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NARRATOR: The great white shark!
Focus.
Power.
Purpose.
Seals are their usual prey of choice.
But what about something bigger?
Much bigger.
South Africa's coast is shark infested.
Massive tigers.
Marauding bulls.
And gangs of blacktips.
They're all here.
It's a predator's playground.
Roughly two million seals live at the southern tip of Africa,
which is why one of the highest concentrations of great whites
on the planet hunt these waters.
Other giants are here, too.
It's the beginning of winter in the Southern Hemisphere.
Great pods of humpback whales like this are heading north.
For four months,
they fed on nutritious krill off Antarctica,
building up blubber reserves for this journey.
Over 30,000 humpbacks make this annual migration.
Their destination, Mozambique,
to give birth to their calves in warm tropical waters.
The ocean off southern Africa is too cold for baby whales.
It's dangerous, too.
Great white sharks dominate these southern waters.
The humpback migration routes
take them right through white shark territory.
So what happens when humpback whales and white sharks
run into each other?
RYAN JOHNSON: Wow.
Away from the boat, away from the boat, away from the boat.
There we go.
NARRATOR: Ryan Johnson is a shark scientist
based in Mossel Bay, South Africa.
He's been studying the white shark population here
for over 20 years.
RYAN: Whoa, there we go!
Oh, she went for it!
NARRATOR: In February 2017 he was flying his drone
during a shark survey when the phone rang.
RYAN: The phone call came in
from the National Sea Rescue Institute
that they had been alerted that there was a whale out at sea.
It looked like it had been wrapped up in longline.
NARRATOR: The whale wasn't moving.
Was it dead?
RYAN: And then the whale breathed and it blew,
and I realized that this whale was still alive.
NARRATOR: Then, Ryan saw something else.
A 14-foot great white shark
headed straight for the young whale.
And it did the unexpected.
It attacked.
RYAN: I know the science and I know the literature,
and I know this has never been seen before.
NARRATOR: It bit the tail,
then it rolled the weakened whale
as if trying to drown it.
This was not some random meeting.
It was a methodical attack on a whale by a great white shark.
A shark that seemed to know just what to do.
Ryan is the first person ever to witness this shark behavior.
He played the drone footage over and over
and suddenly recognized the shark.
He tagged her for research back in 2012.
Her name is Helen.
RYAN: Dorsal fin came up out of the water,
and you could clearly see the satellite tag remnants on her,
plus that distinctive dorsal fin.
Now that she is that shark that hunted a humpback whale,
a living humpback whale, she has sort of marked her place
in the sharks' hall of fame forever,
and she's always gonna be remembered for that.
NARRATOR: Ryan had serious questions.
Is this shark attack a one-time-only event,
or do white sharks really hunt living whales
and we just never see it?
To get some answers, Ryan decides to dig deeper.
He sets off to follow
the 4,000-mile migration route of the humpbacks.
Are there specific places where white sharks ambush the whales?
Do attacks follow a pattern?
And why hunt whales at all
when there are plenty of seals available?
Ryan goes back to what he already knows
about the great white.
11 million years of evolution has made them fast...
agile...
...and calculating.
Most shark species are cold-blooded
and have to stay in warmer waters.
Great whites are one of only seven species
that can raise their internal body temperature.
Being warm-blooded, they keep their edge in cold water,
which is why no seal is safe
off the coast of southern Africa.
For them, white sharks are an almost unbeatable foe.
So, why would white sharks turn to whales?
Off the coast of South Africa,
the sharks have plenty of seals to eat.
Resident colonies of Cape fur seals dot the coastline.
Half of a seal is blubber or fat.
That's what white sharks are after.
A white shark's liver is like a giant fuel tank
where it stores the calories from fat.
Combine enormous energy reserves with warm blood,
big teeth, hydrodynamic shape,
and sharks' super senses,
and you've got a feeding machine.
Spectacular breaches on seal decoys
show just how these sharks have been hunting
for millions of years.
They know how to hunt seals.
So, the question Ryan really wants to answer is,
why would they hunt something much bigger
and much more dangerous?
NARRATOR: Ryan begins his research at Seal Island
just off Mossel Bay, South Africa.
It's a well-known hot spot where great whites hunt seals,
and it's just three and a half miles
from the site of the humpback whale attack.
