots of flotsam.
And if there's flotsam, I bet you can guess what else is in there?
Jetsum.
Jetsum.
You nailed it.
Yeah.
Actually, I learned the difference between that.
Flotsam is stuff that comes off of a ship that's sinking,
and Jetsam is like purposely chucked off a ship.
Oh.
So like the rafts and stuff that they threw off would be considered Jetsam,
but everything that just kind of came off would be considered flotsam.
So the door in Titanic is Flotson.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
What about when Boba Fett follows the stuff out of the Death Star?
I think that would be Flotsam, unless they kicked it out on purpose.
Because it's like garbage.
Oh, then it'd be Jetson.
Okay.
This isn't that complicated.
No, you're right.
Okay.
All right.
I mentioned that 12 rafts had made it overboard, but not all of them had men in them yet.
And then a number of floater nets had made it over as well.
These floater nets are essentially just huge rope nets with big corks all over them.
so they float on the surface,
and it can hold up to 50 men on top of it.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
But then when you guys are picturing these rafts,
I want you to clear your mind when you're picturing a raft
because this is not the big kind of like zodiac polyurethane-looking raft
that you would picture.
They are these large balsa wood rectangles with a cargo net in the middle.
So it looks like big...
Oh, so like you're exposed to the water underneath.
It looks like...
a bunch of boxes with like canvas over them forming a rectangle and in the middle there's just a
cargo net and you would be in like a couple feet of water yeah that doesn't sound great and then some of
them would kind of break out and you'd be standing like five feet in like five feet of water so you're
still wet the entire time and if you're not five feet tall that's going to be problematic yeah
annoying yeah all right so captain mcvay like i mentioned was alone for a long time in the water
wait i have a question yeah uh is there still any threat from this
submarine? Yes, they were really worried about the submarine coming back and just opening fire on that.
Like, what can they do? They have a mountain machine gun that they could just put on top and just shoot everyone. Yeah. They were really worried about that. Yeah. The first few hours. In fact, they think they saw the submarine pop back up, but it went away. Really? Yeah. That's pretty like standard kind of thing in World War II is if you sank someone, you could then have like planes or submarine or whatever come in and just like. Do.
Strayf them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They were pretty worried about that.
Captain McVease alone for a long time, but then he finds two empty rafts and gradually
picks up around a dozen or so other sailors.
They were pretty lucky because the rafts had some provisions and some gear in them.
Some of these rafts had a little bit of fresh water in wooden casks.
I don't think his did, but some of the other ones did.
So basically, if you end up in a raft, you were very lucky.
Even though you're still in the water, you could dry out your life jacket.
you could put your body on top of these boxes
and there's often some provisions for these men.
The floater nets could fit a lot of men on top of them
but they were really ungainly.
If you put too many men, they would sink
and everyone would fall off and they'd have to pop back up.
Imagine being like the last one getting onto.
And everyone's like, sorry, you can't.
There's a lot of stories of that of people pulling rank
or people saying like no.
Or like pulling out a gun or a knife or whatever
and saying, like, you can't come on here.
The Billy Zane.
Yeah, it got a little crazy people trying to figure out, like, where to go.
But they slowly established these groups, lots of small groups, and a couple big ones.
The biggest one that I mentioned had roughly half the men in it, as well as Dr. Haynes and
Father Conley.
And that group was almost exclusively composed of men that were just floating in the water.
No rafts, no floater nets.
So about 400 men that were just floating.
Wow.
Yeah.
I would have thought the big group had some rafts.
and stuff. No. So Haynes told these men in this group what he told him to do and it worked really
well, I think, was to get in a big circle and get single file in the water and tie their life
jackets kind of to each other and then wrap your arms around the guy in front of you and lay
your head down on the guy behind you. And that way they could like keep somewhat warmer and
they could kind of float as a unit and that way everyone would kind of rely on each other to
stay afloat. That's like such a secondary danger compared to everything else that they
they're facing, but you get hypothermia real quick in water.
We're going to talk about that. Yeah. And not so much in this water, but like, what you just
mentioned is really important because you don't have this kind of ordeal with the Titanic
or the Lusitania because they all froze in like an hour, you know? So you don't have people
that are floating for days that need to be rescued. And with this, like, they're in 85 degree water.
So hypothermia is a real concern, but it was like very insidious and slow what it was doing to
them. We'll get into that. A lot of the men that were floating had no access whatsoever to any
provisions or fresh water during the entire ordeal, so almost five days. I read a story from one of
the survivors that talked about how the only fresh water he had the entire time was when a tiny
rain cloud passed over and he's able to catch some raindrops in his mouth and his hands.
But also he talked about how that cleaned some of the oil into his throat and it made him vomit
again and lose all that water anyway. So then there were lots of groups.
of just a dozen or a couple dozen men, and there are likely a fair amount of people that were
completely separated from everyone during this ordeal, but probably all of those solo people
died, and we're going to get into why that is. Basically, I'm just trying to set up the scene
for what's happening in the water. We have a couple really big groups, then lots of different
smaller groups that are spread out over a huge distance. About half of these men have life jackets,
and a large percentage of the men are simply floating in the water or treading water. The rest
either on floater nets or rafts,
and the experience in the next five days
was really terrible for all of these men,
but much worse for the men that were just floating
and didn't have any provisions.
Yeah, I'd be toast without like anything.
Yeah.
Like just treading water?
And they would just take life jackets off of dead people.
So I think over time,
a lot of these guys that didn't immediately drown
were able to get a life jacket,
but you had to go take it off of like a corpse.
Oh.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'd have no problem.
Neither would I.
You'd loot the dead like that?
Yeah.
I don't know if that's looting.
I think they would happily give you their land jacket.
Yeah.
So pretty much right after they entered the water, men started dying.
Many of them had terrible burns, broken limbs, broken backs, fractured skulls, lots of awful
injuries from the sinking, and they maybe swallowed too much oil, too, and vomited
until they passed out and sank.
A lot of them, they think, just bled out.
out from their injuries from the boat, but it's thought that like dozens, if not hundreds of
men died within the first hour or two of being in the water.
And then those corpses would actually, a lot of them, because they still had life jackets
and whatnot, would just float next to the living men throughout this entire ordeal.
Yeah.
So they were pretty much constantly surrounded by corpses.
I guess that like being in war too, there's like a lot of emphasis on getting bodies back
home to loved ones.
I guess that is a consideration in taking the life best off, of course.
Dr. Haynes was collecting dog tags for a really long time.
Yeah.
And then he had like a hundred of them.
And he couldn't hold him anymore.
They're too heavy, so he had to drop them all.
Oh, man.
Stanley Lipski was one of the men that would die during the first night in the water.
We talked about him in the first episode.
He was the gunner whose hands had burnt down to just his tendons and his eyes had
boiled in their sockets.
Oh, man.
I was hoping he died a while.
No.
So men were actually holding him.
him up out of the water and Dr. Haynes found him and he knew there was nothing he could do for him
and Lipski said, Lou, I'm dying. Tell my wife I love her and she should marry again. And then he
died not long after and they took his life jacket and let his body sink down into the depths. I just can't
imagine what that would be like a real conversation taking place like that. The doctor didn't marry
his wife, right? I don't think so. Because then it's like, I don't know if he really said that.
That's true
He's like, I promise everyone I told you
He's like, she said it
Don't let anyone marry my wife
He's like, what's that?
Like, what did she say?
What did he say specifically?
Like, I want you to marry my wife when you get home.
That's what I want most.
He gets there and she's like, did he have any last words?
Yes.
Like, well, he did.
It's a matter of fact.
I don't like this.
This is awkward.
All right, but the thing
I just want to include that story because that happened dozens of times that night.
Men saying goodbye to their friends.
Lots of like injured.
Yep.
Lots of injured men that.
That guy just married everyone's wives.
Simply gave up.
That didn't happen dozens of times.
But lots of people that would literally just like put their face down in the water and die
because they didn't want to feel any more pain.
So day one as the sun peaked over the horizon, it almost immediately became intolerably hot.
Temperatures would be in the low 80s during the night.
but during the day they're well over 100 degrees
or roughly 38 degrees Celsius
That'd be so hard to like not be able to get any type of shading
Yeah be awful
I mean all you can do is like continue to dip down under the water
But like I will say though that the oil that was covering a lot of these men
Was suddenly somewhat helpful because it served as a pretty
Actually getting I was wondering
Yeah as a pretty effective sunscreen
And the men that were covered in it were able to avoid some of the terrible sunburn
The other people got
And there were even men that would like re-apply it because they knew it was helping with the sun.
So if you forget your sunscreen, just get some oil out of your car.
Yeah, just go get some mortar oil and rub it all over your face.
Easy life hack.
