The photographer behind the lens, Brian Skerry, is no stranger to the world’s most formidable aquatic predators. With a career spanning decades and more than 10,000 hours logged beneath the surface of the world’s oceans, Skerry has dedicated his life to documenting the beauty and the brutal reality of marine ecosystems. However, even for a professional of his caliber, the footage captured this summer represents a significant milestone. Working in the often-turbid waters of the North Atlantic, Skerry spent several days collaborating with local charter boat captains to track and record the elusive behavior that many fishermen had described but few had ever seen from an underwater perspective.
The specific incident occurred on June 29, during a period when reports of shark interference with fishing activities were reaching a fever pitch in the region. Skerry’s camera was positioned to catch the action as a fish, already hooked and being reeled in by a fisherman above, moved through the water. Suddenly, out of the murky blue-green depths of the Atlantic, a juvenile female great white shark appeared at a high rate of speed. With surgical precision, the shark lunged at the struggling fish, deftly removing it from the line in a flurry of motion before vanishing back into the gloom.
The speed and accuracy of the strike were remarkable, but it was the nuance of the shark’s approach that truly caught Skerry’s attention. In reviewing the footage, Skerry noted that the shark appeared to be making a calculated move to avoid the dangerous hardware associated with the fisherman’s catch. The shark grabbed the fish from the side, seemingly intentional in its effort to avoid the lure and the hook itself. To Skerry, this suggested a level of cognitive processing and caution that challenges the common perception of sharks as mindless eating machines. While he admitted that he might be reading too much into the animal’s actions, he noted that it appeared the shark was making specific decisions to secure a meal while minimizing the risk of getting hooked herself.
This behavior, while newly documented on film from this vantage point, is a familiar frustration for the fishermen who frequent the waters of Cape Cod and the Gulf of Maine. For years, charter boat captains and recreational anglers have reported a sharp increase in "taxing" by sharks—a slang term for when a predator takes a portion of a catch before it can be landed. According to reports from the area, it has become common for fishermen to reel in nothing but the heads of their intended catches, with the bodies having been sheared off by the powerful jaws of a great white.
