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  • 4 days ago
River.Monsters.S09E01
Transcript
00:00:00I'm Jeremy Wade. I'm an explorer and biologist.
00:00:07Fishing is my passion.
00:00:11One of the most extraordinary catches of my life.
00:00:14Time and again, this passion has helped me solve both fresh water and marine mysteries.
00:00:20This thing really is a river monster.
00:00:24Now, I'm taking on the biggest and maybe most complex investigation of my career.
00:00:30This is an absolute beast.
00:00:32A dramatic story of untold deaths.
00:00:37Of 2,500 souls shipwrecked in the mid-Atlantic.
00:00:43And the horrific fate of over a thousand who never made it.
00:00:48The screaming. The screams were just terrible.
00:00:52A story that's never been fully told.
00:00:56Right here, fin on the surface.
00:00:58This investigation will lead me on a global journey to uncover what really happened in the water that night.
00:01:04It will take me deeper than I've ever been before.
00:01:07Down into the abyss.
00:01:09To confront sea monsters in their own domain.
00:01:13I feel like an astronaut landing on the moon.
00:01:16The sinking of the British passenger steamer, RMS Laconia, has haunted me since I first heard about it.
00:01:39It's one of the most famous stories of the Second World War.
00:01:43I've learned about dramatic new evidence that suggests there's far more to this story than first meets the eye.
00:01:51On September the 12th, 1942, the RMS Laconia was sailing in the mid-Atlantic bound for England.
00:02:05She was carrying civilians and soldiers returning home.
00:02:08And hundreds of Italian prisoners of war bound for internment camps in the UK.
00:02:14Several days from safety and hundreds of miles from land, she was attacked by a German U-boat.
00:02:21Two torpedoes struck her starboard side in quick succession.
00:02:26The Laconia started to take in water fast.
00:02:30Accounts talk of stunned passengers and crew scrambling to escape.
00:02:36Italian POWs broke out of their holding cells and tried to force their way off the stricken ship.
00:02:43Some attempted to board the already overloaded lifeboats, but were fought off by Allied soldiers.
00:02:52The scene turned into a bloodbath.
00:02:58At first glance, this is an open and shut case.
00:03:03For decades, it has been assumed that most of the passengers and POWs drowned.
00:03:08And those who didn't, were taken by sharks.
00:03:13But I've always wondered whether that was the whole story.
00:03:17My previous investigations have often shown that the answer is seldom what is first assumed.
00:03:24And now, I have a chance to find the true culprits.
00:03:28Because buried deep inside this archive, I've discovered a forgotten cache of eyewitness accounts.
00:03:35Full of clues that could turn this story on its head.
00:03:38Many hundreds of people ended up in the water where some mysteriously just disappeared.
00:03:47Dragged beneath the surface with only their life jackets ever re-emerging.
00:03:52Bodies found by rescuers days later had been attacked by creatures in the water.
00:03:59And of those, a number showed bite marks that still don't point to any obvious perpetrator.
00:04:04This new evidence suggests multiple mystery attackers.
00:04:14But what were they?
00:04:18With over a thousand victims, this will be a huge and complex case.
00:04:22But using the accounts of those who lived through it, I'm going to find out what happened to those who didn't.
00:04:35The people who wrote those eyewitness accounts are long gone.
00:04:38But there is one survivor who I have managed to find.
00:04:45I'm on my way to meet a woman who was actually on the Lacomia that night.
00:04:51She is one of only a handful of survivors who are still alive today.
00:04:56At the time, she was just a 14-year-old girl.
00:05:01And she was fleeing the war in Singapore.
00:05:04And she was travelling with her mother, her father and her brother.
00:05:26What happened when suddenly it was no longer normality on the boat at that point?
00:05:36Well, it was eight o'clock.
00:05:38And the first torpedo struck.
00:05:40It was awful.
00:05:42But by the time you gathered your senses, the second one hit.
00:05:46Josephine and her family only had minutes to get up on deck.
00:05:50My father threw the life jackets at us.
00:05:53And he said, come on, the lifeboat stations.
00:05:58We dropped everything, rushed out of the cabin.
00:06:04The screaming, the screams were just terrible.
00:06:09It was total, total chaos.
00:06:14They lowered our lifeboat to the sea.
00:06:18And the minute it hit the water,
00:06:20people were trying to climb into it as well.
00:06:24They were having to be pushed away.
00:06:27We couldn't take anymore.
00:06:30I witnessed an Italian person of war being shot by a man in our lifeboat.
00:06:37He was trying to get on.
00:06:40And he was shot.
00:06:42That was war.
00:06:44War at its worst.
00:06:46So the men rode, and they rode, and they rode.
00:06:52And we managed to get quite away from the ship.
00:06:56And when we looked, the stern came up.
00:06:59And then it went down, and then everywhere was pitch black.
00:07:05The next day I realised the water was pink because there was so much blood.
00:07:13And that was when I realised that there were sharks.
00:07:17There were sharks.
00:07:19Because you could see the tips of the fins at one stage.
00:07:23And then, you know, now and again you'd get one a bit nearer.
00:07:27Because they'd been circling the boat.
00:07:30It was awful.
00:07:31I'm not surprised that Josephine saw sharks.
00:07:37I know they are part of this story.
00:07:39But tellingly, she says that she didn't see them until the next day.
00:07:44I know that in the immediate aftermath, people were attacked by something.
00:07:49But if it wasn't sharks, then what was it?
00:07:53This is the biggest case I have looked into by far.
00:07:58When you're looking at something that happened in the middle of 75 million square miles of ocean,
00:08:05where on earth do you start?
00:08:11The Laconia's last recorded position was 5 degrees south and 11 degrees west,
00:08:17in around 12,000 feet of water, 700 miles from mainland Africa.
00:08:22Trying to operate at the site of the sinking would be a logistical impossibility.
00:08:34But I get lucky.
00:08:36I receive permission to travel to a military base.
00:08:39A tiny speck of land just 250 miles from where the Laconia went down,
00:08:44known as Ascension Island.
00:08:45Ascension is one of the most remote islands anywhere on earth.
00:08:55It's right slap bang in the middle of the Atlantic, sort of halfway between Africa and South America.
00:09:01But most importantly for me, it's the closest I can get to the scene of the incident.
00:09:06Ascension is a British and US military base, and travel to the island is heavily controlled.
00:09:16Evening.
00:09:18Have you got to Ascension?
00:09:20Yes, Ascension flight too.
00:09:22Gaining access to Ascension is one thing, but now my whole investigation hinges on what fish I find when I get there.
00:09:30I've managed to gain permission to travel to one of the most remote and secretive islands on earth.
00:09:57Ascension Island.
00:09:58No one lives here permanently.
00:10:03The vast majority of the 800 or so personnel are on military contracts.
00:10:09What they do is not public knowledge.
00:10:13And some areas of the island are strictly off limits.
00:10:18But it's the vast expanse of water around this speck of land that interests me.