Or if you're like at the Trinity test, just like, oh shoot, I forgot my sunscreen.
I'll just put some motor oil on my face.
It's like everyone has sunscreen and then just one guy in black face.
And while you bring up the Trinity test, there's something I, like,
myth I wanted to spell really quickly. And it's also, we got a lot of questions kind of about
the nuclear part of this. They had dropped off their, like, they were done. They had dropped
off the bomb components. They knew that the Indianapolis was like out of it. So I think often with
this story, we hear this narrative of like, oh, they were on a top secret mission and that's
why no one came to help them. That's not at all what it was. They, like they, their top secret
mission was over. No one came to help them because they got bungled up. Some,
of the, like on that first day while they're in the water, some of the men that had been in the
radio shack that had like tried sending out an SOS message were telling everyone around them,
listen, that message got out. We saw the needle move. They have a little needle that if the
message actually gets transmitted, the needle moves. And they all were like that needle moved.
And they knew that they didn't have time to confirm the message or wait for a reply.
But because it had gotten out, because there were so many different boats and operating bases
and everything that could have picked up their message,
they all just assumed that someone would come help them.
That people they reached out to didn't assume it was a prank.
Yeah.
Well, the crazy thing, too, is like...
They went out of business.
Not only had their message been received and filed away,
but Commander Hashimoto, the guy that sunk them,
had also reported to Japanese officials
that he sunk an enemy worship in that area,
and his message had been intercepted by U.S. codebreakers.
No way.
But they didn't have a record of any ship being in that area because it had kind of gotten bungled.
So when they intercepted that message, they thought that it was just the Japanese trying to draw rescue ships into the area so they could sink them.
Yeah, that's kind of a prank, I guess.
That's like a pretty deep prank.
Like, let's hope they intercept this message.
Hoping that, yeah.
Well, they knew this was something they would do.
And we would do, too, is like false messages because you know that codebreakers are listening.
And so they heard this and they looked and they saw, well, we didn't have a ship in that area.
So this is obviously just them trying to get us.
No wonder Mike Tyson like those messenger pigeons.
Yeah, seriously.
Yeah.
They never failed, right?
This is all to say.
Kurt on me, that one pigeon.
You did an episode on that.
Brave.
Must have failed at least once.
This is all to say that no rescue was being mounted for the men in the Indianapolis.
and no one on our side of the war
had any idea that their ship had been sunk.
You don't think the Japanese would start sending their own pigeons
with like fake notes?
They might.
Would they be like Japanese pigeons?
Would you be able to tell the difference?
I don't know.
The note was written in Japanese.
Oh, that's probably more of a giveaway.
Right.
So I just finished doing all the research
for a three-part series on the USS Indianapolis.
And to be honest with you,
it was a lot of work,
a lot of stress and it was kind of hard to let the story go and not think about it. And one thing that's
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As the men floated in the water that first day, they gradually cleared away from the biggest oil slick.
Some of them did, and as they did, they got much better visibility into the water bowl.
They could suddenly see more than 50 feet into beautiful crystalline water, and that gave them
a very clear view of the dozens, if not hundreds, of sharks that were now circling in
the water beneath the men.
All right, let's take a second to talk about these sharks before we keep going with their
stories.
We mentioned in part one and in our conversation with Dan that there were likely a number
of different species that were present as the men are floating in the water.
So we have oceanic white tips.
I think that's our number one offender here.
I shouldn't say offender.
I already take that back.
That's our number one shark that's probably attending this feast.
Tiger sharks, silky sharks, shortfin mako sharks, and blue sharks were all likely there.
You wouldn't necessarily expect a tiger shark to be there,
but some of the descriptions that the men had of one particular massive shark does make you think there was a tiger.
That's one of the first ones Dan assumed would be there too, because they,
he said they're like deep water sharks.
Yeah, they're coastal, but they do go out into plagic areas.
So, yeah.
But again, most of the attacks on the living men were likely done in large part by the
oceanic white tips and then maybe a few by tiger sharks.
These other sharks like the silks and the blue sharks, it's possible.
But we don't really know.
That's the thing.
Like what we know is that a lot of men that were bitten or saw people get attacked
said that they had a big white fin.
So that's why we kind of assume most of them were oceanic white tips.
What fin would that belong to?
What species of sharks?
The oceanic white tip.
But like are there any other sharks that match that description?
No, not that would be out there.
So there are other white tip sharks like the white tip reef sharks that we swam with in Galapagos and stuff.
Yeah.
But they're, they don't attack people.
And this is the only one that you would see that has the dorsal fin sticking out of the water with like a big white section on it.
Okay.
Yeah.
If it was a white-tip reef sharks, that's such a great frame job by them.
Yeah.
Like, everyone's going to think that's oceanic white tips, you know?
Well, do you think a shark would want the notoriety or would want to pass the buck?
Yeah, I don't know.
Well, I mean, what you're doing better right now?
The reef ones.
So I'd assume you'd want to pass the blame on.
There you go.
There's your answer left.
If you were just like a shark that always kind of wanted to bite a person.
Yeah.
And you never had the opportunity.
This would have been a good opportunity.
Yeah.
You could just go up and make a little bite and put it on one of your friends.
All you can eat buffet.
Yeah.
So there's a big range reported when it comes to how many people were killed by sharks from the Indianapolis.
And that number is probably somewhere between 30 men and 150 men.
Some of the groups that were floating in the water say they never saw a shark attack or even a shark.
Oh.
And some of the groups had pretty consistent attacks during...
really the whole ordeal.
And most, like, all, every single interview I watched with these men, and I watched a lot of them,
they all talked about sharks.
There wasn't any of the interviews that I watched where they're like, no, I didn't see a shark.
What group would you want to be in?
With the captain and the two.
Well, I'm saying, like, the groups that saw sharks or the groups of...
Oh, I'd want to see sharks.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Especially if you got on the, you get rescued and everyone's like, dude, how about those sharks?
We saw so many sharks.
I'd see a single shark.
They'd be so mad at me.
You'd do so good on that show on Netflix?
They'd be, all the other sailors would be so angry at me.
If I was like sad, I didn't see a shark.
They'd like, can we go back?
All right.
I hope a torpedo hits this boat.
Yeah, that's serious.
Rats.
All right, for us to understand why there are so many attacks, though,
we really need to understand the behavior.
of these open water pelagic sharks.
Oh, wow.
Specifically, the oceanic white tip.
Getting in the mind of a shark.
A little bit.
So pelagic, I keep saying that word, that really just means, like, deep open water.
So when you're, like, away from the coast and you're in deep water.
And basically, as we mentioned, these are sharks that exist in these large pelagic open areas of the ocean.
And these are essentially nutrient deserts.
There's not a lot of food for them.
We tend to think of the ocean from like a perspective of the coast, because that's where humans spend most of their time.
There's tons of fish.
There's these big continental shelves.
Seals.
There's reefs.
There's seals.
There's all sorts of stuff there.
A lot of life.
And when you get out in the open ocean, you can go a long time without seeing much.
Because of that, if an oceanic white tip or any other pelagic shark hears or smells something that could be potential prey, they're going to investigate it because they're not really.
sure when they're going to get another chance. And we talked about this a little bit in a recent
subscription episode, but sharks have this kind of like scale of senses that they use as they're detecting
prey, and they go from one to the other. And they do use them at the same time. But their longest range one,
and Dan mentioned this too, we tend to think of it as being smell, but it's actually probably hearing.
Like, they're probably going to hear things further away than they actually smell them. And so
the sinking of the Indianapolis would have made so much noise and splashing.
They don't even have like ears though.
They do.
They have an inner ear.
Inner ear?
Yeah.
That doesn't sound efficient.
It is efficient.
So what's our ears of it doing?
They also have a lateral line and their lateral line like if we can't look at hearing is just
from a human context like animals hear in different ways.
So like they pick up the tiniest little minute vibrations in the water through their lateral line.
And that's a part of their overall hearing system.
Yeah.
Okay.
So that's going to be their first thing.
They don't always count as hearing.
Maybe that's what that one chess player was doing with the vibrator.
He was just listening.
Yeah, I've always been wondering, like, how could he understand, like, what a vibration
is trying to tell him?
But that's like, you're listening to the vibrator.
Yeah.
It's telling you E5, Roke E5.
I think that would have that on this touch.
But anyway, so we have hearing and then we move on to scent.
They're going to pick up scent at a very long distance.
And then once they get closer, we have those other senses that we talk about quite a bit,
the ampuley of Lorenzini and their site.
Their site is probably like the next and then the ampulae of Lorenzini when they're really...
That's this spidey sense.
Yep.
And that's kind of how they really key in on exactly what they need to do at the very end.
So how much of a difference would it make for?
for them sensing these sailors if the sailors are in the oil water compared to in the clear water.
