Will Cain Country - Should We Fear the Shark?

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

As we know following the OceanGate Titan submersible tragedy, the ocean can be a dark and dangerous place. But as summer arrives and more Americans hit the beach, Chris Fischer, founder and expedition leader for OCEARCH, helps us learn what we're facing when it comes to the creatures of the deep. Join Will and Chris as they discuss creatures like the Great White and Tiger Shark and the Giant Squid, and what humans can really expect from these animals.   Tell Will what you thought about this podcast by emailing [e-mail] Follow Will on Twitter: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Should we fear the shark? It's the Wilcane podcast on Fox News Podcast. What's up and welcome to the weekend. Welcome to Friday. As always, I hope you will download, rate, and review this podcast, wherever you get your audio entertainment at Apple, Spotify, or at Fox News podcast. You can watch the Will Kane podcast. on Rumble or on YouTube. The story of the Ocean Gate submersible that has been missing in the North Atlantic for the entirety of this week is absolutely terrifying.

It appears now that the five souls aboard that submersible are lost. It's been longer than the available oxygen that would have sustained them for, I believe, 96 hours from the point at which it was lost. There are reports that was a debris field found around the Titanic. That debris field, according to the Explorers Club, could be that of the Ocean Gate submersible. This prospect of going 12,000 feet down into the ocean, far below any oceanic rescue in the past, is absolutely terrifying. It's claustrophobic. It's dark. It's lonely.

It is excruciating. As the week went along, that submersible could have been on the surface anywhere out there in the North Atlantic. There was apparently no way for them to open the hatch from the inside, leaving them reliant on that oxygen supply of 96 hours. It could have been lost anywhere on the bottom of the ocean, which was described to me as a needle in a haystack. And even if found, it would have had to been brought back to the surface, which would have been roughly an eight-hour trip. Two employees of the Ocean Gate Company, two rich individuals, and one teenage son of a billionaire, lost in one of the most terrifying ways to die. I always had this attraction, this, you know, edge of a skyscraper, have to walk up to the edge after going to the top. Attraction to the ocean.

I love the ocean. I love the edge of it. I love the unknown beyond. That sense of exploration and mystery, but also that sense of darkness and loneliness, that potentiality of being lost. I've always loved that edge, that frontier. But I've never been really afraid of sharks, the thing that keeps most people out of the ocean. A video a few weeks ago made its way around social media, and it's horrific. I do not encourage you to go watch.

but it's a 23-year-old Russian man swimming off the coast of Egypt in the Red Sea, and he is attacked by a shark. It looks like something out of jaws. His body lunges left and right. It's turned upside down with his feet in the air. He's screaming. The water turns red. He yells Papa, because I believe that his father was on the shore.

It's truly horrific. But I thought it would be interesting to have a conversation with an expert. As we approach the summer, we're once again in that moment where anecdotes are blown out and blown past statistics to drive fear. Every summer we hear about shark attacks in Florida, shark attacks in Hawaii, many people who are not often finding themselves right there at the frontier, right there on the beach, right there at the ocean, all of a sudden find themselves waiting in and waiting in along with fear. Well, Chris Fisher is the founder of the Oceanic Expedition and Research Company, a nonprofit by the name of Osearch. He's made his mission to return the world's ocean to balance and abundance. He hashtags his profile on Twitter, Facts Over Fear. He has explored the ocean both on the surface and in its depths.

He's gotten to know its creatures, the squid, the great white shark. And I've always been fascinated and always curious as we all are as we approach the summer and shark week looms a month away to get our arms around with reason, with rationality, what it is that we're facing in the ocean when it comes to the shark. Here we go. All you need to know about sharks with Chris Fisher. For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax.

until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Fresh excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. Following Fox's initial donation to the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund, our generous viewers have answered the call to action across all Fox platforms and have helped raise $7 million. Visit go.com. forward slash TX flood relief to support relief and rebuilding efforts. Chris Fisher, man, I'm so glad to have you on the show today. I have a bottomless pit of curiosity for sharks, and I come at this.

from our short conversation on Fox and Friends this past weekend, really kind of on the side of sharks, which is we constantly do the story. Oh my God, shark attacks are up. Be very afraid. Jaws is out there to get you. But I was just asking you, what is the top line when it comes to sharks? I mean, do you think that the average person out there is going waiting in the ocean on Long Island, New York, or in Florida, should be thinking about sharks? No, not really thinking about sharks. I mean, if you're walking in the ocean, statistically, you should be looking at could rip currents, right? And rip tides, right?