00:10:24Very few people get to fish here, either recreationally or commercially, which means that the species that are here now are going to be the same ones that were here in 1942.
00:10:37There's a 200 mile exclusion zone around the island, so although these waters are fished by a handful of locals, they've been protected from large scale commercial fishing for decades.
00:10:52To help me assemble a suspect list for the Laconia disaster, I've brought with me the eyewitness accounts from the archive.
00:11:09But they are proving as frustrating as they are useful, tantalizingly hinting at a number of underwater attackers without providing the detail that could lead me to a positive ID.
00:11:24But one thing does come across clearly, and it flies in the face of conventional wisdom in such cases.
00:11:35The accounts are unanimous in stating that sharks were not the first attackers on the scene.
00:11:42So what was?
00:11:44One thing I'm coming across again and again is that a lot of the people in the water that night speak of being attacked by schools of large, aggressive silvery fish.
00:11:55Take this from Ian Peel, who was one of the many people who was in the water who hadn't been able to get a place in a lifeboat.
00:12:10Immediately I heard cries of shark.
00:12:14But it wasn't shark I saw, but huge numbers of large silvery fish slicing and attacking at will.
00:12:20Even more formidable than a shark.
00:12:25The obvious culprit is the Barracuda.
00:12:31A fish I've encountered before.
00:12:34But I can eliminate them from the suspect list, because ferocious as they are, they tend to school and hunt around coastal reefs, not in deep open ocean.
00:12:50So what exactly was Ian Peel describing?
00:12:55The mid-Atlantic is new territory for me, and I'm working with limited information.
00:13:00But somewhere out there, there's the silvery predator that was first on the laconia scene.
00:13:04And I've got to work out a way to find it.
00:13:05And I've got to work out a way to find it.
00:13:07The mid-Atlantic is new territory for me, and I'm working with limited information.
00:13:13But somewhere out there, there's the silvery predator that was first on the laconia scene.
00:13:19And I've got to work out a way to find it.
00:13:22The best way to cover a large search area is to use a technique called trolling.
00:13:39Whenever you're fishing, the biggest question is, where are you going to put your bait?
00:13:44And in this immensity of water, that's a very big question.
00:13:47But with the island here, there's a plateau where it gradually gets deeper, out to a couple of hundred feet.
00:13:55And then in a very short space, it plunges down to a couple of thousand and then keeps on going.
00:13:59And what we're going to do is fish on the move and just go along the drop-off with lures out the back.
00:14:09The survivors' accounts describe the fish that drew first blood as being medium-sized and fast.
00:14:17So that's what I'm going for.
00:14:19On the big rod, we're going to put this.
00:14:22You can see that mimics a fish in the water.
00:14:24This is quite significant because what happens, the water catches that as we're moving and it pushes it down.
00:14:30It makes it dive and it gets a good wiggle on.
00:14:33Cirrus hooks on here.
00:14:35Thick wire because quite likely if anything hits this, it's going to have teeth.
00:14:39In fact, you can see it's been hit a few times by some toothy creatures.
00:14:44So off we go.
00:14:50We work our way along the drop-off.
00:14:53To increase my chances of a take in the vast mid-Atlantic, I have two different lures working at the surface and two deeper down.
00:15:01The lures have definitely got the attention of the birds, so they've got to look fairly convincing.
00:15:06The fact is, it's something happening on the surface here which just gets, triggers the attention.
00:15:11And we're hoping the same will happen beneath the surface as well, getting fish to come up and investigate.
00:15:15As first on the Laconia scene, my silvery suspect was clearly curious and quick.
00:15:22So who's going to be first to hit?
00:15:24This is steaming away, steaming away.
00:15:30I'm in the mid-Atlantic, on the trail of a mystery silvery predator that was said to be first on the scene of a major maritime disaster.
00:15:50Screaming's ache!
00:15:53After trying different lures, I finally have a hit.
00:16:04Is that off or is it just coming towards me?
00:16:06Yeah, that was hooked up for 20 seconds or so, but it came off.
00:16:22Sometimes happens.
00:16:23It's interesting, you're just covering water, covering water, nothing's happening, nothing's happening, and then just out of nowhere, suddenly the reel is screaming.
00:16:31But in this case, just as quickly, it's gone.
00:16:50Dolphins beside the boat.
00:16:52This is a really good sign, the rod tip's really banging away there, and that's indicative of the lure down there really pushing out some vibrations.
00:17:09It's like the dinagong going off, and I've got a good feeling about that.
00:17:13Out here in the middle of the ocean, there's no significant land mass to stop the huge Atlantic swells.
00:17:31Then, another take on the same rod.
00:17:34This time, I'm hoping it will stay hooked.
00:17:36This is steaming away, steaming away.
00:17:49Haven't seen it yet, at all.
00:17:56It's quite a rapid kick, whatever it is.
00:18:02I think I've got a bit of colour, I can see something down there.
00:18:04I've landed a silvery fish, and an energetic one, but is this the fish that drew first blood?
00:18:24Skipjack.
00:18:26It's almost like a bit of metal, isn't it?
00:18:28Amazing the energy it's got.
00:18:29It's actually very mirror-like, and actually in open water.
00:18:33That's very effective for camouflage, if you're about the same kind of depth as that.
00:18:37It's just going to bounce the light off, and it's almost going to disappear into the background.
00:18:41But then if you're looking down on it, it's dark.
00:18:44So it's perfect countershading.
00:18:48I don't think this skipjack is the silvery predator that the eyewitnesses talk about.
00:18:52These fish just don't have the hardware to inflict the sort of wounds described.
00:19:02I'm going to try a different approach, by using to my advantage the strong currents that swirl around the island.
00:19:08Maybe it was scent rather than sight that brought in the predators that night.
00:19:14There's a whole sardine on the end here, and the boat is drifting, so we're just going to slowly drift.
00:19:22We'll keep some chum going in the water, just to bring the small stuff in, get some activity going, and hopefully bring in the bigger predators.
00:19:37Oils from these pieces of fish leave scent trails in the water, and the predators here quickly find my bait.
00:19:58Something fast almost empties my reel.
00:20:00Fish, um, took it right next to the boat. Look at that thing go, leaping in the air.
00:20:23The fish is desperately trying to throw the hook.
00:20:26Then...
00:20:37My line goes slack.
00:20:42Oh, it's still there, it's just running towards me.
00:20:51I don't have any doubt about these waters being rich.
00:20:54Here's a bit of confirmation there.
00:21:00Oh, this is a good-sized dorado on.
00:21:07This clearly isn't a silvery assailant, but it is a powerful predator in its own right, and worth a closer look.
00:21:14Beautiful fish. Look at that. Dorado means gold, but look at all the blue on there. Also known as mahi-mahi dolphin fish.
00:21:24Those acrobatic leaps are totally in character for a hunter that takes out flying fish.
00:21:32It's still got a lot of strength, I can feel it flexing.
00:21:34But despite their obvious strength and agility, dorados have never been known to pose a threat to humans.
00:21:43Off it goes.