Seals and humpback whales are as different
as they can possibly be.
What connects them in a shark's brain?
It's well-known that their diet is mostly marine mammals.
But just how selective is the great white?
Ryan runs an experiment
with two different sized seal decoys.
Which one will the sharks attack?
RYAN: For me, this experiment is all about
that cognition of a shark, that decision-making process,
when it weighs up the pros and cons of attacking a prey.
Does it go from that extreme level of success,
that big reward but high risk,
or is it going to be more conservative?
Because this feeds right into the decision-making
Helen had to go through
when she was faced with a whale nine, ten times her size.
She had to be assessing the risk;
the chance of her getting injured;
the chance that she would be unsuccessful;
the chance that her life as a predator could end.
NARRATOR: Do the sharks display
a simple species preference,
or is there something more to their selection?
RYAN: Make this turn as tight as you can,
because there's no swell,
and we just head right up the edge of that island.
Nice one.
A little shark, but hit the little decoy,
hit the little juvenile pup.
Nice, that's what we're looking for.
First breach, number one.
Baby seal.
Okay, decoy back in.
Wow!
Big shark, big breach!
That was massive!
Can you believe it?
And on a juvenile seal.
There we go, we thought so!
Again, small decoy.
Look, we swapped the small seal over to this side,
got the hit on it.
This is getting conclusive now.
NARRATOR: Every breach is on the smaller decoy.
The small seals are low risk
and an almost guaranteed reward.
The sharks make a clear choice.
They're very discerning, which suggests that Helen's attack
on the humpback whale was discerning, too.
At Seal Island, the pickings are easy,
but not all hunting grounds are the same.
Just how adaptable are great white sharks
when conditions are not in their favor?
To find out, Ryan moves from Mossel Bay
to Robberg Nature Reserve 80 miles east along the coast.
Just offshore, the humpbacks are migrating.
The sharks pay no attention.
Like at Seal Island, they're after the pups.
But the sharks can't ambush from the deep here;
the water's too shallow and clear.
Then how do they get the job done?
They're incredibly adaptable.
Hiding behind the adults, pups flounder in the surf.
Ryan has never before had the opportunity
to watch white sharks tested like this.
There's no chance of surprising a seal here.
A shark patrols the cliff face
engaging the prey in plain sight.
It's looking for a single small seal.
But the sharks aren't the only adaptable species here.
The larger seals gang up.
Attack is the best form of defense.
But only to a point.
And the cat-and-mouse game begins.
NARRATOR: Ryan Johnson is at Robberg Nature Reserve
off the coast of South Africa.
A hunt is underway.
Here, conditions favor the prey.
So far, it's seals, one;
white shark, zero.
But great whites don't give up easily,
and they're patient.
Then, a small seal separates from the rest.
It's go time.
The shark strike is so quick the seal is mortally wounded.
Ryan is right beside the shark.
This seal was dozing, vulnerable.
It paid with its life.
RYAN: I cannot believe what I just saw!
Holy moly!
Somebody help us up,
it's not good water to be in at the moment.
Bloomin' heck!
What we just went through.
Damn, Barry.
BARRY SKINSTAD: It's good to be alive.
RYAN: Wow.
That is something else.
I tell you, that's something else.
NARRATOR: It's a clear message.
Against the odds, white sharks are able to pick
the perfect moment and execute.
It's the same ability Helen used
when she attacked the humpback whale.
Nothing random about it.
RYAN: How that shark snuck up and was successful,
one second it was there,
and the next second it was feeding and thrashing.
Yoh.
You think you've witnessed it all,
you think you've seen it all, but you ain't seen nothing
until you've been in the water with a hunting great white.
NARRATOR: Hunting great whites have one very subtle ability
over all the others.
They can detect the moment of maximum vulnerability
and exploit it.
Helen used her intuition when she went after the big whale,
and she had extra motivation to do that.
In winter, small seals are plentiful and easy prey,
but in the spring when the seals have grown up,
they're more difficult to catch.
So, the sharks must adapt their diet.
What would a big great white risk then
for a bellyful of blubber?
An attack on a whale?
Perhaps.
Over 30,000 humpback whales migrate through sharky waters
off the coast of South Africa.
They're headed to Mozambique.
Humpbacks are the fifth largest whale species.
They can reach up to 60 feet and weigh a staggering 40 tons.