That's what gets people. We have hundreds or thousands of people drowning, you know, and we have less than a dozen people a year, shark interactions that end up in fatalities with humans. You know, the real headline is, I think for people to get is that sharks are coming back, which means we're going to end up being proud of what we leave behind for our grandkids and our kids. Like, they're going to see an ocean full of fish. They're going to be able to go out with their family and catch a fish and eat it.

And quite frankly, coming up into the 90s, we weren't trending that way. We were going the opposite way. And I think what most people don't understand is, you know, when you really zoom out on Osearch, what is Osearch, what are we doing? It's more of a human health program than a shark program. You know, two thirds of the ocean, two thirds of the planet is the ocean. The ocean provides us 100% of our water. Two thirds of our air and several billion people a year of day, they're food. Right?

So when you got an operating planet, the planet which we live on, if that 70% is not functioning properly, no air, no water, and a lot of people missing their food. Well, it just so happens the system manager of the ocean is the white shark, right? So here we have the white shark managing and balancing the system, the apex predator at the top of it. So the headline is if white sharks are thriving, humans thrive. If they are not, we don't. And that's because they're the apex predator of the ocean. Without the apex predator, you lose the complete balance of the ecosystem? Yeah, for example, yes, precisely, right?

They're the system manager. So up in the northeast where you are where they're seals, the white sharks are migrating northbound right now. This is the time of year they start moving north. They spend their winter south of Cape Hatteras when it's too cold up north. This is that transition period of time where we got our early, arrivals, maybe the first third of the sharks making their way up to East Coast, and then a bunch of them are still staging just below Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and then there's a few outliers

that are further south. But eventually it's too hot down below. The white sharks are the balance keepers of the temperate ocean, right? The cool ocean. As it gets hot, the white sharks push north. The tiger sharks move up in behind them in that tropical water. The tiger shark is the balance keeper of the tropical water, the hot water. And so right now we're in the early first third of that migration. By the end of June, early July, almost all of them will pass through, and they'll be settling in up in New England, and they'll be settling up in Nova Scotia. Now, while they're there, and you're talking about the system manager, how does this work? When those white sharks are up there in front of all those beaches and all those seals,

it's important for people to know we've had this tremendous success story with the recovery of our marine mammals because of the Marine Mammal Protection Act about 55 years ago. when we stopped killing whales and seals. So now that population is really starting to roar back. It's taken a number of time because there was a long time because there was so few, but now we got it rolling. And if you live up in the northeast and you've been out to the Cape in Massachusetts and Maine, and now they're all the way down through Montauk and coming into the Jersey shore,

you're seeing a lot more seals. When these white sharks show up there, every one of those seals will eat one fourth as much all summer and fall fall if those white sharks went there all of those seals would be wiping out your menhaden which i believe you call bunker up there it's a bait fish and then all your stripers your lobster your cod your bottom fish the seals would just wipe it out and then there's nothing for us to eat oh fascinating so the white sharks the white sharks are actually guarding our fish stocks up there and they do the same thing down south by preventing the squid from wiping it wiping out all the fry and small fish every night when they migrate to the surface.

So, I mean, basically, they guard our fish stocks, so we have food to eat. What a fascinating illustration of something we intuitively know, that there's got to be a balance to nature and every single creature inside of that ecosystem serves a function to the overall ecosystem. Chris, you grew up in Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, landlocked. I actually am from Texas, and I live in Texas again now. I spent 15 years up in the Northeast, but like you, I've always had a love or an attraction to the ocean. I went to college in California.

My family throughout the years has spent time in Hawaii in the summers. And so I've always been attuned to the idea of sharks where they are and how they migrate. And you point out something that I've always found fascinating. The migration patterns and the distance traveled by these sharks. Like, I've paid attention to Hawaii in particular. And these sharks out in Hawaii are just passing through. I mean, they pass through every year. It's one of their places, but it's shocking how much ground they cover.

They're over to Northern California. They're back to Hawaii. As you point out, the Great Whites on the East Coast, up and down from the Caribbean, back up to north of Montauk, as you pointed out. What is a migration pattern for these? And I guess we're focusing largely on Great Whites, or is it all sharks? Is it Tiger Sharks as well? They cover so much of the ocean.