00:21:44Oh, strong fish.
00:21:45These waters are teeming with predators, but so far my catches don't match the descriptions in the eyewitness reports.
00:21:56Doubts are creeping into my mind. The information I have is just too scant. My search parameters are too wide.
00:22:09Given the richness of these waters and the sheer scale of the search area, I need to somehow narrow my focus to stand any chance of catching this elusive killer.
00:22:21I go back to the eyewitness accounts and come across one with an interesting clue.
00:22:32Jim McLaughlin was deep inside the ship when the first torpedo hit.
00:22:38He writes that the noise was crushing, that it felt like he'd been punched in the head by a powerful fist of sound, turning his head to putty.
00:22:49He goes on to say that inside the laconia, pandemonium had erupted.
00:22:56People screaming, everyone pushing and shoving, clutching at his legs.
00:23:01Some of them falling back into the darkness of the hold below.
00:23:08Jim made it off the stricken laconia to the relative safety of an emergency raft.
00:23:12But it's in the water where his problems really began.
00:23:18He writes that he was resting on the raft, alone in the pitch dark of the night, when suddenly he felt the most excruciating pain in his left calf.
00:23:27He drew his legs onto the raft in a blind panic, and his first thought was that he'd been bitten by a shark.
00:23:38But when he looked down at his calf, he saw gruesome, fang-like puncture marks.
00:23:43There are any number of predatory schooling fish like the two I've already found in these waters, but this new evidence narrows my search.
00:23:57Jim's description of fangs is striking, and could be a breakthrough lead.
00:24:02There is one schooling predator that might fit the bill, with silvery flanks and vicious fangs.
00:24:12It's a member of the snake mackerel family, and it inhabits a vast range throughout the Atlantic.
00:24:19It's called the snook.
00:24:22At this time of year, though, they aren't in open ocean, but in vast breeding schools along the coast of South Africa.
00:24:29So that's where I'm headed.
00:24:33The snook could be the fish that drew first blood the night the Laconia went down.
00:24:39But to be sure, I need to catch one.
00:24:46I'm fishing out of Cape Town, the port that the Laconia sailed from on its fateful final voyage.
00:24:53It was a month northwest of here that she went down, leaving hundreds floundering in the mid-Atlantic waters.
00:25:00Now, the snook are normally out in the open ocean, middle of the Atlantic, but at certain times of year they do come in close to land, and I'm told that right now, this time of year, if I go fishing in the water here, I stand a chance of catching one and having a good look at one.
00:25:22Before I can get one on my line, I have to find out where the snook are schooling.
00:25:33And in such a huge expanse of water, I'm going to need a little help.
00:25:38Now, sometimes the birds give a bit of a clue because they'll be, you know, they've got that bird's eye view and they can see bait fish being chased, but we're using technology as well.
00:25:49We're basically keeping an eye on the sonar screen because that doesn't just tell you where the bottom is, how far away that is, it will show up fish as well.
00:25:58But time might be against me. This is Cape Point at the southerly tip of Africa, known here as the Cape of Storms.
00:26:13It's three hours before we get the first sign of fish.
00:26:17Are they still there?
00:26:18He's right here. He's right under us.
00:26:20According to the sonar, we're right above a school of fish.
00:26:24There could be anything between a couple of hundreds to a thousand fish down there.
00:26:29So what I'm using is this. This is actually, it's lead with a bit of colouration on it.
00:26:35And I'm just dropping that down to the bottom and that's what they go for.
00:26:40These Cape Fir seals sense that there might be an opportunity for easy prey.
00:26:45Let's see what happens when a small bait fish imitation runs the gauntlet.
00:26:56The sonar only tells me so much. I know there's fish down there, but are they snook?
00:27:07Here we go.
00:27:08Whatever I catch, I'll need to get it in the boat fast to avoid it being snatched off the line.
00:27:14Just retrieving it a bit erratically. Here we go. That's one. That's one.
00:27:18I'm off the coast of South Africa, attempting to find out what happened to passengers of the doomed RMS Laconia.
00:27:37Here we go.
00:27:39I'm chasing down a fanged open ocean predator. The probable match for what some eyewitnesses described seeing in the water that night.
00:27:49Just retrieving it a bit erratically. Here we go. That's one. That's one.
00:27:53This feels like a good size. This is taking line out. This fish is stronger than I anticipated.
00:28:09I'm trying to bring it in quickly because there's seals around. That's the problem.
00:28:17There it is. There it is. There it is.
00:28:23It is a sleek silvery predator, but is it the culprit?
00:28:31Here we go.
00:28:34Right. I'm being very careful, actually, not to get too close to this because not only has it got very sharp teeth,
00:28:41but also, apparently, if one of these does bite you, if it draws blood, there's anticoagulant there.
00:28:46You just won't stop bleeding for hours. So I'm looking as close as I dare, but not too close.
00:28:54But this is what I came here all this way for. Open ocean, schooling fish, they're fast, predatory.
00:29:00Was this the silvery fish that they were talking about, the survivors of the Laconia?
00:29:06And in terms of puncture marks, well, that is going to cause a puncture mark.
00:29:10What I'm seeing now does indeed point to Snook being the first fish on the scene the night the Laconia went down.
00:29:18Whether it was just chance or the commotion of hundreds of people thrashing on the surface that brought them in, we'll never know.
00:29:24But it appears that the people in the water encountered a school of these fanged, ferocious fish.
00:29:36Snook aren't going to kill you, but perhaps their activity helped to call in other predators.
00:29:43I've landed one suspect, but I've got unfinished business back at Ascension Island,
00:29:48because the more I dig into the eyewitness accounts, the more they reveal.
00:29:54The thing is, normally I don't have very much to go on, but in this particular case, the sheer quantity of information is starting to make things quite complicated.
00:30:07Some of the injuries described by eyewitnesses were clearly not caused by any of the usual suspects.
00:30:14So it's these unusual wounds that I now want to turn my attention to.
00:30:18One account is particularly interesting.
00:30:29Five days after the Laconia was sunk, a French rescue vessel arrived at the scene to search for survivors.
00:30:35Some of the bodies they pulled out were covered in highly unusual bite marks.
00:30:44In the words of the account, these were neat round holes, as if made by a punch.
00:30:50But then I see something matching this description with my own eyes.
00:31:00And fishermen here tell me that this is not uncommon.
00:31:03This fresh one?
00:31:04Look at these marks on this Dorado.
00:31:09Circular wound here. Another one here.
00:31:13The beginnings of one there.
00:31:15And on the other side, these are all fresh.
00:31:19These are caused by something called a cookie cutter shark, which is a small species of shark.
00:31:24It lives fairly deep down during the daytime.
00:31:26But what it does, it comes up at night and it's a sort of a sneak stealth attacker.
00:31:31I mean, you think of a Dorado.
00:31:33This is a fast fish.
00:31:34You know, normally you're not going to catch one of these things.
00:31:36But the cookie cutter comes in very quickly and it bites a very clean plug of flesh out of it.