No difference.
No difference.
I don't think so.
Wow.
Yeah.
Because for me, it'd be easier to see the ones in the clear water.
Yeah, the oil is staying on top of the water, though.
So, like, that's not affecting the sharks at all.
The oil and water, you know, they don't mix.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So in 1945, we hadn't really killed huge number of sharks yet.
So oceanic white tips were really plentiful.
And Dan kind of talked about that last week.
This was probably like one of the most widespread and commonly encountered sharks in the world.
And definitely in the open ocean.
The noises and the smells from the sinking of the ship and this two mile long line of men leaking their body fluids into the water
would pretty much bring any oceanic white tip in a huge radius to the area.
I don't know exactly what that radius is, but pretty far.
I think within miles.
They're talking.
They're not talking.
Yeah.
And while these are bold sharks,
they would no doubt be a bit cautious
around a potential food source
that they don't totally recognize.
And that's why the sharks likely circled
and bumped for a very long time
before they finally started attacking.
And it's also probably why they went
for dead victims first.
And that's a side note I wanted to make.
Like if you bump and they don't react type of thing.
Yeah, exactly.
Just kind of those.
probably mostly it, just bumping and realizing.
And there's no, and there's no like electrical field like there is on living prey.
You think if they like just kept bumping you and not biting you, you'd kind of be like,
oh, they just want to be friends?
I'm sure some of these men probably thought that because they got bumped all the time.
Yeah.
And some of them didn't get bit.
But I don't think they thought they wanted to be friends.
Yeah.
No, my side note was that the sharks almost certainly fed much more on corpses than they did on the live victims.
I think most of the attacks that happened on the live victims probably happened due to the men like splashing or acting like prey or kind of drawing in the attention of the shark and making it click into that predator mode.
But they probably would have been pretty happy most of these sharks just eating corpses the whole time.
Yeah.
But like some of the behavior of the men probably drew them in to attack.
And probably a few men that handled it as well as you can still got attacked.
Totally. Totally.
Like once when we did the.
great white dive.
It kind of seemed after a little bit, like they were eating some tuna and stuff.
Yeah.
And after a little bit, it seemed like they were just going to bite anything in the water for a sec, you know?
Because they're just totally keyed in.
Yeah, they're like in eating mode.
Yep.
Basically, I just want to say all of this before we really get into the attacks because people need to understand.
These are just animals operating under the rules of their own natural history and their
environment.
pelagic sharks have to be inquisitive and they have to take advantage of any potential meals that is like what they have evolved to be and it this wasn't bloodthirsty predatory you know they are predatory but it wasn't like sharks that were hoping to finally get to eat people this was just an animal being an animal only need to be afraid of this if we're on a ship that gets sun right if you're floating in tropical waters for a long time you're
you should probably worry about the shark.
Otherwise, and you know, we're going to teach some of the stuff that you could do
to where you're going to be a lot safer than you would otherwise.
But, I mean, that's all just to say, like, I think if we were to pump the smell of Taco Bell
into Jeff's apartment for days and then put a big old plate of Taco Bell right in the middle
of his living room, you better believe our guy's eating that Taco Bell.
He's eating.
There's no way that last days.
Yeah.
I'll, like, bump into it.
See what it does.
He'll keep walking.
Checking it.
And we wouldn't blame him for it.
And that's, I mean, these sharks have been smelling all this crazy stuff for days.
And now they're seeing it in front of them.
A shark's going to shark.
Do you think sharks are similar to bears where something that's extremely calorie dense or like a candy or a sweet?
Are they going to be super into that?
Or are they strictly just trying to get meat?
I don't think they would be.
But I don't know.
Okay.
I don't know if they have like, if they.
They throughout their lives have the ability to encounter such a variety of food to where they would kind of know.
You know?
Yeah.
And I think bears are more intelligent, too.
Okay.
Yeah.
Oh.
All right.
On the evening of the first full day, Kazel Smith was laying on a floater net.
His hand was dangling in the water.
He'd been gripping a life jacket all night and he was finally getting used to the swells as they lifted and dropped the roughly 50 men on his net.
The constant up and down motion had led to a lot of not.
and many of the other men on the net had spent most of the day vomiting while being baked in the hot sun.
But now in the evening the temperatures were finally starting to drop a little,
and as Kozal Smith dipped his hand in the water, he noticed something concerning.
All day long he had watched as dozens, or even hundreds, of large sharks circled in the deep water,
far below their net.
And now as the sun was going down, they were suddenly much closer, within a few feet.
Oh, that would be like, if you're seeing a ton of sharks under you,
you and then like the sun goes down. Suddenly they're right there. And you can't like see down as far anymore.
That'd be scary. That could be. And we've always talked about sharks. When are the two times you don't
want to be in the water? Don and dusk. They're highly crepuscular. Oh yeah. There you go. So as he realized this,
he started to withdraw his hand from the water. But in that instant, a large oceanic white tip shark
shot through the water and bit into his left hand, ripping him off the net and pulling him under water.
No way.
His horrified fellow survivors watched as he was there one minute and then immediately gone.
He was pulled 10 feet underwater by the shark, which was now shaking its head back and forth,
trying to separate his hand from his body, and Smith suddenly realized that he was about to be
eaten alive underwater by a shark.
He held his breath and swung out with his right hand, doing his best to push and hit the shark
in an effort to discourage it, but it only intensified the resolve of the shark, and it
continued sawing its teeth back and forth on his hand,
which now only the bone was keeping it connected to his forearm.
But Smith's right hand suddenly caught at something softer
as he was like trying to hit the shark.
Then the rest of the shark,
pushed his middle finger in and felt it go deep into something soft.
He'd found the eye of the...
Oh, okay.
For a second.
For a second, I was like, whoa.
As I was reading that as, okay.
Yeah, he'd found the eye of the shark, and it released its grip and started thrashing around under water.
So he gets back to the surface, and he does his best to swim to the net with his mangled hand.
He's holding his left hand up with his right arm.
And the men on the raft saw the trail of blood he was leaving, and they wouldn't let him back on to the floater net.
What?
Because they were afraid that he was going to attract more sharks.
And if it was me, I would be like, like the hundred below us right now.
Yeah.
But his adrenaline was thumping.
and he pulled himself up onto the net,
even though the men were like kicking and hitting him
and trying to stop him.
And he landed flat in the middle of a bunch of these other men,
and then one of them pulled out a knife and tried to stab him to death.
So he decided to take his chances with the sharks
and jump back into the water.
Jeez.
This guy did end up surviving.
I did see a photo of him.
Oh, nice.
Yeah.
Did the stabber guy?
I don't know, probably not.
Because that guy's probably already losing his mind.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
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to cooking your next chef quality meal. In a nearby group that evening, one of the men watched
as a large shark shot straight up through the water column and attacked his friend right next to him.
The splash was so large that a small wave broke over him and he instinctively ducked and closed his eyes.
to shield them from the spray, and when he opened them back up, his friend was completely gone,
life jacket and all. In many of the groups, the shark attacks started at dawn on Tuesday.
Men that were on the edges of the group, or ones that decided to try and swim away from the
groups, were the first to be killed, and the other sailors huddled together and would hear
screams that they all said were unlike anything they'd ever heard in their entire life and
during their years of war. High-pitched, blood-curdling, unearthly screams of men being eaten alive,
by a wild animal.
Some of the groups would hear these screams for the rest of their days in the water,
and they'd be haunted by them for the rest of their lives.
One group watched as a man was attacked by a particularly large shark,
and he was dragged through the water like a big fish dragging a bobber.
He was pushed through the water at waist level while he screamed
and tried to push away the mouth of the large shark.
So just imagine that.
He is moving through the water with just his waist at water level,
and the sharks just pushing his torso
through the water as he's screaming.
Like trying to get started water skiing.
Yeah.
And I just, I think of that video from Egypt
that we saw the tiger shark eating the guy
and it kind of does that with him a little bit.
And that, just that like 10 second video
from like 100 yards away scarred me.
Yeah.
And these guys had to watch their friends
like being eaten by these sharks.
Yeah, from feet away.
And this guy's screaming
and then suddenly his screams are cut short
as the shark pulled him beneath the surface.
In Dr. Haynes' group,
there was a man who drift away from the group
and was starting to yell for help,
and they thought maybe he was starting to lose his mind a little.
So they sent one of the other men out to bring him back.
However, when that guy separated from the group,
a large dorsal fin almost immediately popped up behind him,
so he lost his nerve and went back to the floating group of men.
Then a few minutes later,
the man that was yelling out in the water
went silent when he was pulled underwater.
One man was sent out.
Pretty good idea to go back from.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that would make me go back.
They're still following orders at this point, too.
I know.
I know.
If there's a guy 100 yards out.