Yeah, they have different migratory patterns, but they're all kind of related to the seasonality of things. But obviously, a fish in the tropical water has got a different migratory path than one in the temperate water. But when you talk about Hawaii, that's interesting. You know, we pioneered all of our work off of California and Mexico back between 2007 and 2010. And the first population of white sharks we worked on was at Guadalupe Island, there, 220 miles southwest of San Diego. And we were the first people to put the real-time tags on those animals in 2007, and that was the first time we saw the animals migrate from there all the way to Hawaii and back. Many of them don't quite make it all the way. They stay in what people call the White Shark Cafe or the shared offshore foraging area, which is about 1,500 miles off San Diego, about halfway between California and Hawaii.

But then there's a few outliers that do make their way over to the Hawaiian Islands. before they return. So, you know, we're seeing these animals. We're tracking animals covering between 25 and 30,000 miles a year. And you've got to realize we only get the straight line distances when they stick their fins out of the water that's measuring that distance, right? If you look at all, they're winding around and up and down. I'm sure they're traveling two, three times that actual distance. So they have the capacity to cover massive ranges. These ones on far east goes to the United States. They're ranging all the way from Newfoundland to Cancun. Yeah.

Which is wild. And back every single year, not once in their life, every year, right, they make those moves. So that goes to show you a couple things that they can do for us to help us understand how healthy the ocean is in that area. Number one, these animals are what they're called bioaccumulators, top of the food chain, right? So little things eat things they shouldn't. and they get toxins in their body, plastics, things on plastics. A bigger fish eats that.

The toxins pass up to the bigger fish. The next biggest fish, all the toxins accumulate as it goes up the food chain, and they end up in the white shark. So when we're doing our toxicological reviews of these animals, we can tell you if the ocean is generally healthy or not between Newfoundland and Cancun because they accumulate all the toxins, of everything in the food chain on their annual migration. And we do see it pivot around a little bit when they start to chew on a lot of seals up north.

The toxicology is a little bit different than the southeastern United States. But it helps us understand if there's things on the land that we're doing that we could maybe go without or mitigate so it's not getting into the water, getting into the food chain, because ultimately we end up eating it, especially if you end up taking out a mid-level game fish like a striper or a snook or a redfish. you know so um it's a they're very very important top of the top of the heap and the great thing is is off the east and west coast of the united states we're winning we are winning our oceans are back we have rewilded our atlantic and pacific ocean at a level unseen since the 40s or 50s

and it is a time to celebrate that okay i'm going to fire at you some curiosity questions as we go um not everybody will want to know all the depth that i do on the the the ecosystem and the support of the shark. So here's a joke that I heard that I've always passed on when people say, hey, do you think there are sharks here? And I said, well, there's one test as to whether or not you're an area where there might be sharks, and that is to taste the water. Taste the water, really, why? Is it salty? Because if it's salty, there are sharks. Is that fair? There are sharks in the water if you're in the ocean. Yeah, I mean, just like there are lions in the forest if you go for a hike, you know, so, yes, that is the best way to approach the system, right? You're

you're someone who understands the system. The biggest thing that's changed, though, I think where people could possibly, you know, maybe not quite get that, I'm 55. And so when I grew up going swimming in the ocean in the 80s, 90s, late 70s, you could just walk in anywhere. We had whacked the ocean in the 70s and 80s. We crushed our East Coast and our West Coasts. We wiped out all the sharks, the game fish.

We were gill netting our inshires. waters crushed it. You could walk in anywhere. There was nothing there, right? And so then in the 90s, in the late 80s and early 90s, we got those gill nets out to bring back the striper fisheries up north to bring back the red fisheries, redfish fisheries in the mid-Atlantic, the snook and stuff down in the Gulf and in Florida to bring back the whole recreational fishing economy because it had tanked. No one was buying boats, no one was buying trucks. No one was buying fishing rides. You couldn't catch. No one was chartering boats. was this all because you said it's all because of commercial fishing it was just over overfishing

commercial and recreational fishing i mean you know that was like everybody was whacking every shark everybody was we were overfishing commercially overfishing recreationally um and then in the late 80s and early 90s we removed the inshore gill nets off most of the east coast up northeast it was to bring back the strippers back in the 70s 80s you couldn't catch a striper right you couldn't catch a snook in Florida or redfish in Texas or Louisiana, right? And so we get these inshort gill nets out. And then in the early 90s, we start to protect our sharks because all their numbers it tanked into like single digits, right? Bad. And then things started to rebuild. And what happens is when you remove inshore gill nets specifically to save, say, the striper up in the