00:31:43I want to learn more about this elusive and unusual creature.
00:31:46Looking through pictures of other bites strengthens the case against the cookie cutter.
00:32:05These wounds are significantly bigger.
00:32:10Although this unusual predator may be small, less than two feet long,
00:32:15its bite can cause serious damage.
00:32:22And yet, that signature bite mark is just about the only evidence that cookie cutters even exist.
00:32:29One thing that is known about them is that they rise towards the surface at night to feed.
00:32:35So in the evening, I head out to try and find signs of one for myself.
00:32:40As far as I'm aware, the cookie cutter has never been caught on a line.
00:32:44So this is a very long shot.
00:32:48But at the very least, I might see what else is feeding in these waters after dark.
00:32:53At the time the laconia went down.
00:32:56We're just trying to get into position on the drop off.
00:33:03About 300 foot of water is what we're looking for.
00:33:06And then we're going to drop down the anchor.
00:33:08And we're going to stay here into the night.
00:33:10The laconia was hit at around 8pm and sank by 9.30, leaving its stranded passengers with a full night of horror ahead.
00:33:27Here on the equator, you don't get long evenings, it gets dark very quickly, sort of 7 o'clock-ish, something like that.
00:33:36And now 9.30, pitch dark, has been for a couple of hours.
00:33:42I'm using pieces of tuna that I'm going to send down to the bottom.
00:33:52I'm hoping this might at least bring evidence of a cookie cutter.
00:33:55The Atlantic at night is eerily quiet, and apart from the small pool of light from our boat, pitch black.
00:34:09I can't help but make the connection between this boat and the laconia, and also this time of night.
00:34:19This is about the time of night that the boat went down, and those hundreds of people ended up in this water.
00:34:33Now, it's just about keeping alert.
00:34:35And feeling for a movement on my line.
00:34:45The movement, when it comes, almost pulls me in.
00:34:58That's quite a rapid tail beat right now.
00:35:05Yeah, this feels quite heavy.
00:35:06It's...
00:35:09Contrasting, it's actually coming up quite quickly.
00:35:12So...
00:35:19Here we go.
00:35:22Wow.
00:35:26This is a horse-eyed jack.
00:35:28Took down there in about 300 foot of water.
00:35:31These are sometimes known as big-eyed jacks.
00:35:34They see well in the dark and at depths.
00:35:37They probably share nighttime territory with the cookie cutter.
00:35:40But there are no bite marks to suggest that this one has had an encounter.
00:35:44OK, I'm going to put this back.
00:35:50I load the hook again.
00:35:51And it's not long before something else takes the bait.
00:36:06After its initial pull, it suddenly develops an extraordinary burst of power.
00:36:10It's going.
00:36:12Right.
00:36:14Oh, it's just going.
00:36:15It's just going.
00:36:16It's just going.
00:36:17It's going.
00:36:18It's going.
00:36:20It takes everything I've got to stop it.
00:36:22This is something that took the right on the bottom.
00:36:26Oh, here we go.
00:36:27Here it is.
00:36:28There it is.
00:36:30What's that?
00:36:32Ah.
00:36:33Oh.
00:36:34Oh, it's just going to be right on the bottom.
00:36:36There we go.
00:36:37Here it is.
00:36:38There it is.
00:36:40What's that?
00:36:43Ah!
00:36:45Oh.
00:36:46I'm fishing in the Atlantic Ocean, in the same waters where the RMS Laconia went down.
00:37:04Here we go, here it is, here it is.
00:37:06I've just brought up a hefty amberjack from the deep, but I'm not the only hunter out tonight.
00:37:12It's half an amberjack, sharks, but it already, when I hooked it, it ran off, stopped, and then
00:37:20it went a second time, and actually now that I think about it, that second time, it was
00:37:24more powerful, and what that was, was actually a shark hanging on to this.
00:37:30I think moving on, what I've got to do, I've got to fish heavier line, bigger reel to hold
00:37:34that line, heavy wire on the end, possibly a bigger boat.
00:37:42So, I didn't find any evidence of the elusive cookie cutters, but from what the fishermen
00:37:48showed me, I know they're in these waters.
00:37:58The question facing me now, is what's down there that can bite a 25-pound fish clean in
00:38:03half?
00:38:05Perhaps now is the time to find out what bigger sharks are hunting in these waters, and this
00:38:14time, I'm well prepared.
00:38:17I'm just getting some chum cut up to go in the water.
00:38:32Small bits of fish, which will just keep trickling in there at intervals.
00:38:38This creates a certain amount of scent in the water, but the other thing it does, it will
00:38:41bring in small fish, and then the activity of those will bring in larger fish.
00:38:49So, we're creating an event here, we're creating something to make this bit of ocean stand out
00:38:57from all the other space out there.
00:39:02I know that sharks have an extraordinary ability to pick up scent, but in such an immensity
00:39:07of water, chumming almost seems futile.
00:39:09But I keep the chum going in, which keeps the bait fish feeding near the boat.
00:39:24Then, I get a faint movement on the line.
00:39:37Whatever has taken the bait speeds off.
00:39:45What ensues is a battle that's still in progress an hour later.
00:39:49I winch it in, turn by painful turn.
00:40:10Sudden slackening then, it could be the fish trying to roll up the line.
00:40:14The thing is, when it does that, is to basically not give it that slack that it needs.
00:40:24Taking line again.
00:40:25Which way is it going?
00:40:26I think it's still here.
00:40:27Yeah, we're close, we're close.
00:40:28That's the leader knot.
00:40:29You can see the fish down there.
00:40:35You can see the fish down there.
00:40:54This is a tiger shark.
00:40:58Is that under the boat?
00:41:01This tiger shark is not giving in.
00:41:05Definitely not coming to work with this fish.
00:41:10It thrashes and rolls as it attempts to free itself, and it's all I can do to hold it.
00:41:15Oh!
00:41:16That's gone.
00:41:17That's gone.
00:41:18That's gone.
00:41:19We've got the whole bait back, but the hook, it was just somewhere inside the mouth,
00:41:30and it hadn't completely penetrated.
00:41:31The thing is, what they do is they roll up the leader, so you haven't got, very often,
00:41:37that direct pressure on the hook.
00:41:39The hook is, you know, the line goes around the body, and, I mean, you'd think looking
00:41:44at the bend in that rod and the amount of general strain on everything that that hook
00:41:49would have gone in, but, no, it was still a lot of energy when it came to the surface,
00:41:54and basically it just moved around enough to just work that hook free.
00:41:58So, yeah, there's more sharks here than we thought.
00:42:03I've now encountered big sharks on two successive nights.
00:42:07These waters are clearly teeming with active hunting predators.
00:42:14Although last night's catch got away, I've encountered the tiger shark's ferocity before.
00:42:24This is tiger shark, and this is a big one.
00:42:27I have little doubt that the Laconia victims would have had to contend with this powerful predator.
00:42:32But tiger sharks, in the open ocean, usually hunt alone.