You guys are like leading and you got us in this mess.
Like maybe I don't need to listen to you anymore.
It definitely broke down in some of the groups, like the whole hierarchy and everything.
But one man was sent out by his group to retrieve a nearby floating crate of potatoes.
And he made it 60 yards when suddenly he started screaming at a group.
of sharks tore into him.
Geez.
Men would wake up to their shipmates being completely gone or missing a limb, and in the mornings
or evenings they would have to listen to the screams as shark took their friends and fellow
sailors, and all they could do was pull their legs up and hope they wouldn't be next.
One man named Buck Gibson woke up one morning on a floater net, and when he looked over
at the young sailor next to him, he saw that his leg had been severed and a large bone was
sticking out of it.
He tried to wake the boy, but he was dead.
One raft was being followed by a large tiger shark for days.
The men even named it Oscar, and then one of the boys decided to stab it with the homemade pocket knife.
He buried in an inch deep in the shark, and it just casually reacted and swam away.
One sailor...
At least got, like, a touch of damage back to the sharks, though.
It's true.
It's a fight now.
One point of damage dealt.
One sailor reported a floater net with 15 men on it was attacked by a group of sharks in a feeding frenzy.
and that all 15 men were killed by those sharks.
Wow.
In the raft?
On a floater net.
Some of these rafts, too, there were stories of them like coming up through the cargo
net on the floor.
Yeah, because they're like still in the water.
Yeah.
At one point, two friends were floating and one of the men no longer able to handle his thirst,
told his friend he was going to dive down and take a drink of the cooler water deeper down.
That's interesting strategy.
Yeah, there's kind of a delusion among a lot of these men once they started losing their minds,
that the colder water down deeper was actually fresh water.
So they would dive down and drink it.
Is there any difference in depth for saltiness?
No.
Like salt doesn't rise at all or anything.
Not anything significant.
His friend watched him swim down through the crystal clear water,
and then a shark came out of nowhere
and grabbed his friend and dragged him away while he struggled to escape.
I mean, that's probably actually good.
Better than drinking sea water.
He's about to drink sea water.
Just go insane from the salinity.
And we're going to talk about that.
Yeah.
Some men would go crazy or simply give up,
and they would swim away from the group and essentially commit suicide by shark.
And all too often, it went according to plan.
There's a few stories of that, of them just being like, I'm done,
and they just start swimming, and a shark comes in.
It's kind of messed up to make the sharks live with that, though.
Basically, the most horrific shit you can imagine just happening day after day,
and being forced to simply float in the water, in the dark,
and hope your turn isn't next after you've seen,
dozens of your friends get killed by sharks, it's just going to have like a huge effect on your
ability to keep it together mentally. And I think something that's important to talk about is for a lot
of these boys, sharks were just something they'd read about like once in a book, you know, like they
haven't seen tons of shark documentaries. They haven't seen jaws. Sharks were kind of just like a thing
that existed out in the world that they don't really, they hadn't really seen much of, you know.
And so they didn't really have any idea of how to react to these fish they were eating them alive.
So when they'd come in close, a lot of them would just like scream and splash to try and scare them away.
But really all that's doing is intensifying the shark thinking that it's down to prey.
Yeah.
Well, that's what prey does for shark.
Is it like splashes in the water column?
So for them it's like, okay, yeah, this is food.
I wouldn't move at all.
I like.
Well, actually, no, I'd move if they bum me.
The thing I just couldn't get over was thinking about how terrified you would be.
Like, you just, like, how could you ever not be afraid of the water after that?
You know, like, and I know a lot of the survivors never would go back near the ocean even.
Like, Quinn, he dealt with it by just killing sharks.
Yeah, that's true.
You can't blame them now.
Now that you know all about it, it's kind of like, all right, I get it.
I mean, we got the last laugh, humans on white tips.
Oh, Jesus, yeah.
Anyway, we'll get into that too.
Well, Brody's the one that killed the shark.
Like, what was his beef?
He just, yeah.
That little boy.
Brody doesn't like the ocean.
I mean, it wasn't his.
Sailors weren't queens.
You didn't know that for sure?
All right.
But when it came down to it,
the sharks likely killed far fewer people
than the rest of the dangers
that these men in the water faced.
Most of the deaths that occurred to the men
who successfully made it off of the ship and didn't die from their injuries during the sinking
were chalked up to exposure.
And exposure is just kind of a catch-all term for what the elements were doing to their bodies
as they floated in seawater and burning hot sun for five days.
Also, just like this is a little side note, some of them said that little fish would come up
and nip at their flesh and stuff too.
And because they'd been in the water so long, their flesh just kind of started like
pulling away from their bodies.
and some of them had like exposed finger bones and toe bones from little fish just
nipping out of them constantly.
But floating in salt water for that long is basically akin to taking a bath in acid because
the sodium in the water will slowly break down your skin and tissue.
So like being in salt water for five days is going to affect you about the same as being in like
sulfuric acid for a few seconds.
Like they both get really bad.
So much so that we're going to talk about some really terrible injuries that happen.
in part three when they're pulled out of the water.
But for now, we're going to run through what these men were experiencing.
We touched on this in episode one, but salt would be deposited on the skin when saltwater
evaporated in the heat, and then it would be ground into their skin through the constant
rubbing from life jackets or clothes or whatever else.
And this led to these huge open wounds or ulcers all over their skin that'd become infected
and they would scream out in pain every time they got splashed by saltwater.
It felt like acid hitting these.
ulcers. So they were just like constantly, you know, in pain from that. The sun was a huge
factor. Skin above the water would not only be hit by direct rays of the sun, but also the
rays reflecting off of the water. A lot of the men suffered second degree burns from their sun
and their exposed skin, their saltwater ulcers, and their lips and eyes all received serious sunburn.
Eyes. I'm glad you said that. That's perfect segue because that was the next thing I was going
to talk about and one of the hardest things to read about. The men were almost always eyes
level with the water and they got a ton of glare from the sun all day. None of them had
sunglasses or anything to protect their eyes from the water and for the sun. This led to sunburn
corneas and this thing called photophobia, which pretty much means any light exposure to the
cornea causes intense pain. So like for me, after I got LASIC, I had photophobia for like a little bit.
Sure. And any light just like really, really, really hurt. Did you have that at all? I did. Yeah, for
36 hours maybe.
You've watched a Lord of Ringsman.
Moments after. I only had it for like
two hours and some people have it for a really long time.
But I can't imagine
having that pain and then like
not having a way to stop it.
Yeah. Many men would cut makeshift blindfolds out of their
clothes or they'd place their socks over their eyes to try and block the sun.
But blindfolding yourself when there's sharks that are killing people all around you
led to some like pretty intense fears and panic.
I'm sure. Yeah, like, I mean, it doesn't really change the fact that the sharks are out there,
but not really being able to monitor your situation is another level to add on to that.
Yeah.
Hypothermia is also a huge issue.
Even though they're in 85 degree water and it was super hot during the day,
it would cool off quite a bit at night.
And 85 degree water is still much colder than the human body.
So it would still cause your core body temperature to drop.
many of the men would immediately begin shivering as soon as the sun went down.
And while it would take probably longer than five days to kill them from hypothermia in that warm of water,
it was causing some really big issues, like decreased mental function and it led to more dehydration.
Because when you're becoming really hypothermic, what your body does naturally is it diverts blood flow from your extremities toward your core.
and then because your body is suddenly like,
oh, there's a bunch of extra fluid in your core,
it makes you start peeing a lot.
No.
So even though they were completely dehydrated,
the hypothermia would make them have to pee like pretty constantly.
Yeah.
And there's also something called immersion diuresis,
which is what happens to you when you're scuba diving, actually.
And it's just the same thing,
like the pressure of the water causes blood to move inward.
and then your body again tells you,
oh, we need to get rid of this fluid,
so you're peeing a lot.
There it is.
When you scuba dive, you pee more than you typically would.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, I do.
But it's hard to pee.
It is hard to pee.
Because the pressure and it's cold.
Yeah.
And you got like suits on.
I have a hard time peeing and scuba diving.
Yeah.
It's a problem for me, actually.
Uh, there is it?
Yeah.
You just get what, like,
like, there's been dives that I've been on where I have to pee so bad.
But can't.
And so I have to, like, put my knees in the sand and, like,
think about peeing.
That's like Bear Grill's worst nightmare.
Yeah.
Yeah, I guess.
Why?
He's got to drink that pee, but he can't.
He wants to drink it.
He wouldn't be able to drink it scuba diving, though.
No.
See?
All right.
Double whammy for bear.
You think...
Poor guy.
I bet you you could.
Take the regulator out.
Maybe.
You'd get a lot of salt water.
Fill his oxygen tank full of urine instead of oxygen.