northeast, we didn't understand it. Now we know that we actually remove the gill nets from what is the white shark birthing site and nursery. We were whacking all our white sharks before they were even one year old, and they have to live to be 20 years old before they can even mate and replace themselves. So when we remove those inshore gill nets to bring everything back and we brought back our recreational economy, it's now, I believe, bigger than the commercial economy. There was a time back in the early 2000s. They were both roughly around $80 billion of economic impact, but now the wreck is surpassed it. Everyone's buying boats. People can catch. So that's, started to rebuild in the 90s and then about five years ago they started to protect the menhaden inside

state waters because we started to see like we're managing back our whales our seals our game fish but we're not managing back their food it wasn't all linked together so we started to manage back our big forage fish and that's why you have now whales in new york harbor again whale you know tuna in new york Harbor like it's electric off of south shore long island and jersey because of because of all this work i mean it's like it's the biggest story that's not being told and you know why will why because in the non-profit space the cash only flows when the sky is falling and so you got these people out there freaking everybody out they're freaking out our kids i got kids college students i lecture that are terrified there's not going to be any place for them to live

they're not excited about growing up they think the planet is tanking there's nothing in the ocean and so now these kids i have professors when i speak and lecture asking me trying to like hey can you help these kids man they're freaking out they think they're not going to have anywhere to grow up because everyone's dogpiling them and over exaggerating all the problems with the planet and they think that there's no reason to get an education to work hard to build a future to have a family it's disgusting what's going on it's disgusting same thing Same thing in the hunting world. I'm a hunter. I love duck hunting.

The population of game animals has been, as healthy as it ever has been in the United States of America. Hey, okay. Let me follow curiosity for just a minute. Intuitively, Chris, it makes sense to me. I can almost understand the migration pattern of a shark going from Newfoundland to Cancun, almost shadowing the East Coast, you know, where I would think there'd be an obvious food supply. I mean, closer to shore, closer to life, reefs, seals, as you mentioned. That California to Hawaii migration is harder for me to understand because tell me what does a shark eat? You just said there was a great white cafe out there, 1,500 miles halfway between California and Hawaii.

Like, what is a shark doing and eating and how is it living out there in the middle of the ocean? I guess in my mind in a way, I think of it almost like a desert out there. It's not, right? So, like, what is he doing out there? On the surface, yeah. So the migration, the way it works out there is these animals are gathering in the Channel Islands. In early years, it was Guadalupe, while their numbers were a little lower.

As they began to recover, they're now reestablishing across all the Channel Islands there off California. They're there in the summer and fall, and they're putting a lot of pressure on the seals, the elephant seals, the Harbor seals, the sea lions, again, protecting our fish stocks. Once the weather comes down on them, they slide out offshore to this White Shark Cafe. Now, we took the ship out there in 2007. We've never been hammered by weather like I was hammered on that trip. Because we're working 1,500 miles off the beach.

There's nowhere to hide. And so what we found was we saw in our tags, they would migrate out there. We used one tag to track them along, you know, how they travel along the surface. We had another tag on them that was tracking their up and downs, their dive profile. And we see them diving down every day, and they're going down into that deep scattering layer where there's all these fish and squid. And then, you know, that layer migrates to the surface every night. All the squid come to the surface at night.

It's the largest migration in the world that occurs every single day. When it gets dark, the scattering layer migrates to the surface. They would rise up with them, and then when dawn comes, they drop back down. And when we were out there, we found five different species of very large squid, even some giant. squid and you know they were all reproductively ripe so when squid mate they die so i think they're just out there slurping up the fresh dead every day at their leisure rising and falling with this massive volume of squid occasionally picking off some of the you know those ribbon fish and other things that live in this deep scattering layer tremendous volume of food that doesn't look like anything

is there during the day because it's interesting i can how deep it was nothing this. We're seeing them dive up to 3,000 feet deep and beyond. Our tag only goes to 3,000 feet, and then they're pinning it, right? But most of the time, 8, 900 meters. Wow.