00:42:45So they are unlikely to have gathered in sufficient numbers to be solely responsible.
00:42:50So what else was there?
00:42:55For a complete picture, I need to figure out what sharks were roaming these waters in 1942.
00:43:01Searching the historical records throws up useful information that might help to give me the answer.
00:43:07In 1942, the Laconia was far from an isolated incident.
00:43:17The Battle of the Atlantic was reaching its peak.
00:43:20In that year alone, over 1,600 vessels were sunk, resulting in the loss of thousands of lives.
00:43:27Going through the reports of these disasters, I start to see a pattern emerging.
00:43:36Account after account describes the same shark species attacking the people in the water.
00:43:41A shark I have little experience with.
00:43:44The oceanic white tip.
00:43:47But this shark, which patrolled the Atlantic in large numbers in 1942, is now on the endangered list,
00:43:55and can only be found in a handful of marine reserves dotted around the world.
00:44:00The reason for this shark's rapid decline is simple.
00:44:04Basically, not long after the end of the war, from about the 1950s or so,
00:44:08commercial fishing on an industrial scale started in the open oceans,
00:44:11and sharks are particularly vulnerable,
00:44:13and it turns out oceanic white tips are one of the most vulnerable species.
00:44:18And it's very hard to come by any definite numbers,
00:44:22but people are saying they've been almost wiped out worldwide.
00:44:27So the fact that they're not here now doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't here in 1942.
00:44:33But if I'm to study these now endangered creatures,
00:44:37it's clear I'm going to have to spread my search a little further.
00:44:56This is the Bahamas, and this is one of the few places left on Earth
00:45:00where there is still a relatively healthy population of oceanic white tips.
00:45:09Although it's clear that sharks are a big part of this investigation,
00:45:12and I think there's enough historic evidence to place oceanic white tips in the dock,
00:45:17there's still one question about their involvement that needs answering.
00:45:21According to the Laconia eyewitness accounts, sharks didn't show up until many hours after the sinking.
00:45:32The question I want to answer is why.
00:45:38The Laconia sank in a huge expanse of open ocean,
00:45:41where there would undoubtedly have been lone hunting oceanic white tips.
00:45:45But the chances of a large number of sharks being in the exact location where the Laconia sank at that exact time are slim.
00:45:54So what was it that called in these lone sharks in the vastness of the mid-Atlantic?
00:46:04I think there's a clue in the eyewitness accounts.
00:46:07Take this from squadron leader LJ Peters, who, along with hundreds of others, was fighting for his life in the water that night.
00:46:18He'd swam some distance away from the stricken vessel.
00:46:23By the time he stopped and looked back, the Laconia was almost gone,
00:46:27and he found himself surrounded by debris and burning oil on the surface.
00:46:31Then beneath him, he goes on to write, he heard two huge, booming explosions.
00:46:46Now this booming sound is when the boilers, which are under, you know, intense pressure,
00:46:52superheated metal, as soon as that hits the water, you get a crack and the whole thing just goes.
00:46:56And this sound would have carried over an enormous distance, much further than the sound of anybody splashing in the water,
00:47:05any shouts, this kind of thing.
00:47:06And I'm just wondering if this might have been what called sharks in, possibly, from a very big area of ocean.
00:47:16Now, I don't have the wherewithal to duplicate that scenario to create a huge explosion underwater.
00:47:22But maybe there is a way that I can investigate the effect that sound has on sharks.
00:47:31And maybe this is going to help me. This is a waterproof underwater speaker.
00:47:36And if the weather's okay tomorrow, if I can get out on the water, this might just give me some answers.
00:47:43I want to investigate whether the sound of the Laconia's boilers exploding underwater could have brought in sharks from a distance.
00:47:54My plan is to do this using an underwater speaker.
00:47:57Once we're far enough away from the island reef, we'll stop the boat's engines and I'll continue silently by kayak.
00:48:09I've heard that there have been white tips spotted in this area.
00:48:30And what I want to do, I want to just put some pure sound in the water.
00:48:36I don't want any scent, I don't want any visual stimulus, just sound, and see if anything actually responds to that.
00:48:43I've got all the equipment on board and I'll just leave the main boat a little bit further behind.
00:48:49Then I'll get the speaker in the water.
00:49:02As the name suggests, oceanic white tips are true open ocean predators.
00:49:07They are able to travel huge distances between feeding when prey is scarce.
00:49:12In the vast expanses of water they travel through, they are constantly on the alert for any unusual occurrence.
00:49:25I'm going to test whether sound in the water can bring sharks in to investigate the source.
00:49:42I'm putting a low frequency tone through the speaker.
00:49:46A shark's hearing is adapted to very low frequency vibrations, such as those made by struggling prey.
00:50:00The sound from this speaker has an underwater range of around 800 feet, spreading out in three dimensions.
00:50:06That equates to over 80 million cubic feet of water.
00:50:12Now, all I have to do is wait.
00:50:36I have to do is wait.
00:50:45Finn just broke the surface.
00:50:46Right here, right here, right here.
00:50:47I'm investigating what happened to hundreds of people who ended up in the water after their ship sank in the middle of the Atlantic in 1942.
00:51:08I want to find out whether sharks could have been brought to the scene by the sound of the ship's boilers exploding underwater.
00:51:14Finn just broke the surface right there.
00:51:19To test this theory, I'm not using bait or blood to attract sharks.
00:51:24Just sound.
00:51:27There's one right here heading this way.
00:51:31I'm guessing about six foot under the water.
00:51:35It's a lone oceanic white tip.
00:51:41And it's coming in.
00:51:42And it's just feet away from the speaker.
00:51:45It's actually just within three feet of the speaker.
00:51:51But one lone shark doesn't prove my theory.
00:51:56One here.
00:52:01Finn out of the water.
00:52:03Right.
00:52:04There was just one.
00:52:05I think, you know, there's at least two now.
00:52:19Right by the speaker.
00:52:21Just two, three feet away.
00:52:22I think if I was actually in the water, that would be very ominous to see that.
00:52:31I mean, I'm safely or relatively safely clear of the water at the moment, but these sharks are definitely interested.
00:52:38They've come in from, I don't know where they were, but they've come in to check out this situation.
00:52:44Check out this situation.
00:52:48And the sharks aren't leaving.
00:52:51They're sticking close to the speaker.
00:52:52The sharks are circling.
00:52:53They're just hearing the sound.
00:52:54And they are, they're circling me.
00:52:55I'm encouraged that this experiment appears to be working.
00:52:56But I'm now surrounded by sharks longer than my tiny kayak.
00:52:57I'm a little worried.
00:52:58They're becoming too interested in me.
00:52:59The sharks are circling.
00:53:00They're just hearing the sound.
00:53:01And they are, they're circling me.
00:53:02I'm encouraged that this experiment appears to be working.
00:53:17But I'm now surrounded by sharks longer than my tiny kayak.
00:53:21I'm a little worried.
00:53:22They're becoming too interested in me.