You think the pee would...
right into your mouth.
He just has like a, what are those called in backpacks?
A camelback full of urine.
Would the pee make it more or less salty?
You could drink your own pee, and we're going to talk about that.
But I'm saying all of this we're talking about.
Under the ocean.
Less.
Okay.
Yeah.
So like bear would want to put some element into his pee before he drinks it.
You could.
Because it's not got any like salt or electrolytes.
I don't know if it doesn't have any flavorless though.
I don't know if urine doesn't have any salt or electrolytes.
Yeah, he just wants it straight.
Yeah, pure.
Yeah, I agree.
Like seawater has much more than RP does, without a doubt.
Sure.
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Dehydration was really one of the biggest problems these men were experiencing.
I'm surprised anyone's living.
Well, some of them had provisions, but it seems like after two days you're done, right?
No, seven days, I think.
Oh, is that what it is?
Without water.
I've been misinformed.
I forget.
It might be five, actually.
Well, I mean, Jesus.
did 40.
40, but he was an exception.
Did he drink?
Was it just food or was it food and water?
40 days and 40 nights.
I don't know.
Are you looking at up?
Three to seven days without water.
No, look up.
I'm not looking up that.
I've always thought it was 48 hours without water in your toast.
But that's like this is a whole food pyramid thing.
But there are people that die after like three days.
Some of these men did have like a little bit of fresh water that like, like,
tided them over this four days, four and a half days. Some of them only got a little bit from the
cloud. And I do think water was probably the number one factor that would decide whether or not
you survived. Their mouths, so like just to describe kind of what this was like for them,
their mouths became unbearably dry, just felt like total cotton. Their saliva turned thick and bitter.
Their tongues would dry out and swell up and it felt like this thick, huge dry worm that was
blocking their airway.
I get that on Adra.
It's the worst.
Right.
It times that by 100.
A million times.
Yeah.
Like you have,
they had not a drop of moisture in their mouth.
So it make it impossible to talk.
And this feeling of a lump in their throat would make them unconsciously swallow.
And that only increased the intensity of the dry mouth.
Oh, really?
You're not supposed to swallow with a dry mouth?
I just think they just wanted to try and swallow away this lump.
But like they didn't have anything to swallow away.
You can relate though, Jeff, that's wild.
You should write a monologue like Quint.
I was just saying that feeling like your tongue is huge.
It sucks.
I'm sure, yeah.
Their lips would crack and the skin around their mouths and noses would pull back and shrivel like a corpse.
And their kidneys are working over time to flush toxins.
So what kidneys will do in that kind of circumstance is they take water from any place they can get it.
And your body essentially starts drinking from itself.
So it depletes like water from every other metabolic process.
And every cell in your body is just screaming out for water.
Dude, the cramps must have been unbelievable.
Yeah, they have some terrible, terrible cramps.
And your brain needs water too.
So being severely dehydrated messes with the electrical activity in your brain
and causes a wide range of effects, including poor judgment and hallucinations.
So they had a ton of hallucinations.
Every book talks about that a lot.
They would see islands with dancing girls.
They would think that they were like headed to a hotel.
Let's not do that.
Headed to a hotel with a soft bed.
And they would start swimming for these things.
And then they'd either drown or get killed by sharks as soon as they left the group.
Yeah.
And sometimes the screaming of the people that swam away would like kind of break the delusion for everyone else.
But a common one too is they saw the Indianapolis.
And some of the men that saw it said they could see.
it underwater and that it was fine.
And so they would dive down to try and like get into the mess hall to get food and stuff.
I mean, they were just completely losing their minds and they would drown.
But lots of different, lots of different hallucinations about anything you can imagine.
It is interesting because like you think of the desert as the hardest place to get water.
But really it's being stranded in the ocean.
Yeah.
What if you hallucinated like a shark and that made you stay on the raft?
That'd be a pretty useful hallucination.
Yeah, that would be.
Or if you hallucinate the shark as a beautiful dancing woman,
and then you go dance with the shark.
And you stick your finger in its hole or whatever your west said earlier.
Yeah, it's high.
And I will say their hallucinations are going to get a lot worse,
and they're going to turn violent.
We're going to talk about that in a minute of a little.
First we're going to do seawater.
So this impaired judgment of just being dehydrish,
in the first place made a lot of the boys think they could drink seawater.
Yeah.
Like I said, some of them thought the cooler water at their feet was something they could drink,
or they thought they could hold water in their hands and the salt would evaporate out and then
they could drink it.
But everyone like still had their brain was telling them, no, no, no, don't do that, don't
do that.
And some of them just couldn't stand having like the swollen tongue thing going on anymore.
And they just simply put their heads down and started drinking.
And drinking sea water when you're already.
that dehydrated is a death sentence.
Does it feel good for a second?
Yeah, because it like, there's liquid.
Yeah.
Like, yeah, for sure it does.
And that's why a lot of them keep drinking it.
Yeah.
But it killed every single one of them.
Anyone that drank seawater died.
It's like pouring gasoline on a fire to try and put it out.
I can't believe any of these guys survived.
I know, I know.
It's unbelievable.
The raft guys, though, were in a much better.
That's true.
Especially the guys in the water.
You said a couple rafts had fresh water, right?
A little bit.
Yeah.
When you drink sea water, your cells will literally explode in an effort to give your body extra water,
but that's still not enough.
Your kidneys start taking water from any possible place.
And then you get hypernatremia, which is an excess of salt in the body.
And basically any excess water in your entire body in all of your cells will be sacrificed
as your kidneys scrambled to try and clean your blood and remove these toxins.
So blood vessels will tear, fluid builds up in brains, it causes seizures, cramps, insanity.
They vomited uncontrollably.
They foamed at the mouth.
They died of kidney failure, amongst other things.
One survivor was so dehydrated that his eyes bulged from his sockets made, and it was
impossible for him to close his eyelids around him.
And, like, he was getting just, like, sunburn and seawater on his eyes all the time, too.
So just like terrible, terrible stuff.
Yeah.
Dr. Haynes watches some of the boys drink seawater.
Even after he pleads with them not to,
and he sees them experience like severe muscle cramps, intestinal cramps,
convulsions.
He also watches them foam at the nose.
And then he said like brown fluid,
the color of root beer started dripping down from their noses and mouths.
And they went completely crazy.
It's just thinking you probably don't have any fluid for tears either.
You have nothing.
So your eyes are just,
sandpaper.
Some of them screamed as they clod at their throats
in the desperate need for water.
Some of them spun in the water
or went into violent fits.
All of them eventually either slipped into comas and died,
drowned themselves in their mania
or attracted sharks from all the splashing
and were torn to pieces.
But even men that weren't drinking seawater
were completely losing their minds.
They would suddenly see their fellow sailors
turn into Japanese combatants.
They would like be talking to them
and all of a sudden it would be like,
They would say a slur.
And then they would pull out knives and start stabbing each other.
Geez.
So now you got to be worried about like the other people.
Yeah.
So in Haynes's group and Dr. Haynes's group, all the floaters,
they experienced a shared delusion that enemy soldiers were among them.
And they started stabbing and drowning each other.
And Haynes watched all of this in horror.
And he saw one of the men actually gouge out the eyes of another shipmate.
And in a matter of 10 minutes, 50 of the men were killed.
in this violence.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
And it's bad too because it's like the crazy people aren't the one just dying as much.
Like they're the ones killing.
Right.
So then they're still around too.
Well, yeah, I'm glad you said that because in some of these other groups and like these
groups weren't communicating between each other, but they all experienced kind of similar
things.
Like one of the other groups on a raft, they just decided once people start losing their
minds because I think they saw it happen a little bit, we're just killing them.
So they would put the guy in a headlock and they would stab a knife through his armpit into his heart.
And as soon as they started to break mentally, they would just do it.
Jeez.
Yeah.
Is that the best way to place?
That's what they decided was like the best way to do it.
In the armpit?
The most humane way.
Yeah.
I don't know.
It's just death from every side.
Like there's not even your shipmates you can't even.
Like listening to all the interviews, these like old sweet men,
and they're all wearing their like Indianapolis caps and everything,
they would just be like, yeah, but the sharks would stop,
but then we started killing each other, you know,
or like, oh, the oil sure did help with the sun,
but boy, did it make you vomit.
Like everything was bad.
Yeah, there was nothing that was good, you know?
We're almost done with the suffering.
On the last full day in the water,
cannibalism was reported.
men watched as sailors cut into the wrists and necks of the dead men in the water and drank
their blood to assuage their thirst, which honestly I would do that.
Sure, yeah.
The scene had become a complete and total hell, and rescue had to come quick, where every
single man in the water would die from one of the dozens or so ways that people were dying.
But no rescue had been launched.