3,000. That's amazing. Yeah, and so the only at the surface, we dragged a tuna feather around out there the whole time we were out there, you know, for like two and a half weeks, not one bite. But the only other thing that was there is we came across a

massive pod of sperm whales with a huge dominant bowl and you know that's the largest squid eater in the world right so the white sharks are out there with the sperm whales and they're dropping and eating the fresh dead squid that are mating every day and i mean you're slurping it up and it's easy living but they do when they leave guadalupe they leave in the channel islands they leave fat right because they've been putting the pressure on the seals and when they go out to the um to the white shark cafe or the shared offshore foraging area when they return they return really skinny So they're like getting back and then they're wanting to bulk back up again.

Hey, out of curiosity, Chris, like I think one of my biggest nightmares, it's not getting attacked by shark, by the way. And it's like, I think it's like someone who goes up to the top of the Empire State Building but can't help but look over and feels this compulsion to jump. Like, I love the ocean and I love being on the ocean. But I think one of my biggest fears is that stretch of open ocean out there, like so far from anything. It's, I don't know.

What was the book where the guy is on those life? I mean, there's a bunch. Unbroken was one, but where he dreams that he's on the boat with the tiger and all that. I can't remember the name of that book. But, and then, and then there's the one where the, the World War II ship goes down and all those guys are stranded out there in the middle of nowhere. The Indianapolis, all attacked by sharks. I am, I don't know, there's something, that's where I feel like I need to go out there, but also it's my greatest fear. It's like, when you're out there, what is it when you, what do you feel 1500 miles from shore? it got to feel a little lonely yeah well i like being on the boat disconnected from land i cherish

my hundred days a year at sea uh because it's like life used to be you know intentionally avoiding technology um i love it out there um but it is um the problem is the weather there's no place to hide and when the weather comes up the weather we were out there for about almost a month and we had this three weeks of glorious weather and you know we saw the weather kind of coming and we're like okay we got to get all the little boats back on the ship we got to get everybody in here and we can get underway we can drive through the weather but we can't be caught with our stuff out and it came up so fast on us out there it went from flat calm to 15 feet like that and I had to get a guy off a boat and back onto the ship and all the 45 expeditions and 25 years at sea one of the scariest maybe

the most dangerous thing was trying to get my friend Todd Goggin off our 30-foot contender that we couldn't get on deck because it was too rough to pick it up so we were going to have to tow it and I had to get him off that boat and onto the ship and when we grabbed him and he left and we caught him and we all fell in and everybody was okay it was all gnarly and that happened out there and then we had 12 days to drive back three days couldn't get out of bed you know you couldn't And, like, to go to the bathroom, you just had to kind of get there and hold on, and then eventually about a week later, it got better. But, uh, not only when you're offshore, dude, you're just at the whim of the ocean, you know,

and I'm in a Bering Sea crabber, right, which is made to handle, you know, crappy weather. Man, it's, you may feel so small. I'm attracted to all the, the perfect storm, Shackleford's, uh, endurance. I, ever, all these stranded out there books and stories. I'm attracted to that. because of what you just described, that fear. So I'm going to, I'm going to ask you, continue to ask you a few curiosities. I'm going to put some of them in the form of a personal story.

So one of the places that I like to surf, by the way, is a place called Shark Pit in Hawaii. And, you know, I think the name for some reason scares off some people. But, I mean, I will say, though, I've seen a shark out there at Shark Pit. I didn't get out of the water. We didn't get out. there's something about this story of sharks that doesn't, it doesn't scare me in the same way. I don't know if I'm doing mathematical probabilities in my head, and I'm understanding he doesn't really want anything to do with me.

Is that stupid? Should I've gotten out of the water when I see a fin at a place called shark pit surfing? Well, I think that the answer is, you know, if you have the capacity to identify the animal, that's fine. What do you have happened in these surf spots, right? is you have usually some sort of bottom structure that gets a wave to jack up, right? The wave comes in. It hits some sort of bottom structure, stands up.

And, you know, the better the structure on the bottom, the better the wave. This structure is also what attracts life, right? Small fish live on this structure. It creates currents and eddies and holes and things. And then, you know, other animals live around it. So some of the best surfing spots are super lifey spots. And so when you talk about, I don't know this place in particularly, but if you look at this animal and you see a fin, well, I mean, well, what does that mean?

Does that mean it's a little for your four-foot thing? Yeah, it wasn't incredibly large. Yeah, so, you know, you got to realize most of these things. Most sharks are eating things about the size of your foot. Right. You know, so they look at you as a threat unless you're a white shark predating on seals and you're in your black wetsuit on a surfboard and now you've dressed up like their food and you're hoping that you don't fool them, right?