That's three times longer than the world's largest
great white shark and 30 times heavier.
The whales are big and strong enough
to injure or kill a healthy white shark.
But that blubber jackpot might be too tempting to pass up.
Now it's midwinter in the Southern Hemisphere.
This blue wilderness has many players,
and they're all on the move.
Ryan must keep track of it all.
He's watching the movements of great whites.
Do they follow the whales as they move north?
Helen has made this journey before.
In the winter of 2016,
she was tracked all the way to Mozambique.
That's where the whales go every year
to breed the next generation of humpbacks.
Was Helen waiting for them?
Ryan's searching hard for evidence
of white shark and humpback interaction,
and that Helen's attack on the humpback whale
was anything but random.
During this time of year,
there's a great gathering of marine species.
A vast run of sardines headed in the same direction.
It's one of the ocean's greatest feeding events
and lures predators of all kinds.
Dolphins, gannets, seals,
thousands of sharks and hundreds of whales.
Ryan looks for whales with bite marks or wounds;
hard evidence of shark attacks.
These are Bryde's whales.
They're here to feed.
But the humpbacks don't join in.
They simply keep going.
Do they get ambushed as they go by?
Finding scars or wounds might mean yes.
RYAN: So, we've just come across our first resting humpback.
This is a good chance to get in and start looking
for shark bites and shark wounds on these humpbacks.
Oh, there's, a shark just jumped.
See that? A shark just jumped. Nice!
And what I'm hoping to get is to look for some scars,
some evidence of shark bites,
and then we know that it's possibly a more common behavior
than we first expected.
Wow, look at that, okay.
NARRATOR: The whale is pec-slapping,
slapping its pectoral fin on the surface
signaling to other whales nearby.
Ryan must be careful.
He didn't see any bite marks,
but he has seen footage of a subadult
badly bitten...
and badly bitten by a mob of sharks.
NARRATOR: This young humpback is the victim
of a shark attack.
The rare footage shows open wounds made by sharks
trying to get at the blubber beneath the skin.
But the bites are too small for a great white.
And with so many bites, it must have been a shiver of sharks.
Likely duskies chasing the sardine run.
Dusky sharks don't work alone.
Could a school of them take down a whale?
This evidence suggests that they tried.
Yet somehow this young whale escaped with its life
and kept going.
The migrating humpbacks have only one objective now:
the safehouse of Mozambique.
It's a whale birthing paradise
far from the usual hunting grounds of great white sharks.
Vulnerable baby whales can nurse, grow and gain strength.
The adults have traveled 4,000 miles to safety.
The warm water and lack of predators
give their species the best chance of survival.
It's a magical time.
The whales spend up to four months mating, birthing,
and nursing their young.
This is their time to bond and interact.
But these adult whales have not eaten
since they left Antarctica months ago.
Their strength diminishes each day,
and the time is coming when all of them, adults and calves,
will have to swim the 4,000 miles
back to Antarctica to feed.
RYAN: After four months up at Mozambique,
they start this return migration down,
and that's when it's going to get really interesting,
'cause at that stage you're going to have these weak whales,
these whales that haven't fed up enough that have been starved
for the last four or five months.
And as they go down, they're gonna be the ones
that I think are really vulnerable to attack by sharks.
NARRATOR: Now it's springtime,
and the humpback whales begin the journey south,
back to Antarctica.
Everything works against them.
New mothers dig into precious energy reserves
to produce 100 pounds of milk a day.
RYAN: So, look at this.
You can see that utter, utter commitment of these whales
to get back to Antarctica.
She's been up at Mozambique for the last three, four months
feeding that baby, getting its blubber layer up,
getting it ready for those cold waters of Antarctica.
And now she's got one mission,
and that's to get down past South Africa,
across to Antarctica and get back to the food.
You know, you look at this coastline,
and it looks pristine, it looks beautiful,
but what is hidden is the amount of perils
that these whales face.
There's shipping lanes here, there's nets,
there's longliners, there's shark bather protection nets.
And it's when they get entangled,
it's when they get weakened, it's when they get isolated
from each other that they become vulnerable to shark attacks.
NARRATOR: Helen's attack on a humpback happened
at the end of summer during this return trip to Antarctica.
The whale she attacked was tangled up
in heavy fishing line
and all alone.
