Expedition Great White: Cue the Music!

I've seen Jaws, Jaws II and Jaws III more times than any beachlover ever should, but I can't help it. I love those shark movies. So when National Geographic sent me a screener for their new series Expedition Great White, I couldn't wait to see if a real shark hunt was anything like the hunts in the movies. Let's just say that at one point, someone utters that famous line, "we're going to need a bigger boat," and they mean it!

Expedition Great White follows a scientist, two expert fisherman, a chef and an actor on a mission to snag and tag every great white shark off the coast of Guadalupe Island, Mexico. Dr. Michael Domeier is a shark expert and he's developed a satellite tracking device that will help him figure out some fishy mysteries surrounding sharks. Domeier has been cataloging sharks for years and he's caught, tagged and named nearly a hundred. What's so startling about this series is that in the first few episodes, they actually manage to catch several of the named sharks giving credence to Domeier's theory that this particular area is a mating spot. The odd thing is, the male sharks return to the spot every year, but the females only come every other year. Why is the question.

Maybe the female sharks need a year off after mating in order to raise their young. Or maybe they simply don't have the sex drive of their male counterparts so they blow them off every other year for a girls night out in the Bahamas. Domeier hopes that his new tracking device (which is more sophisticated than the old ones) will help solve the mystery - that is, if he can catch enough females. In the episodes I watched, he didn't get many.

What he did get were several enormous males who were "hard" and full of sperm. Who knew National Geographic could be so racy! In each episode, the fishermen put out bait for the sharks, then, when they take it, weigh them down with buoys just like the barrels in the Jaws movies. They then pile into a small boat and follow the shark until it tires out, at which point they reel it in and swing it into a submerged cradle that comes down off the side of their ship. They pen the shark, and then, in a process that reminded me of a pit crew at the Indy 500, they irrigate the shark, restrain it, take measurements, blood samples and photos -- all in under 20 minutes. When the time is up, they have to release the shark or it will die. Releasing isn't always as easy as dropping the cradle back into the water. A couple of times actor Paul Walker has to get up close and personal with the fish to help it get turned around and out the door.

“It’s a thrill. You got to be quick to react," says Fast and the Furious star Paul Walker. "A 3,000-pound fish is gonna pull you in the water
and his buddies are waiting down below to take chunks out of you.”

And if you think the sharks are scary, wait until you see the Mexican Federales that insist on boarding the boat!

Expedition Great White premieres Sunday, June 6, 2010, at 9 p.m. with back-to-back episodes on National Geographic Channel. In "Feeding Frenzy" they catch a 15 foot male and one feisty female. Then it's "Fresh Kill." Running out of time and bait, the crew follow a flock of birds to a fresh kill which leads them to their biggest catch ever. After that, watch new episodes of Expedition Great White every Sunday at 10:00 for the rest of June.

Here are some clips:

Guadalupe Island, Mexico: (Left to right) Captain Brett McBride, Dr. Michael Domeier, Chris Fischer and Whitey Evans mount an antenna to the dorsal fin of a great white shark. (photo credit: © Chris Ross/Chris Fischer)