And so, you know, I've dove with so many sharks and been face-to-face with so many sharks and fought them off back-to-back with Captain Brett over the years that, you know, I like to look at the animal. What do you mean fought them off? Oh, so before the world of offshore adventures, Captain Brett McBride has been my captain for over 25 years. We made this show called Offshore Adventures that was on E.C. and outdoors. Yes. And it was on Saturday morning for the Internet, when you can only watch your fishing and hunting on this. It was on a boat called the Go Fish, and we did a lot of fishing, free diving, and food. We were big on take one fish, let's show people how to handle it, eat it perfectly.

But a lot of that was from spear fishing and free diving. So countless times I've been in the water with Brett where we've been back to back, you know, shooting Big Tuna or Wahoo and had, you know, a dozen or more, you know, eight to 12. foot bronze whalers and sharks on us and you know of course we're asking for it right we're shooting fish we got them you know and we're back to back with our cameras and spear guns and poking at them and kicking at them and and you know and then waiting until we get a little room and then have a small boat pick us up it's part of it if you're in this i mean you know what do you i mean it's just part of it you know it's just it's uh what do you punch them in the nose that's what everybody thinks you do New York, Will?

I mean, if you're going to start calculating risk and bakes your decisions and activities on real statistical risk, like you mentioned earlier, you know, we're talking about a subject that it was not going to come up in the top 1,000 on the list. Right. Right. Okay, wait, wait, wait. But if I find myself in that situation,

what do I do, Chris? I have always heard punch them in the nose. I don't know if I'm gouging them in the eye, they've already got a hold of me somehow, I imagine. So what do you do to fight off a shark? Well, if you're swimming in the water, it's different than if you're standing at the beach. So if you're swimming in the water and you find yourself, wow, I'm isolated out here and I got a shark on me and there's no boat around to pick me up, you eyeball that shark. You never take your eyes.

You eyeball that thing. You stare it in the eyes. and if you can, try to muster up the energy of a predator, you know, like when you're in a fight or something. And you try to send that energy to that thing. You eyeball that thing, like, I am coming to get you. Because they pick up that energy, and they're not used to that.

Nothing does that to them. They are predators. So you'll immediately see them bend off and, you know, start to give you more room and work. crown and you just eyeball them and swim at them because then they'll just create you know the one thing that's not going to happen will you're not going to out swim them right so turning away and swimming away like everything else in the ocean that they eat is probably not a winning strategy right you know you're it's like trying to run from a lion or you know you're just better off to turn around and get real big you know

And so, you know, it's the same kind of thing. These things aren't used to stuff coming after them and countless times, you know. The key is you said you're by yourself, right? Because, like, the famous joke is how do you out, you and your buddy, in front it with the lion. Like someone else, and you're a better swimmer, get to it. Right. I don't have to outrun the lion.

I have to outrun the lion. I have to outrun you. The other thing is, is if you're spearfishing and stuff like that, you know, you know, drop your fish, if you got them tied off on your hip or whatever. I encourage people to do now. if you're spearfishing, you need to have a boat tendering you. And when you shoot one, grab it, put it in the boat. Don't, like, swim around.

We used to swim around with, like, 60-pound wahoos, the length of our leg tied off on our weight belt. You know, how could you blame a shark if it came in and bit your leg off? I mean, it's like, you've got what it eats laying against your leg. You know, so, you know, is it gets sharky and sharker and less and less than that. And I think this brings up the real topic, Wayne, Will, is that the ocean has changed a lot in just the last 20 years, 15 years. And so we can't just wander into the ocean like we did when I was a kid because we'd wiped it out. Now it's back.

It's wild. It is rewilded. So we have to like train ourselves. When you go down to the beach, you need to look at the ocean. If there's bait balls there and birds crashing on it and game fish on it, there's going to be other predators there. Right. So you don't want to swim and walk out into the middle of the food chain, you know, for a normal person. Right.

You know, we were having a meeting yesterday in O'Surch meeting, and we were talking about how, what goes on up in the New, you know, the Long Island, Jersey area where you got all these menhaden. And they, the game fish and the sharks come in and they crowd the menhaden against the beach. It's one of their eating techniques, feeding techniques, because if they can crowd the bait up against the beach, then they can all blitz it, and it can't go down or away. So you have this, so one of our chief scientists was like, well, what do we tell people? What do you do when they got a bait ball crowded up against the beach? I'm like, sit back, watch it, and enjoy it. It's like an American safari.