Humpback whales have close family bonds,
but the safety of the pod comes first.
Stragglers are left behind.
This humpback was still
2,000 miles from Antarctica.
It was weak and vulnerable;
everything a white shark looks for in a victim.
Worst of all, it was alone in white shark territory.
NARRATOR: The grueling migration back to Antarctica
can be fatal to whales.
Some are too old, too weak or just unlucky.
When a whale dies, it's like a dinner bell for sharks.
They didn't kill it,
but that doesn't matter.
Whale blubber is pure fat.
Sharks convert the fat to energy,
which they store in their massive livers.
They'd have to kill 200 seals to get the same energy boost.
Of course, sharks scavenging dead whales
is not new to science.
But a great white attacking a living whale is new.
Just what would a shark do for a mouthful of whale?
If the right opportunity came along,
would they go in for the kill?
Killing a live whale is vastly different
to scavenging a carcass.
RYAN: And what struck me was just how patient,
just how strategic Helen was
when she was going about this attack.
She wasn't trying to eat, she was trying to weaken,
she was trying to slow down.
She was trying to slowly overcome this whale
before even considering feeding on it.
NARRATOR: To do that,
Helen attacked the whale's tail first.
A washed-up carcass reveals just how difficult it is
for a shark to get the better of a whale.
RYAN: This tail is one of the main power forces
for any humpback whale.
It can literally propel one of the whales, a 40-ton whale,
18 meters out of the water.
So, even for the biggest, strongest great white shark,
if it took a knock by one of these,
it's tickets for the shark.
What was clear was on that weak whale,
the first place the great white targeted
was right here on the tail, on the keel.
And the idea is, and I reckon if I cut in here, we'll see it,
is that these big veins that go here,
supplying energy to this muscle.
With the white shark targeting this area here,
essentially what it could do was open up a vein,
let the whale bleed out and then when it was very, very weak,
almost dead, target it and actually try to go and kill it.
NARRATOR: This is exactly what Helen does.
She bites the whale's tail again and again.
Eventually blood begins to pour out.
Then, as the whale grows weaker,
Helen does something no one has ever seen a shark do before.
NARRATOR: For the first time in shark science,
Ryan witnesses a single white shark killing a humpback whale.
The whale is tangled up in fishing line, weak and alone.
White sharks are experts at assessing vulnerability.
The young humpback has been left behind by the pod.
There's no escape.
RYAN: Was Helen cognizant of this? Most likely.
And it begs the question,
would this attack even have been contemplated
if this whale was at full strength?
And I think probably not.
NARRATOR: Helen uses the same strategy
white sharks use when hunting seals.
She's watchful and patient,
assessing the whale's strength and ability to resist.
The whale's life slowly bleeds away.
Helen patiently waits.
It's typical great white hunting behavior,
but adapted for a whale.
Helen waits until the whale is most vulnerable.
Her shark sense tells her when that moment has come.
RYAN: So then she changed her entire strategy
and started focusing on the head.
Basically, like this shark had done,
she grips onto this and she essentially puts all her weight,
taking the head of the whale down.
NARRATOR: She uses the weight of her body
to shove the whale's head underwater.
Her goal is to drown it.
The great white is methodical.
She knows just what to do.
RYAN: And there is a chance that Helen,
the shark that attacked this whale,
has in fact learned this behavior,
and it is unique to her.
But on the other hand, it could have been
that it's just a very common behavior,
that for some reason scientists around the world
have not been able to observe before.
NARRATOR: When Ryan compiles this video evidence together
with the footage of Helen's methodical expert attack,
he arrives at just one conclusion.
White sharks are going after whales
more often than we think.
After 50 minutes of patient, persistent effort,
the whale draws its last breath
and Helen succeeds in drowning it.
RYAN: Filming it and actually documenting,
you get conclusive evidence that great white sharks
can in fact predate and hunt on whales,
and that's brand new to science.
It's never been seen before, never been documented before,
and it opens up an entirely new avenue of research.
NARRATOR: Helen, the white shark,
found vulnerability and opportunity.
She calculated the risks, successfully took down
not a seal, but a whale, and ate her reward.
Great white sharks are among the most lethal and effective
apex predators on the planet,
and Helen is likely not the only whale hunter
on this coast.
Captioned by Side Door Media Services