When the Indianapolis was sunk, their SOS message got out, and they were received in
three different places. On Latee's, so the island they were sailing to, Commodore Jacob Jacobson,
terrible name. I like that name, actually. Was woken up just after midnight, and after he read
the SOS message, he pretty much told the people that woke him up. If you get another message,
let me know, I'm going back to sleep. Another office received the SOS, and they actually dispatched
tugboats to go inspect the site of the sinking. But the guy that dispatched the tugboats, his command
officer Norman Gillette got mad at him that he hadn't been consulted first and he told the tugboats
to come back even though they were already a third of the way there.
Dude, Gillette.
And another boat on Lati had heard the message too, but when it was relayed to command it was ignored.
So three messages, three people heard this message, all three of them.
Mainly like the upper people too.
And this is all going to be really important for part three.
This is pretty much because they never got a confirmation.
message from the Indianapolis, but there's also the other things that went wrong.
So furthermore, when the Indianapolis didn't arrive in Leyte, they still marked her as
arrived because there was a lot of traffic and ships were just marked as arrived unless they
heard differently. That guy, that's me at that job. Like, I'm just like, yeah, there's me.
There was one guy whose job was actually to physically check to make sure ships were arriving.
and when he saw that the Indianapolis hadn't arrived,
he marked her as overdue,
but everyone just kind of shrugged
and assumed that she had been diverted for some reason
or, you know, for whatever reason she wasn't there.
And it would be at least another five or six days
before anyone really noticed her absence,
and by then all of the men in the water would be dead.
So his men died from saltwater poisoning
or went crazy and killed each other
or drifted away from the group and were killed by sharks.
all of them continued to pray and hope.
They pleaded for someone, anyone, to notice them down there in the endless Pacific,
for their God to send an angel that would pull them out of hell and send them back to their families.
And it just so happened that on Thursday, August 2nd,
that very angel was flying toward them and a Lockheed bomber.
And that'll be part three.
God's got Lockheed bombers on a side.
All powerful.
No wonder he beat Satan cast him out.
I don't know that Satan has a summary.
That's true.
Give us the Bible sound.
Yeah, thanks, Bill.
All right, you guys have any questions about part two?
Pretty harrowing.
Yeah, I didn't.
I feel like it's important to have heard that story, but.
Yeah.
I will say, like, I really recommend these books because in the books,
you hear about like individuals and their groups
and kind of what these individual groups were going through
there's much more of kind of like a narrative
because there's characters you've been following the whole book
it's impossible to do that with our time constraints
it is the books really paint it much better than I did
I kind of just told all the terrible stuff
you sure yeah there's some really good stuff that you left out
there's nothing that good but there were like moments
you know, where they like joked around with each other or they kind of were just like, you know, boys in the water.
Yeah.
But it was pretty terrible.
Is there a good reason to believe that this is an isolated incident?
Because a lot of ships were getting blown up and sunk, right, in this theater of war?
Were there, is there any good reason to believe that there were other attacks, a shark?
Oh, they're for sure were.
Yeah.
Really?
They for sure were.
I think this one, though, it's the fact.
Yeah, the fact that they were floating for so long.
Yeah.
Is what made it so unique.
And it was a big ship, you know, where a lot of people went into the water.
But there's, I've, like, just learning about this, I stumbled on a story about another one off the coast of South Africa where a thousand people went in the water and only like 200 came out.
Well.
And they think the oceanic white tips took a lot of those people too.
And that was during World War II as well.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
I kind of feel like I need something like this.
to happen to me.
I hope it doesn't.
Just so like I don't take anything for granted.
Just so when you're like, yeah, if you ever have grandkids, they like look in your eye and
they know there's something you're not telling them.
Or just like every cup of water I drink, I'll be like, man.
Remember when I was in the ocean and I didn't have this?
Boy, I sure hate this one.
It's salty.
You don't think your anal cyst helped you appreciate life anymore once you got it removed.
It wasn't a cis
Yeah
What was an anal polyp fistula?
It was an abscess
Abscess and then a fistula
That's right
Oh yeah I did have a fistula
Yeah do you have a new outlook on life
What else do you have in there?
No that's a good
That's a good point
Maybe I wouldn't have a better outlook
Yeah I'm just saying I'm not like
I don't want to
Yeah
Maybe I do want to call you out on this
It's a good point
Yeah, good.
Yeah.
I wouldn't have a better outlook.
I don't want this to happen.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I think humans are adaptable and strange.
Getting serious for a second.
I think going back to those older men later in life who did go through this, it's kind of amazing the resiliency that humans can exhibit.
Dude.
Just like hearing them talk about it and seeing that a lot of them like went on to live like normal lives.
And I know like, I know every generation has its like problems.
and its issues, I do think that generation was better at just kind of putting stuff behind them.
Just kind of being like, this awful thing happened to me.
I'm going to have nightmares about it the rest of my life, but I'm not going to let it dominate.
I'm not going to talk to a therapist.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, can you imagine some of those young soldiers or older soldiers, they live through
the depression and all of a sudden they're just like, you know, they're born in the depression,
and then they get just drafted into a war.
And it's like...
I mean, we lived through Y2K.
That's true.
We did.
All our calendars rolled over.
It was chaos.
Your dad had to work a whole year extra or something.
That was like, well, yeah, we don't have to get into that.
Also, I do want to say...
My dad's a hero.
That guy's finger found the shark's eye just so everyone's clear.
You said, you...
Oh, that's right.
I got that mixed up.
I apologize.
All right, let's move on to our...
categories. First category, I wanted to ask you guys, your favorite survival movie ever,
or just like a memorable one, too, if you want it just to be a memorable one. Can be a true
story, it can be fiction. Feel free to run with it. Yeah, I mean, favorite would probably be Jurassic
Park, but we don't even mention that. And that's loosely a survival movie, I'd say. It is survival.
Yeah. They survives. Yeah. I was some of them. I was thinking castaway. Yeah, that's a great one.
It's a good pick.
Yep.
Like survival.
Maybe my favorite Tom Hanks performance.
Yeah.
It's fun.
You know?
And yeah, just a lot of what ifs.
Yeah.
That movie makes you so sad when a volleyball floats away from him.
Yeah.
Like they did a good job on.
I was mad at him for it.
Me too.
You got to swim for that.
Yeah.
But then I read about it and it's like, oh, okay, he had to let it go.
Yeah.
Gotta leave Wilson behind or else you'll be a crazy person.
You'll be on that island.
intimately for the rest of your life.
Mike, what's yours?
So I actually, another Tom Hanks movie came to mind, Apollo 13.
They're up there surviving, solving problems.
But that got me thinking.
I don't know if you're familiar with the show Firefly.
Have you seen Firefly Nathan Fillion?
I saw one of the movies.
Serenity?
Serenity.
I never saw the show.
The show's still worth watching.
It's really, really good.
But especially, I think it's like the eighth episode of the only season that ever aired.
It's called Out of Gas and some power convermed.
or something on board goes down
all the powers off they have no more oxygen it's running out
and so Nathan Philean's character sends everyone off
and he's kind of going through that lack of oxygen deprivation psychosis
and he starts recalling all of these moments from the past
is really like emotional really really well done
and I honestly think just that episode alone warrants a watching of that show
if you're interested in like science fiction space stuff
Joss Whedon oh yeah is it so well you know
Is he canceled?
I think he is.
I still watch Buffy though.
Sure.
All right.
Dollhouse.
I picked the movie The Impossible, which is about the tsunamis.
That's a good one.
The like 2004 tsunami.
Yeah.
And it's Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, and Tom Holland's like first performance, I think.
I watched this not that long ago.
I think this movie, if I just like needed to cry, like if I felt like it's been a while
since I've cried and I just like really want to cry,
this would be the movie I'd put on.
Because it just has so many scenes that are like tear-jerkers
where they're finding each other and like getting separated
and just like them,
just what they had to experience in like in the water that day
and you know trying to find each other.
I think it's an amazing movie.
You know it's another good one?
What?
USS Indianapolis Men of Courage.
Three S is on that.
Is that like the sequel?
We're going to watch that soon
I have not seen it
But okay
What character from Jaws do you relate to the most
And I actually saw in our listener question
Someone said what characters would we be
So this is kind of getting two birds with one stone
I would say quint for me
Really?
Just because I'm more or less a solitary
And sort of a
Irassable character
A little grouchy
When you get in public you make a scene
I scratch the chalkboard
You need all the attention on you.
Right.
What does he have on the chalkboard when he scratched?
Does he just have like he wrote the shark?
There's a drawing of a shark eating a kid?
That's right.
Yeah.
And it's so goofy.
I love it.
Yeah.
We need to sell merch of that.
We really ought to.
That would be good.
I don't think they'll catch us for that.
No, that's not.