It's like something from the 40s. Like, it's awesome. Watch it. And Captain Brett was there. He's like, load your spear gun and swim around out to the outside. Right now, I don't think we can tell people that. you know so you know it just goes to show you like he's going in you know but he knows how to handle himself water so we talk a lot about great whites and you you you clearly have a love for

the white shark you know i i pay attention at least in the summertime to shark attacks it seems to me that so first of all the numbers are inflated it seems to like like you said standing in the water waiting in the water small shark attacks in places like florida i want to ask you two things like what's going on is that is that the vast majority of stats that we see. But then let's pair that with this. I feel like in places like Hawaii, what I constantly hear about is tiger sharks. So we talk so much about white sharks. They're not really who we're talking about as a threat. I mean, maybe it's surfers in Northern California or someplace like that. But talking about the kind of shark that's actually responsible for our fear.

Yeah. Well, so with the kind of shark that's responsible for our fear is like a four-foot black tip swimming around off New Smyrna Beach, Florida, nipping at people's ankle. right and they label it a shark when it's an ankle biter you know and they go get two stitches or none you know that's that's 90% of what's recorded when you talk about like incidents the results in fatalities it's less than a dozen a year right and statistically shark interactions are down last year and this year so even though we have recovering abundance um so it is these smaller sharks but now the one thing that's interesting you know when you get to really know these animals. And, you know, I think it's a good thing for people, especially if you're a

fisherman, you can start to connect some dots on things or a surfer, a waterman. You know, tiger sharks are a little different, right? They're kind of like stupid. They got that big boxy head and that big flat nose, and they kind of will eat anything. I mean, you find junk inside of them like pizza boxes and, you know, garbage. Versus when you talk about something like a white shark this thing only eats like grade a sushi grade super fresh blue fin tuna yellow fin tuna striper seal sea lion you know whale they know these things aren't wandering around looking for the kind of you know we the undesirable it's more like a sushi grade eater you know you know and then you go to a tiger shark and it'll kind of bite anything you know they just kind of try

everything. So the situation in Hawaii does seem to consistently circle back around to this tiger shark issue. I don't really know what's going on in regards to that beyond the fact that tiger sharks behave really less, more indiscriminately than a white shark. So less predictable? They chasing down something hot, you know, and a tiger's kind of come up and just kind of put its mouth on anything. So it could be just the behavior of that specific animal. A lot of shark tourism out there with people playing with sharks. So I don't know if that has anything to do with them, just coming right up to you, but they tend to do that anyway. So I think this, I've oftentimes told people, you know, I'd rather handle a 4,000-pound white shark than a 1,500-pound tiger shark

in the cradle on the deck, just because they're like a snake. They can kick me. You can be standing at their head and they hit you with their tail. They're just kind of nastier, wilyer little critter compared to, you know, a white shark is more like a lion, like just an absolute beast. What species is responsible? A hyena. That's a good analogy. What species is responsible for most fatalities? White sharks.

White sharks are. And there's also, well, and you have the, it depends, you know, I think there's, the stuff. that we read in the news, but I think there's probably quite a few interactions in very poor areas around the world, in rivers and things where you don't know about it, where it probably really comes into the bull shark situation. You know, bull sharks, they're nasty, they're aggressive creatures, and they do tend to go up rivers. So, like, you know, you're not going to hear about it in very, very, in Africa, South America, Central America, Asia, you know, if someone went bathing and doesn't come back.

I think if you really looked at it and you could get the real data, it would be the bull shark. I was going to ask you about that, actually, Chris. I've always been fascinated by sharks coming up rivers. I think I read one time about how far sharks have gone up to Hudson, how long you can have brackish water that they could still keep going. There was a documentary of some kind where a shark, maybe it was during Shark Week, I saw this, but a community way inland was terrorized by a shark through the river system.

So what is that? Is that always bull sharks and how far can they go up into fresh water? Mostly bull sharks and they can go as far as they want. Really? Really? No, the salinity isn't a problem. Just keep pushing. No, I think they adjust over a very long period of time.