00:53:24Right here, fin on the surface going down.
00:53:31I get the feeling that I'm being followed.
00:53:34I think one of the creepiest things is actually the fact that, you know, when you're diving, you've got a mask you can actually see clearly.
00:53:41When you're above the surface, the surface is broken like this.
00:53:43You just see that very ghostly gray shape.
00:53:46Oh, here's one right here, right here, right here.
00:53:49And it's coming back.
00:53:59I've drawn in oceanic white-tipped sharks from a distance.
00:54:04But without an obvious food source, they've started to turn their attention to the kayak.
00:54:11It's time to turn the speaker off.
00:54:17Eventually, the sharks lose interest in both the speaker and my kayak.
00:54:24Well, I definitely got the impression that the sharks were interested in the speaker.
00:54:36In the sea, the evidence seems to suggest that the night the Laconia went down, the sound of the boilers exploding brought these sharks in from a large distance.
00:54:45Once at closer range, they detected the melee at the surface.
00:54:49But this case isn't solved yet.
00:54:55I'm uncovering evidence that suggests that, as well as oceanic white tips, a bigger and more elusive predator came to investigate that night.
00:55:08This is an absolute beast. An absolute beast.
00:55:19I'm investigating what happened to the passengers of the RMS Laconia, torpedoed at the height of the Second World War in the mid-Atlantic.
00:55:32My investigation has so far ID'd three hunters that could have been present in numbers at the scene of the disaster.
00:55:38The snook, the cookie cutter shark, and the oceanic white tip.
00:55:47But I'm uncovering evidence that a much bigger predator may have been there that night.
00:55:55I'm back in the area where the Laconia sank, because this investigation has one last twist.
00:56:01I've unearthed something puzzling buried in the eyewitness reports that doesn't seem to match anything I've heard of before.
00:56:12One man says that he saw somebody dragged, in his words, vertically downwards.
00:56:22Moments later, just his empty life jacket re-emerged.
00:56:26What could have done this?
00:56:31Accounts of oceanic white tip attacks on people seem to follow a pattern.
00:56:36Cautious circling, followed by the strike.
00:56:40And this is similar to some other shark attacks I've investigated.
00:56:44But this description just doesn't seem to fit.
00:56:49The Laconia sank in 12,000 feet of water.
00:56:52I've looked far and wide for suspects, but so far I haven't looked down.
00:57:05A memory surfaces.
00:57:08I've seen photographs of monster sharks snagged in the nets of Atlantic deep sea trawlers.
00:57:13Huge, bizarre creatures that belong to another world.
00:57:17Are these the creatures I'm now looking for?
00:57:19Were the victims of the Laconia dragged down by a Leviathan of the deep?
00:57:32My plan is to head out to deep ocean.
00:57:35Off the coast of Ascension Island, as close as I can to where the Laconia sank.
00:57:39And fish as deep as my line will allow, to see what will take my bait.
00:57:54This will be a journey into the unknown.
00:57:56I don't know what we will pull up from below.
00:58:01We know more about the surface of Mars than we do about the deep ocean.
00:58:06A fishing expedition of this nature is highly unusual.
00:58:10And whatever I haul up could be of huge scientific interest.
00:58:13So I've invited shark specialist Dr. Tristan Gutteridge to join me on the boat.
00:58:20Whatever I catch, he will document a tag to record its movements.
00:58:27He talks me through the system he's devised.
00:58:33So we've got two components.
00:58:35The transmitter to basically relocate the tag.
00:58:39And then the logger that takes the information, the environmental information,
00:58:43the depth and the temperature that the shark is at.
00:58:44Fishing the depths of the Atlantic won't be easy.
00:58:54And catching a real life sea monster takes big gear.
00:59:00Big circle hook on the end.
00:59:02Attached to about 30 foot of nylon coated steel wire.
00:59:08And then the petrol line is 130 pounds.
00:59:14And on full drag.
00:59:19So that's pretty well locked up.
00:59:24So all we've got to do now is get the bait on.
00:59:26Big lump of rock on that.
00:59:28Send it down to the bottom.
00:59:30And I'm hoping fairly soon we will find out what's down there.
00:59:32All around me the pitch black of the mid-Atlantic adds to my sense of unease.
00:59:42I've no way of gauging the horizon.
00:59:45And I have the unnerving sense that we're floating in space.
00:59:53Out of the darkness, something flies onto the deck of the boat.
00:59:58Look at this.
01:00:02It's just flew into the boat.
01:00:04It's a flying fish.
01:00:06Amazing.
01:00:08Flying fish have evolved their remarkable ability to evade predators.
01:00:12It's achieved by gaining huge speed underwater before they propel themselves into the air.
01:00:19Never seen that before.
01:00:32We rig underwater cameras to record anything on its way up to the boat.
01:00:46The bait is down on the bottom.
01:00:48And yet, anything that happens down there will be transmitted up.
01:00:53The rod top will move.
01:00:54And I could also feel it through my fingertips.
01:00:58It's almost like being a spider in the middle of a web.
01:01:01So now I'm just waiting for a knock on the line.
01:01:11In preparation for something huge, I put on a fishing harness.
01:01:14But if I'm honest, I don't really know what monsters will be lurking at these depths.
01:01:26Oh, there's a knock. There's a knock.
01:01:28Then I feel the gentlest of knocks on the line.
01:01:32Before the reel, on full drag, screams off.
01:01:35Oh, that is going up to speed.
01:01:45That is going very fast.
01:01:47Whatever has taken the bait down on the bottom has really taken off.
01:01:54Oh, here we go.
01:01:56Like a tail banging the line.
01:01:58It doesn't feel like anything I've ever hooked before.
01:02:01A mystery beast.
01:02:02But it's been really steaming off, taking line.
01:02:08It's a very strong fish.
01:02:09I mean, that is a very strong animal.
01:02:12Very strong animal.
01:02:18It feels like a massive...
01:02:20I was going to say dead weight.
01:02:22It's not dead.
01:02:23It's definitely alive.
01:02:26But it's a weight.
01:02:28I'm breaking quite a sweat here.
01:02:33It's not really gaining anything at the moment.
01:02:38Oh, there we go.
01:02:39It's a little bit of gain there.
01:02:41Whatever I've hooked is truly enormous,
01:02:42and it has no intention of coming anywhere near the boat.
01:02:45After nearly an hour of struggle, I might finally see my opponent.
01:02:46Whatever it is, is now close to the surface.
01:02:47I can see something down there.
01:02:48I can see something down there.
01:02:50A very interesting outline.
01:02:51In a very interesting outline.
01:02:53Yes, I can see something down there.
01:02:54Very interesting outline.
01:02:59It's a very interesting outline.
01:03:01And it's a very interesting outline.
01:03:03Whatever it is, is now close to the surface.
01:03:04For nearly an hour of struggle, I might finally see my opponent.
01:03:11Whatever it is, is now close to the surface.
01:03:15You can see something down there.
01:03:17A very indistinct outline.