Public domain maybe.
I would say for me it's the shark, Jaws.
No.
I relate to the most.
Okay.
You know?
Sure.
Why?
You want to explain?
I just really want to eat everyone I see.
Okay.
Really?
You're thinking of that first scene probably most, right?
All right.
Yeah.
The first person, too, that's the most want to eat.
For some reason, she's just so, like.
I'm going to say Matt Hoover.
So he's a biologist, like.
Dreyfus?
Yeah, Dreyfus his character.
He's kind of like.
a little wormy in the movie like sometimes he's a little too like I'm smart and I
yeah he's a bit of a weas old you kind of do that I do that sometimes sure so yeah yeah I'll
pick him I wanted to say Martin Brody but I can never be a cop and I just I there's a biologist
in this movie I have to kind of say that that's true yeah maybe I should have said
Brody and we could have had the three people but I'll stand by I like that I said yeah I couldn't
Give you a great reason besides eating people, though?
Because that's all the shark does.
Speaking of eating people, my next question, would you guys eat someone if you're in this situation?
I would, without a doubt.
Like if I...
I wouldn't even think twice about it.
I drink the blood, no question.
Yeah.
I think that's a mental hurdle.
I think eventually I would have no choice but to...
How would you choose your body?
Like, would you choose...
I just turned to get the first.
freshest one. Like you would wait for someone to die? Yeah, like the sharks just ripped his leg
off and so I just like squeeze and a float over too. I would feel really bad if they weren't actually
quite dead. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Then it's a problem. Yeah. But if someone's dead, I am thursday
than the human, like you're on the edge of dying from thirst. You're also super hungry. Yeah, I think I
would do it. That's why you got to take a chomp out of like in the earlobe before you really go to
like somewhere real important.
Yeah.
Because what if they're still alive,
they're like,
ow!
That's my...
I feel like...
And this is...
We're probably going
into way too much detail about this.
But there's like some ragged corpses around,
I'm sure.
And I would just like grab a handful of that and just eat it.
And then I would,
yeah,
I would drink blood too.
Yummy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anthony.
See, I don't know.
I just think sharks have a really hard time.
So I wouldn't want to take their food.
Oh, you could take a bite.
They'll,
understand.
Anything?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Especially if I had a knife.
I don't want, this is like weird.
Yeah.
I'm done thinking about this.
Yeah.
All right.
So are you guys doing it or no?
Yes or no answer.
Okay.
Eventually I feel like I'm going to.
After four days is what I said.
Yeah.
You know what?
I really think I just have to be in it to know for sure.
Okay.
I won't say no.
Okay.
I've got a would you rather for you guys, would you rather be lost in the middle of the
Amazon rainforest?
on a raft in the South Pacific with a week's worth of fresh water and a way to catch water
or in the middle of the Sahara Desert with a weeks worth of water and a way to catch water.
If you could pick any of those three scenarios, what are you picking?
Taking the jungle.
Yeah, I think I am too.
Feels like the best way to stay out of the sun, and that's going to be a real problem.
Yeah, especially for you.
And like drinking water.
I think I think I pick the jungle too, but I will say I've,
always kind of been so fascinated by people adrift in the ocean that I think it's like the
ultimate test of survival and it would be kind of like that ever since I read the book about the guy
that lasted like 400 days I'm just like maybe I was going to ask is like what book do you think
you would make the most money with afterwards yeah oh probably any probably not the sahara
I bet the Amazon or the raft you could I'd want to make the most amount of
money from it as I could.
Okay.
I bet the Amazon.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because you could just, they all make up that they're like attacked by Jaguars and stuff and
no one can say anything.
Yeah.
Nice.
Yeah.
Who's going to refute it?
Yeah.
Next category.
We're Mike and Jeff paying attention.
Quick one.
Who wants to go first?
What's on the line?
Oh.
We're probably going to see a movie while we're here.
The winner, I will buy any, like any one item at the movie.
I will pay for your ticket and I will buy you a drink.
Ooh.
Okay.
So like the one item can be like a candy or a popcorn or something like that.
Get a drink and you get the movie ticket.
That's like $30.
Can I get one of those jumbo buckets?
You can't.
If you want.
Sweet.
That's like $100.
There's a job.
The loser has to stand up the entire movie.
That's a good, yeah.
I tried doing that once in our Lord of the Rings Marathon.
You guys got mad.
Okay, who's going first?
I'll go.
Mike.
Roughly how many.
people went into the water after the sinking of the ship?
900.
Correct.
Jeff, roughly how many of the men had life jackets when they went into the water?
Wasn't it 40%?
Or, 300?
No.
Mike, do you want to steal?
150?
Half.
Roughly half.
Oh, he's going to say half.
Doggone.
Mike, what was the name of the island where the USS Indianapolis was supposed to
supposed to arrive.
Latey.
Correct.
I didn't think you'd get that one.
Good job.
Jeff, name three species of shark that likely showed up.
Tiger shark?
Yep.
Blue shark?
Yep.
Oceanic white tip.
Good job.
Okay.
And.
Going for a bonus?
Ooh, this is a bonus point.
Will you give him a bonus point if he gets it?
I mean...
Oh, man, I forgot it.
If you can do it in five seconds, I'll give you a bonus point.
Okay, never mind.
All right.
The other ones I said were silky and...
Chortfin Mako.
I was going to say makeup, but didn't say?
All right.
So we're 2.1 right now.
Mike, what is hypernetremia?
Too much salt.
Correct.
Jeff, what is photophobia?
Hold on, I know.
Oh, you just said too much salt.
Yeah, photophobia.
Photophobia is when you're, or your eyes hurt from the light.
Yeah, nice.
Okay.
Mike, in what year was Jaws released?
1975.
Jeff, would you like to steal?
1975.
Correct.
Really?
I'm pretty sure.
How am I wrong about that?
I'm going to double show.
I had no idea.
Oh my gosh.
I think you're right.
Yeah, because the 50th anniversary is this year.
Yeah, you're right.
Yeah, I'm a real.
I'm a dork.
Jeff, in what year was the Indianapolis sunk?
What year did this story happen?
Was World War II?
Okay.
1948 Mike do you want to steal 45 correct okay so we're going into the last question
with Mike you know what's crazy so Jaws was made 30 years after this event took place
which we're 50 years away from John what the heck yeah I don't like that all right
Mike what is the last name of the Japanese commander that sunk the Indianapolis Hashimoto
Wow.
He's so good with like any Japanese.
That's five points.
It's incredible how much.
Like in an anime, he'll know every character and their like dad's name.
You're like, you might think you're making me sound like smart or cool.
You're doing the opposite.
You're making me sound like a huge amount right now.
I remember when we would play like Super Smash Brothers and he'd be like, oh, it's Ditcho.
How many, how many like sumo wrestlers could you name?
Right now, just off the top of my head.
Yeah.
Not many.
I don't know.
I didn't really study their names very much.
Me and Brent like Kio.
He's doing real bad right now, though.
We're 5'3.
Jeff.
He just won, right?
No.
Because we had that bonus question.
Yeah.
Jeff, we always do.
What killed Robert Shaw in real life, the guy that played Quint?
Sure.
No.
Mike, do you know what it was?
Alcohol.
Heart attack.
Would have been a real good.
trivia question.
Yeah.
That actually, it's really sad to you just like had a heart attack, got out of his car and
like fell over dead.
Oh, really?
I know he had like some real bad alcohol issues, but.
All right.
So it's 5.3.
This bonus question is worth 30 points.
I'll give Mike first go out of it.
Mike, I was going to give Mike for first shot.
Mike, and I think you're actually going to get this.
What is the name of the prop shark from Jaws?
Oh, I do know this.
Bruce.
Correct.
Oh.
Okay.
Are you?
I'm getting a huge bucket.
That's fine.
They have a Jaws 50th anniversary cup right now.
Do they?
They should definitely get that.
That's probably what I should get.
I'm going to stand up in front of you.
No, that's fair.
All right, let's do some listener questions.
I've got a few.
We asked for some specific ones.
Hey, that's my job.
Okay.
Favorite, this one's from Piper, right?
Favorite boat?
You guys got a favorite boat?
Titanic.
Black Pearl.
Titanic's your favorite, Black Pearl.
I think for me it's the Galaxy Diver too.
That we went to Galapagos.
That's a fun boat.
I mean, no one knows what you're talking about.
It was the dive boat we just took to Galapagos.
I was going to explain it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was setting you up to.
I just loved it.
It was so fun.
It's pretty nice.
Yeah.
I don't think it was like that nice of a boat,
but I just had such a fun time on it.
It was nice and comfy.
Yeah.
All right.
This one's from,
Sophia Marie
If you were on the ship
Would you rather go down in the wreck or survive at all?