But I think there's records of bull sharks and things being hundreds and hundreds of miles up rivers. Wow. If you look back historic. Hey, where you just mentioned, where have you been? And Chris, like, when you, in terms of the most beautiful place you've been on the oceans with Osearch and on your ship, and, you know, I don't know if you've done South Africa. I don't know if you've done off the coast of Africa and all these different. Like, what is the place you're like, Will, you've got to go here? For what's going on above the water or below the water?

Either one. I want to know what blows Chris's mind. Ningaloo Reef in northwest Australia. I think it's like what the great Australian. The Australian Great Barrier Reef used to be like 50 or 80 years ago called Ningaloo Reef, a little place called Coral Bay. You've got to fly out to Perth and go north. It's like the Seattle. If you look at the continent, it's like the Seattle of Australia.

And it is the most pristine body of water I've ever been on. I think we tagged. We went there on a three and a half week trip to try to tag 25 tiger sharks for the Australian science community. And we tagged out in eight days. really yeah and there was like whale sharks everywhere and manorays and crystal clear water no people wide open pelagic fishing just off the beach hasn't been found yet uh it's a special place and they're doing a good job at looking after it there all right one last question personal story so you tell me how stupid this is so a couple of years ago some buddies and i decided we're

going to do a big open water swim there's an open water swim every year from lanai to maui it's And if you know Hawaii, there's a channel and protected water area between Molokai and I and Maui, where it's not real open ocean, right? It's more shallow, but it's also where the whales all go to breed every winter. And so it's nine miles. I was on a relay team, so six guys splitting it up. You're still pretty far out there, though, away from land. And all we thought about ahead of time with sharks, it's all we thought about.

as guys who are not I'm not particularly afraid of sharks but I'm like okay I'm out in the ocean now so we were getting we were looking at stuff online like a electrical probe to trail off of your ankle or whatever it may be Chris

and I will tell you this within two minutes of my relay I was the second man leg and then I went again like you know the rotation goes around more than once within two minutes I stopped thinking about sharks because for two reasons

it's deep deep deep blue There's nothing I could have done. The shark could get me no matter what at any moment. There was nothing I could do. And my biggest challenge wasn't worried about sharks. It was dealing with the ocean chop while I was swimming. Was there anything I was going to be able to do attaching an electrical probe to my ankle or whatever to protect myself on that swim? So, Will, I like math.

I like, you know, have you ever heard of the law of diminishing returns? Yes. Like when the likelihood of something is so, so low, there's nothing you can do to make it lower? Yes. You know, that's what we're talking about. Like, you know, if people want to try to make it so you can't have any interaction with sea life when you go swimming, the lots are already so low, the only way to do that is to basically

not go swimming or, you know, to put a little cage and never leave it, right? So no, you're not worrying about the sharks, you should have been focused on your breathing and maintaining your pace and not worrying about those sorts of things. It's really funny because this fear occurs. Like, let's just play out for just 10 seconds. What would happen if sharks were interested in people and they did want to consume people? What would happen the very first day? A bunch of people get eaten and then we wouldn't go back in the water again.

It would be millions of people eaten every day, you know. Occasionally, we fool them. Occasionally, they make a mistake because we're dangling our feet. in a bait run while the black fin are migrating through east coast of Florida and our foot's the size of the bait and the sharks are in there. And we put ourselves in the middle of the food chain or we put ourselves surfing in cold, you know, the northern latitudes. We're surfing with seals where white sharks are eating them. We still almost never fool them. It's amazing how well they can distinguish us from them. So yeah, no, it's not like the situation in North Australia, like where

they have the crocodiles, like people don't swim there. Right. Right. That's interesting. Yeah. Chris, you, thanks for fighting through the weed eater and the lawnmower in the background there for a certain amount of time. No, I saw him. And I was sitting there watching it going, I don't know what Chris's life is like, but from this distance, it's pretty awesome. Spending so much time on the ocean, knowing so much about sharks, big game fishing. It's an awesome life, man. I appreciate you giving me 30 minutes of it and sharing so many stories about something that I find endlessly fast. I think many people as we approach summer will as well, understanding a little more about sharks. Thank you, man.

Pleasure, Will. Thanks for having me. Look forward to doing it again. Anybody wants to track the white sharks in real time. They can just download the free host search app. I'm Janice Dean. Join me every Sunday as I focus on stories of hope and people who are truly rays of sunshine in their community and across the world. Listen and follow now at Fox Newspodcast.com. There you go. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Chris Fisher of O-Surch. And I hope you will choose reason and fun. Enjoy the ocean. I'll see you again next time.

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