01:03:20But nothing prepares me for what is revealed on the end of my line.
01:03:25What is that?
01:03:34I'm in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, fishing for a monster that could be the missing link in a Second World War marine disaster.
01:03:43I'm fishing in very deep water, and something huge has taken my bait.
01:03:47One way or another, this is sort of endgame.
01:03:53But nothing prepares me for what is on the end of my line.
01:03:57That's the fish. There it is.
01:04:00What I've raised from the deep twists and turns on the line.
01:04:06It's like nothing I've ever seen before.
01:04:09What is that?
01:04:13It's easily longer than the width of our boat.
01:04:17I estimate around 12 to 14 feet long.
01:04:20That's a big old fish. Well hooked.
01:04:22Woo!
01:04:23All right.
01:04:24That's six-gill.
01:04:26Shark scientist Tristan identifies it as a six-gill shark.
01:04:32A primitive creature that inhabits the deep ocean.
01:04:40Here we go, here we go, here we go.
01:04:43This animal has more fossil relatives than living ones.
01:04:52This is an absolute beast. An absolute beast.
01:05:06It's an incredible opportunity for Tristan.
01:05:09A deep sea giant like this has never been tagged here before.
01:05:13And the information we might gain could be vital to my investigation.
01:05:16But we only have a short time to get a tag in.
01:05:20Perfect. Quick, quick.
01:05:23Yes, do that. Fantastic.
01:05:26Tristan has to rope the tail to get some degree of control.
01:05:30Then he can insert the tag into its dorsal fin.
01:05:34Do you want those?
01:05:36Yeah, that's it.
01:05:38So this is 48 hours, then it'll pop off, is that the idea?
01:05:40Yeah, this is 48 hours, and this will log temperature, depth and light.
01:05:45And then pop off.
01:05:49That's in?
01:05:50Yeah.
01:05:51Fantastic.
01:05:57Right, we've got the tag in, and I think we've had as good a look as we're going to get.
01:06:01All right. Take the rope off.
01:06:02Take the rope off.
01:06:03We're now releasing the fish.
01:06:10Good job.
01:06:14Massive, massive fish, and a creature of the abyss.
01:06:19With the shark released, it begins its long journey back to the depths,
01:06:24taking with it the tag that we hope will give us a unique insight into its movements.
01:06:29Is this the first time that tags have that kind have been used here, as far as you know?
01:06:33First time anyone's ever put a satellite tag on a six-gill in a century island.
01:06:37So it'll be very exciting to see what this animal does.
01:06:40We have a reliable estimate of well over 1,000 pounds, you know, something like 1,100 pounds.
01:06:45That is actually the biggest fish that I've ever caught.
01:06:48It's a very special place, very special catch.
01:06:50But thrilling as this catch was, I still can't place these Leviathans at the scene of the Laconia's sinking.
01:06:59These are creatures of the deep.
01:07:01What would they have been doing near the surface?
01:07:03Later, after Tristan has retrieved the data from the tag, he calls me with what might be the glimmer of an answer.
01:07:22Hello, Tristan. Hello!
01:07:25So you got something from the tag? It popped up?
01:07:29Yeah, so what's pretty exciting is we now know kind of what the six-gill was doing across that period.
01:07:35And what's cool is that they make this what's called a dial vertical migration.
01:07:40So they travel down to the depths during the day and up in the water column during the night.
01:07:47It seems to be the light, so when it hits dusk and dawn, that's when they make these migrations up and down.
01:07:53And they're all probably just tracking prey, squid and things like that.
01:07:56But horizontally, we saw no movement whatsoever.
01:07:59So they're moving a lot, but it's moving purely in the up and down direction?
01:08:04Yeah.
01:08:05What might be the point of coming up?
01:08:06Are you thinking that they are doing the feeding when they come up shallow?
01:08:11Yeah, they probably scavenge from carcasses and things like that.
01:08:15I mean, who'd have thought that little thing that we attached to that fish, that it can give this information?
01:08:20It's just such an insight, isn't it, to what's going on down there?
01:08:23Yeah, exactly.
01:08:24All right, bye-bye.
01:08:25Cheers, take care.
01:08:26Cheers, I do. Bye-bye.
01:08:28Right, although there are many questions about six-gill sharks still to be answered,
01:08:32this experiment demonstrates very, very clearly this up and down migration that synchronises absolutely with the passage of night and day.
01:08:42You know, they're down deep during the day, then they rise up at night.
01:08:46And given the fact that the Laconia went down during the hours of darkness, this could be very significant.
01:08:51The only thing is, despite all this amazing technology we've been using, the one thing that it can't tell us is whether six-gill sharks would actually feed on humans.
01:09:03I have been known to use myself as human bait. This time, I think I'll pass. But I think I've found a way to do the next best thing.
01:09:16I haven't come here to top up my tan. The reason I'm here in Honduras is because there's a guy living here who has built this extraordinary vehicle that is able to penetrate right down to the depths of the ocean, the so-called bathyplagic zone.
01:09:37This is where no light ever reaches.
01:09:40I've arranged to meet Carl Stanley, owner, builder and captain of the Ida Bell, a two-man submarine capable of descending to over two and a half thousand feet.
01:10:03We're going to attach a dead pig to the front of the sub as bait. As I learned from a former cannibal tribe in the South Pacific, pig meat tastes a lot like human flesh.
01:10:15I want to find out if this will bring in the six-gills.
01:10:18This is a slightly different type of baiting up operation for me. I'm used to putting things on big hooks, but I've never actually strapped a dead pig on the front of a submarine before.
01:10:30Normally when I'm fishing, I'm a long way away from the bait and I just get a tactile or maybe an audible indication that something's down there.
01:10:38And at that point, I generally don't know what it is, but I'm going to be sitting literally a few feet away from this.
01:10:43So if something comes along and shows an interest in this, I'm going to have a ringside seat. I'm just a couple of feet away.
01:10:50This is the pressure hull and that's made out of three high strength steel spheres.
01:10:56Right, so I take it I'm in that bit there and is that where you're driving it from?
01:11:00Yes.
01:11:01I'm not ashamed to admit that mixed with my excitement is mounting apprehension.
01:11:12That's where I'm going.
01:11:16It's a wee bit claustrophobic and under 2,000 feet of water, it's going to be a whole new level of that.
01:11:31The curved walls make it almost impossible to sit up straight and I could be spending up to nine hours cooped up inside here.
01:12:01I'm positioned up front at Carl's feet in what he has dubbed the passenger sphere, which is a cramped 54 inches wide.
01:12:12The plan is to travel vertically down to 2,000 feet or maybe more, then wait and hope that the bait will attract the sharks on their nightly migration up from even deeper.
01:12:23We're going down into the Cayman Trench, which at its deepest is about 25,000 feet.
01:12:29We're not going quite that deep, but probably a couple of thousand and I've been told to expect a vertical journey of about 45 minutes.
01:12:35As we descend, the temperature plummets from 84 degrees Fahrenheit to a chilly 50.
