![]() ![]() They couldn't believe it themselves, let alone the general public. In 2001, there were even a lot of shark experts that questioned what we were filming. I was very excited by it because I knew that once the world saw these images of these white sharks blasting out of the water, it would be a complete game-changer. I go, "This can't be real." And he told me, "Yeah, it happens almost every day." So based on conversations with my friend Chris Fallows, I had a pretty good idea that we'd be able to capture that. I'd never seen a great white breach before until a friend of mine sent me a video from South Africa, and I almost thought it was photoshopped. Obviously the first Air Jaws changed the face of Shark Week, but back to before it premiered, was there any nervousness on your part about making it? That you wouldn't capture this behavior you had heard about or that audiences wouldn't connect with it as strongly as they did?Īir Jaws was definitely brand-new territory. Shark Week Revival (Photo: Discovery Channel) I never thought I'd be doing it 30 years in a row, but here we are. So my interest grew by just basically getting in the water with them and seeing how incredible they are, how smart they are, beautiful they are, streamlined, athletic, and it just grew from there. Then an opportunity came along 30 years ago to get involved with his fledgling series on Discovery Channel called "Shark Week."ĭuring the first couple of years when I was working on the series, I became reacquainted with the shark, but still had this Jaws thing hanging in the back of my head that they were man-eaters, killers, but it only takes a few dives with one of these animals to understand that there's a lot more to the shark than what's been portrayed in movies like Jaws. For years, I worked in entertainment, I worked in television news. So I would say that I, initially, was scared to death of sharks. I actually saw it in the theater when it came out and was completely floored and blown away, terrified by that movie. Do you remember when it was that your casual interest in sharks became more of a passion? Plenty of other people, however, never lose that wonder of them. In my experience, everyone loves sharks when they're kids and when some people get older, they lose that fascination with them. So I don't know what the correlation is, but I think there might be a show there someday. And then South Africa, you've got a ton of great whites and you have incredible wine there. A lot of them up off of Northern California, near Napa Valley. They're in New Zealand, great red wine there. Wherever there's great white sharks, there's usually really good red wines. And here's a fun factoid for you that most people don't know. Luckily, great whites seem to live in really cool places like New Zealand and South Africa. Yeah that sounds miserable to be on a boat in South Africa watching 20-foot sharks leap out of the ocean right near you for days on end.Ĭan't complain about that. We actually start naming the sharks, not sure if that's good or bad. It's a little bit of fun for us out in the field when we're floating on the boat for day after day after day. We had one shark named "Rasta." He was pretty mellow, so you can see how that works. Interestingly, great white sharks have personalities a lot like people do, so on occasion, we give them names, and usually it's befitting of some aspect of their personality that stands out. ![]() Wow, I was just expecting a favorite species so having a specific shark is even more impressive. My favorite shark is Colossus, the great white shark, that breached, flew out of the water, about 10 feet away from me in South Africa as I was laying prone on a craft called the "seal sled." Definitely my favorite shark of all time. ![]() Jeff Kurr: I absolutely have a favorite shark. Playing Favorites (Photo: Discovery Channel)Ĭ: This could be the toughest question or it could be the easiest question, but do you have a favorite shark? ![]()
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