When confronted by any new movie or TV programme involving sharks, a diver’s first question is this: will the sharks be sinned against or sinning? Is this production sympathetic to the plight of the modern shark, or is it using their bulk and teeth merely as audience-bait? Is it about shark life or “shark attacks”?
The answer is too often a bit of both, but the smart/aware title of SHARK! Celebrity Infested Waters suggests from the outset that the makers have the right approach. Plimsoll Productions, a UK company, claims to be the world’s biggest independent producer of natural-history content, and has an impressive catalogue.
Fear of sharks is built in all right, and on occasion the laid-back expert team do ramp that up a tad – “the second-baddest shark on the planet” etc – but the hyperbole is generally kept well in check.
Reality checks are in any case necessary to ensure that the celebs take their diver training seriously enough to keep them safe in unpredictable environments.
Plus, of course, any show needs its dramatic arc, which in this case consists of seven assorted individuals working their way up towards, drum roll, the big tiger-shark dive!
This is not the sort of show in which some barely prepped stars are dipped into a shark tank, but a full-blown three-week rite of passage in the Bahamas with the likes of Neil Watson’s Bimini Scuba Centre.
The stars, volunteered for the gig by their agents unwillingly or otherwise, need to get their PADI Open Water Diver qualifications while progressing in stages from cage-diving taster to full-on Tiger Beach experience.
Not all of them will necessarily stay the distance and reach that final dive, either, but divers will be pleased to hear that at no point in this five-part series are sharks demonised.
The familiar message that we kill sharks but they rarely kill us is reiterated at regular intervals, and the sharks’ general indifference to humans speaks for itself.
Adrenaline highs
As ever in reality shows, much of the audience’s satisfaction comes from learning more about the participants and watching the chemistry between them develop.
It’s soon apparent that comedian Ross Noble, accustomed to the adrenaline highs of performing stand-up, will be a keen, cool-headed diver, while Rachel Riley (Countdown) tends to go alarmingly beyond cool-headed into gung-ho territory, as she takes off joyously waving her arms about during a shark-feed.
Father-figure Sir Lenny Henry takes it all very seriously, as does the clearly conservation-minded McFly bassist Dougie Poynter. Paralympian basketball-player Ade Adepitan, without the use of his legs, faces his own set of challenges. The weightless freedom he finds in diving is important to him, with the sharks a bonus.
I’m pretty sure I remember him undergoing scuba experiences in the past as a TV presenter, but I think it’s only implied, rather than stated, that all seven participants in SHARK! are virgin divers.
Less convinced that they will survive the shark-diving experience are actors Lucy Punch (Amandaland) and Helen George (Call The Midwife).
Helen sets herself apart from the outset by declaring that she is terrified not only of sharks but even of putting her head under water, the result of a traumatic childhood pool incident. The celebs are all on their own ‘journeys’, of course, but hers looks to be the most extreme.
“The others seem excited; I feel a bit of a Debbie Downer,” she’ll say at one point, as her emotions vacillate between fear and FOMO.
The instructors are the level-headed base – shark conservationists Dr Tristan Guttridge and Danni Washington (always ready with an eco-plug for the sharks) and Australian former clearance diver Paul de Gelder, who fails to boost Helen’s confidence by attributing his lack of several limbs to the attentions of a bull shark.
Full-face masks
There is plenty of joshing around at the surface among the new scuba recruits (“The X-Men have let themselves go”) though under water the full-face masks are used mainly to convey the divers’ awe-struck expletives and OMGs.
But viewing divers will relish the underwater opportunities afforded to these celebrities. Being caged with 10 bull sharks, feeding sting rays in the shallows of Gun Cay and encountering juvenile lemon sharks in the mangroves are merely the tasters. One of the small sharks nips Ross’s ankle: “Nice teaching moment,” observes Tristan drily.
They move on to open ocean with up to 20 nurse sharks off Port Royal. OWD dives follow at Turtle Rock, then watching a shark-feed from a line (“of terror”) at the surface before experiencing the same thing from the seabed. A great hammerhead sighting is a bonus.
The stars undergo a gentle freediving induction, do a dive on which a tiger and two bull sharks turn up and it all begins to get very real for some of them, with more tears and fewer jokes.
Even Helen seems excited by the prospect of a wreck-dive – it’s only the Sapona, poking out of the water with its base at 8m, but such a shallow dive does provide a good test for the gang’s buoyancy control. It’s all building up to the main course – will Emma, the 5m queen tiger, show up with her minions for the finale?
I’m sure the editing of this extended holiday had to be very skilfully done, but the result is a fine advertisement for shark-diving in the Bahamas, which is introduced as the world’s shark capital (argue among yourselves).
Some beautiful shark footage too, and I admit to being surprised to find the later episodes quite moving. Watching the emotional impact of the sharks on the celebrities started me remembering my own early encounters with various shark and ray species, and how that felt.
SHARK! Celebrity Infested Waters is one of the good ones. All five episodes can be viewed on ITVX.
Also on Divernet: JAWS HELPED SPUR FISHING FRENZY: HOW HAVE SHARKS FARED SINCE 1975 RELEASE?, TRIGGER POINTS AND ‘SELF-DEFENCE’ SHARK-BITES, SHARK & RAY CITES LISTINGS GET A BOOST, GREAT SHARK SNAPSHOT MEETS SHARK WEEK + JAWS
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source divernet.com ’