I'd rather survive it all
Wait
So like die immediately or survive the whole ordeal?
Yeah I guess so I live with the trauma for the rest of your life
I think I'd go down
I think I would
I think I would rather
I'd go down instead of die like four days later to a shark I think
Yeah
But if I were going to survive I'd pick
Yeah
That's what it says.
I mean, Jeff, there's no wrong answer, I guess.
This one's from Evan Hieronymus.
Hieronymus.
Hieronymus.
Oh, what is the typical?
Descendant of Hieronymus Bosch, probably.
Garden of Earthly Delights.
Tripteek, beautiful.
Go for it, sorry.
What is the typical prey for oceanic white tip sharks?
What?
You're not heard of the Garden of Earthly Delights?
Like the three.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's fine.
Fine.
I just felt like I needed to acknowledge that.
The typical prey is fish and cephalopods, so squid and then just, yeah, fish.
That's mostly what they use.
For sharks?
For oceanic white tips.
Squids, huh?
Squids, huh?
They do like squid.
You think they like calamari?
Yeah, probably.
You think?
Yeah.
This one's from Nickyldas.
Do you like Caliolars? I don't.
See?
Nickylda says, where any bite forensics done or sharks dissecting.
to confirm Oceanic White Tips were involved.
No, they didn't do that.
I don't think they really even had the science to really do that at that point
to say, oh, this was for sure an Oceanic White Tip.
The testimony of these men are mostly what they used,
and just now we know that's the shark that shows up.
I feel like today's day and age, there's people that will be like,
I don't believe it.
There are sharks, you know, conspiracy theory.
Yeah, yeah.
Ruby Barrett writes, says,
Can Jeff please guess how many buses long the USS Indianapolis was?
Please, Jeff.
I did the math.
Okay, just length.
Yes.
And do you want me to tell you how long it was?
I'm just going to go average school bus.
Not the one you wrote on.
Let's go with 46.
Ooh.
No.
Why'd you make that noise?
15 and a half.
Because I wanted to trick you.
It's not even.
15 is up?
15.
So school buses are about 40 feet long.
Titanic was that big.
Yeah.
Titanic was bigger than the Indianapolis.
What?
Yeah.
Oh.
Brough.
Yeah.
You can't even land a plane like the Indianapolis.
Let's see.
Indianapolis was 610 feet long.
They landed a torpedo underneath it.
Titanic was 883 feet long.
Is how long?
610, the Indianapolis.
And you said,
15? So each bus is like 50 feet?
Each bus is 40. Each bus is on average.
This is they're like 30 feet.
No, I looked it up. On average, they're between 35 and 45 feet. So I did 40.
Okay.
Okay. All right. This one's from Sarah Betas.
If you had to be eaten by a shark, what species would you prefer eat to you?
I'm just going gray white, so it's quick. That's going to be the quickest.
Huh. I think I'll go with a guitar shark.
A guitar shark.
They ever eaten anyone?
I don't think so.
So that'd be at first.
Yeah, you would be.
You could write that book.
Like, you're dead.
Whale shark?
Yeah, you'd be the first there too.
Just get regurgitated.
Since they're not probably not like chewing me up.
No, I like that.
Yeah.
All right, this one's from mid-sized sedan.
Mid-sized sedan, 01.
I wanted to include this one.
Yeah.
Yeah, I like that.
Because we've gotten this question a lot lately.
So there's a documentary on Netflix,
now called Shark Whisper. It's about Ocean Ramsey and Juan Sharks. They're kind of like influencers
that have become really famous for swimming with sharks. And I think her fame especially exploded
after they swam with that huge white shark by Hawaii, like the biggest one ever filmed. And
there's all these videos and photos of her like holding onto the dorsal fin right next to it.
And I will say, so people ask us about her a lot. I think they've done some incredible like
mobilizing to get people to care about sharks.
They have the right attitude about saving sharks.
Yes.
She, in a lot of ways, reminds me of, like, the Timothy Treadwell of sharks.
Oh, like.
Asking for it.
Well, like, she has to, like, touch them and be really close to them and all of that.
And for me...
And she gets mad at all the little fish.
And I...
Like the fox.
That steals her hat?
She doesn't.
I understand that, like, that's...
Those images are the ones that are going to get people.
to pay attention and when you do see like this pretty girl holding on to a massive
great white you're kind of like oh you know they aren't the killers I thought they
were I can't believe people can do that oh you know I never really considered that as
like a fantasy but I kind of works but it's kind of like April O'Neill and the
Ninja Turtles yeah you see a pretty girl with like a bunch of turtles you're like
I'm better than then yeah right it's like oh if a turtle can pull April
I think about what I can do
I have read some things
where she kind of talks about how
scientists aren't as impactful
as her and like this other
just a few things that have kind of made
put my hackles up and then the touching and stuff
is I think a little strange but
that's how I feel good intentions
but you know what the road to hell is paved
with we're not going to tell you
how to feel but I think she
will do more good for sharks than I
could ever hope to in my entire life
unless she gets eaten
then yeah maybe not
Letting them kill a bunch of shows.
They might.
And we bring this up sometimes, but it's not so dissimilar from what Steve Rubin was doing.
Yeah.
He's a hero of all three of ours.
Yeah, totally.
Yeah.
It does, I think in our modern age, it's hard to not see this grifting sometimes.
Sure.
You know.
But, I mean, we need more women in that male-dominated area of grifting.
I will say there are a lot of women.
It's overrepresented by males right now.
I think it's good.
It's good to have a few female Steve Irwin's, you know.
And she's not a scientist, but there are actually like a lot of women that have gotten into shark science.
I think it's an area of like wildlife science that has been very open to like having many more women scientists, which I think is great.
Yeah.
All right.
Quick thing about conservation.
So we talked about this with Dan a little bit, but Oceanic White Tips are IUCN critically endangered.
They're on the endangered species list as threatened.
They have lost, we think probably up.
like up to 98% of their population over the last 30 years.
Wow.
So this used to be a very common shark.
But the problem is they are a shark that really likes to hang out at the surface.
And so pretty much every method of catching fish could potentially catch these sharks.
They're so inquisitive that they'll actually like, you know, approach boats and stuff.
They just get caught a lot by a lot of different types of fish.
Kind of messed up too because, like, they really helped out the Japanese in World War II.
And, like, I think Japan's one of the worst offenders for killing sharks.
And their names, actually, the Japanese name for Oceanic White Tip, they don't love these sharks.
So they're caught globally as targets and as bycatch.
They've been really popular for the finning industry because they have really big fins.
They were once the most abundant pelagic shark species in tropical seas worldwide, but now they're rare in some regions.
Like I said, the estimate is that they've undergone a reduction of 98%.
That sucks.
Which is pretty crazy.
Super sad.
When Jeff mentioned earlier, we do a lot worse to them.
We definitely do.
And we've talked about this before, just in the time that you guys have been listening to this podcast, something like 12,000 sharks have been killed.
Oh, man.
It's pretty crazy.
They won the battle. We're winning the war.
We are devastating them in the war.
All right. So that is kind of a depressing note to end this on, but we're going to be back on part three.
And part three is about rescue.
Well, good job, Wes. I'm enjoying this one.
Good. I'm glad you guys are liking it.
Everyone out there, if you're liking it and you want more, the three of us are together right now.
And we're actually going to watch that Nicholas Cage movie together and do a review.
So if you want to hear us review USS Indianapolis Men of Courage, subscribe to the Patreon.
It's not just that that you get.
There's a lot of other stuff on there too.
And also, Mike just put together a music bracket of our listeners voted on Patreon and Discord.
Yeah.
And then we're going to put together our own afterwards too.
Yeah, we got a lot of bonus and supplementary content.
You know what?
Sign up, try us out, cancel.
if you don't like it.
Exactly.
Right.
But I've heard from people that have done that and just forgot to cancel.
So, well, don't do that.
Set a reminder, get rocket money.
That's how we get you.
And just a personal plea, too.
Three more male grifters.
A personal plea, I've put a lot of time into this one.
I'm really, I can't think of anything else.
And if you guys are enjoying it, share it.
You can't think of a single other thing.
I can't think of some other things.
Yeah, sorry to call me on.
Sorry.
He's like drinking too much salt water.
No, but I'm just saying if you guys are enjoying the series, share it with your friends,
post it on your story, let people know about it.
Because that's really the main way that tooth and claw has grown has been through word of mouth.
So we really appreciate it.
And if you guys are enjoying this one specifically, let people know.
And to your credit, I asked you for like your 16 favorite songs to put into our bracket today.
And you were like, I'm working on the shark episode.
I can't think of anything else right now.
There you go.
Yeah.
Mike.
I'm sorry.
Just asking questions.
All right.
Bye, guys.
Love you.
See ya.