01:13:00We're just coming up to 500 feet.
01:13:05And as we're descending, I sort of can't help thinking about when the Laconia went down.
01:13:10There were people who jumped in the water, but there were almost definitely going to be people trapped inside the structure as well as it sunk.
01:13:18And that is definitely a one-way trip.
01:13:22I sort of don't want to think about that too much.
01:13:27That's 1,000 feet.
01:13:30The pressure on the outside of the hull increases as the weight of all that water above us bears down on the sub.
01:13:37At this depth, that equates to 430 pounds on every square inch.
01:13:42We've got lights on the sub, so the water here is illuminated.
01:13:56But looking up, I mean, the surface is long past being visible.
01:14:02And where we're actually going, it's where we're going to the edge of the bathypelagic zone.
01:14:06This is where even during the daytime, no light reaches down here.
01:14:12The water basically swallows up the line, so it's a very unfamiliar type of space.
01:14:20It's not like the rest of the world.
01:14:22That dark emptiness out there is actually what most of the Earth is like.
01:14:34What we see is a tiny fraction of our planet.
01:14:39We cautiously approach the sea floor.
01:14:44If we were to get stuck on anything, there would be no hope of rescue.
01:14:48We have enough oxygen for three days, but there's no communication with the surface.
01:14:58And no vessel within 1,000 miles capable of descending this deep.
01:15:02And in this complex underwater landscape, it's doubtful anyone could find us anyway.
01:15:08I almost feel like an astronaut just minutes away from landing on the moon.
01:15:25My first glimpse of life down here, a sculptured lobster.
01:15:36This really does feel like the surface of another planet.
01:15:39No footprints.
01:15:41This is a place where no human being has probably touched down before.
01:15:47The depth gauge now reads 2,000 feet.
01:15:51We are precariously positioned on a tiny ledge.
01:15:54To my right, a sheer cliff face drops away towards the bottom of the trench, another five miles down.
01:16:01The pressure on the outside of the hull now is more than 900 pounds per square inch.
01:16:07A crack would mean instant death.
01:16:10So, white light at the moment, and we're now going to switch to red light, which the sharks won't be aware of.
01:16:19So we're about to go into stealth mode.
01:16:22This means that although we can see what's going on, the shark can't see us.
01:16:40So what we do now is we wait.
01:16:45Hagfish coming right in front of us.
01:16:49So we've got a hagfish that's come in here, and that's starting to feed quite actively.
01:16:59What that's doing is that's stirring up a cloud of scent in the water.
01:17:04There's giant isopods scuttling around as well, which have obviously got wind of something happening here.
01:17:09So there will be a cloud of scent slowly spreading out in the water.
01:17:14And what we're hoping is that that's going to call in the sharks.
01:17:19Isopods have been observed going five years between meals.
01:17:23And in this environment, they live in a perpetual state of semi-hibernation.
01:17:28They typically scavenge whatever food drifts down from the surface.
01:17:48Shark, shark, shark, shark. We've got a shark.
01:17:58And the scent from my bait, a dead pig strapped to the front of my submarine, has just brought one in.
01:18:04I'm 2,000 feet down in the Cayman Trench, trying to lure in a leviathan of the deep, the six-gill shark.
01:18:10I want to find out if this creature could have been involved in the aftermath of the wartime sinking of the RMS Laconia.
01:18:17Shark, shark, shark, shark. We've got a shark.
01:18:20And the scent from my bait, a dead pig strapped to the front of my submarine, has just brought one in.
01:18:28Very faint, almost ghost-like, just drifting left to right, just on the edge of visibility.
01:18:37But I'm guessing that wasn't just a sort of a coincidental drift by.
01:18:43I think it's probably picking up the scent.
01:18:50It's turning round, it's turning round.
01:18:58One, two, three, four, five, six, six-gill shark.
01:19:04Wow.
01:19:09That's a big animal.
01:19:11Big, big, big, big animal.
01:19:13I have to remind myself that although I can see it, the shark can't register red light, so it cannot see me or the bait.
01:19:22Oh, here it comes, right over my head.
01:19:26And since we're not making any sound, it has found us using its sense of scent.
01:19:33It's now coming towards us, and it seems to be very slowly zeroing in.
01:19:39Is it gonna feed?
01:19:44Is it gonna feed?
01:19:47Is it gonna feed?
01:20:01Where's it gone now?
01:20:02There it is.
01:20:03It's coming around again.
01:20:04It's coming into the bait.
01:20:05It's coming in.
01:20:06This looks quite purposeful.
01:20:07Look at that.
01:20:08Wow.
01:20:10Look at that.
01:20:11Wow.
01:20:12That is a feeding.
01:20:13There it is.
01:20:14There it is.
01:20:15There it is.
01:20:16It's coming around again.
01:20:17It's coming into the bait.
01:20:18It's coming in.
01:20:19This looks quite purposeful.
01:20:25Look at that.
01:20:27Wow.
01:20:28That is a feeding shark.
01:20:39That's what a feeding shark looks like.
01:20:52It's moving the whole sub.
01:20:53It is actually moving the whole sub.
01:20:58That shark is bigger than the whole sub in terms of length.
01:21:05And I'm literally inches away.
01:21:11Inches away.
01:21:12Well, I think it's fair to say it's got the taste for the bait.
01:21:28That's amazing.
01:21:29That's amazing.
01:21:30That's amazing.
01:21:31The bait has been obliterated by the shark's serrated teeth.
01:21:44Like a ghost, it vanishes into the darkness.
01:22:03Every time you put a bait in the water, you're asking a question.
01:22:04And in this particular instance, my question was, is there life down below the surface layers
01:22:22that might come up?
01:22:23Well, absolutely there is.
01:22:24And some very large and very impressive life.
01:22:27And I have to say that I'm even less comfortable about being down here.
01:22:31So I think it's high time now to get back to the surface.
01:22:34So what does this tell me about the victims of the Laconia disaster?
01:22:45Could the Sixgill have been involved?
01:22:48What I do know is that these rarely observed giants inhabit the same waters where the Laconia
01:22:54sank.
01:22:55They rise towards the surface at night, the time when many hundreds of people were flailing
01:23:00in the water.
01:23:01And from what I've just witnessed, they tear into flesh with gusto.
01:23:11The sinking of the Laconia sent 2,500 people into the vast Atlantic.
01:23:16And this horrifying event must have attracted a multitude of predators.
01:23:20A marauding school of fanged snook, which ripped through in a first wave.
01:23:26Then bloodthirsty, parasitic, cookie-cutter sharks that cut precision bites.
01:23:31And later, tiger sharks and oceanic white tips, drawn in first by the sound of the ship's
01:23:37exploding boilers, and then by the blood in the water.
01:23:41And maybe they were joined by this prehistoric leviathan, the Sixgill shark.
01:23:47A true sea monster as terrifying as anything from the depths of our imagination.
01:23:52The full story will never be known, but I now understand in a way that I didn't before,
01:23:58why so many of the Laconia's passengers never made it home.