Dr. Shimi somaro and crystal chitwor chitworth, thats our team lets do some science. hello. Welcome to tech know. I am phil torres joined by lindsey moran. I got back from one of the most exciting weeks of my life. It was all for science. Here is a question for you would you jump on a 14foot 1ton tiger shark . What i got the opportunity to do. 15 of the sharks in the name of conserving them, lets take a look. Shark, the very name inspires wonder and fear. Villefied as the worlds ultimate killing machine, their bad boy image. I havent had a single aggressive shark in over 35 years of swimming with them on a daily basis. Jim abernathy owns a excuse me dyeing shop. If there is a shark, you will find jim around the water in the camera. 400 billion years shaping our oceans hell. In the last 50 years in my watch, we have literally destroyed it. One of six of all of sharks that are threatened. Dr. Neil hammer slag is also sharks. He rungs the rj dunlap lab in miami policy makers can make good conservation decisions based upon science. Really cant express the value that jim brings to a project like this. He relies on jim for shark savvy. The best conditions. He can design and make it. This is where you are likely to find neil when he is in the field. The shark and hi gather data. A 5day expedition off of the shores of the bahamas to drag up to 20 tiger sharks. The largest sharks in the tropics. He was invited for the missing. People ask me why should we care . As an a pex predator meaning they live at the top of the food pyramid they play an important role. When you remove that predator, there can be a domino effect of other members of the community. You have that. I join neil and his team as they packed the research gear. A little over prepared than under prepared when you are in the middle of the ocean. Crew. This is going to be your home for the next week. Boat. My new home. After a rough overnight package through the gulf stream, we headed to our destination. A special place called tiger beach is not a beach. In fact, its about offshore. Its got plenty of tigers. Really interesting. Why would there not be males here . Reproduction . We reached the location. Everything has to be prepped and ready to go. Then, we set out the baits. In the water. Woohoo. That is nicelooking fish. Once all 8 lines are set, we wait for the sharks to bite. Sometimes, they dont. Suddenly, a sight and everyone swings into action. Baby. Fishing with his line. 100 foot large circles. Means they are not fighting and impairing their movement. Back. Move out of the way. Move out of the way. I want to get it. Can you park the engine . Come on. Right after me. You guys are a female. Hold that out. Get it out of the water. They have been trying to pull this thing in for about 10 minutes now. At th it is a tiger shark, the first one of the expedition. First one is the toughest. Its on. Are you ready . Its so big. Get that pump in. Thats great because one thing he gets to bite down so something, makes them feel better about it. Two, its artificially helping them. This freshly oxygenated salt water over their gills. Ultrasound. Carolyn wheeler is an under grat at the shark and research lab. She is one of the most crucial jobs using this veterinarians ultrasound to see if the shark is pregnant. We cant get the whole uterous in one shot. It showed this shark wasnt pregnant. The next major task, surgery, to implant the acoustic transmitter inside the shark. The size of a double a battery. To transmit these ultra sonic signals for seven years while swimming. The shark is flipped over. Dr. Duncan, a morphologist takes detailed measurements. Tiger sharks, which are predatory sharks are built for, in many cases, ambush, so they speed. When you are looking at more following of a tiger shark, what behavior . The most distinctive thing is the large, blunt head and very unique. Tiger sharks eat larger prey. Their teeth are almost designed like a can opener. Blood and fin samples are also certain before the hook is removed from the mouth and the shark is released. Are you ready . The whole process takes about 20 minutes. One, two, three. It is spectacular. Down to the bottom levels. Stayed with it for an unbelievable amount of time. While i was gasping for air. A bit of a learning curve wiif animal is over one ton an doesnt want to be on the stern of a boat. Implanted into that shark will hem neil track its every move in tiger beach by sending a signal to one of these. This is the pump. The tiger shark. 32 installed throughout tiger beach. A shark. Allows me to analyze the speed. The presence or absence in sharks. A receiver. The weeks worth has just begun. Another shark is on the platform and one test has everybody guessing. We will find out if she is pregnant. We want to hear what you think about these stories. Join the conversation by following us on twitter and real reporting that brings you the world. This is a pretty dangerous trip. Security in beirut is tight. More reporters. They dont have the resources to take the fight to al shabaab. More bureaus, more stories. This is where the typhoon came ashore. Giving you a real global perspective like no other can. Al jazeera, nairobi. On the turkeysyria border. Venezuela. Beijing. Kabul. Hong kong. Ukraine. The artic. Real reporting from around the world. This is what we do. Al jazeera america. I think that al jazeera helps connect people in a way they havent been connected before. Its a new approach to journalism. This is an opportunity for americans to learn something. We need to know whats going on around the world. We need to know whats going on in our back yard and i think al jazeera does just that. Its tavern me a while to develop my sea legs. Rough seas make the smallest task a challenge. Before long, i am right at home. Of course, i still have to cope with the hazards of the job. I have heard shark skin is rough like sand paper but working with these guys, i found out how rough it is. Its all for science. You are trying to unlock the mysteries of one of the worlds top predators. Determined some of these areas they might be using. Kind of in realtime. Its unbelievable. On october, october hammersla g tagged 20 sharks in tiger beach. 11 were pregnant females. You can see a pups two ayes and mouths. This place seems particularly important for pregnant tiger sharks. Why do you think that is . I think thats what is happening is expending their 10 to 15 month gestation period in these warmwaters. But this time, pregnant females are hard story come by. Not pregnant. The crew has another innovation to try out. A custom platform dr. Hagger slag. Its experiment he hopes will crew. The reason i like the platform is its bigger. You can walk around it. The positive thing, he will be happy about this is its about six inches under water. Thats good. This is a tiger shark. Its not a long before the platform is put to the test by an 11 and a half foot female tiger shark. Since the shark is dorsal fin up, a tissue and mezzewments are taken. It will provide a wealth of information, the kind scientists used to get. In the past, you want to know what a shark is eating. You will cut it open and look in its stomach. Now using thin clips and blood that we can look at the chemical signature of the blood to learn what they are eating. The shark has flipped over and Carolyn Wheeler begins her ultrasound . Inside the big bloated tiger shark belly are a bunch of baby sharks. Very exciting first female. Now, we can understand they are their breeding behaviors. Thats what they are doing. They are doing the surgery. Acoustic transmitters. Precise details. A second trekking device to track her movements. Tags, bolt that have no nerves. Medical grade titanium to hold it on. Degrades making sure that tag will fall off eventually. Let her go. Let her go. All right. That was awesome. The team will follow her wherever she goes on google earth. Of course, i had to check out the ultrasound. Definitive circles. This is here this is here. Two uteri. This ult that sound shows some of the pups in one event. I am counting maybe three or four pups in that area. There could be more. Coming in and out of focus. Finish this out. Time to swing back in action. There was a lot of action over the course of three days. The team had caught a total of 15 sharks. I know we call it tiger beach. This shark caught on day 3 turned out to be pure gold for research. There was a female the team tagged before in october on their last expedition . This was their first recaptured shark of the trip. When they found it in october, it was pregnant. Now he gets to find out what happened after that. Showing she is not pregnant now. Thats exciting. Means we can use the acoustic tag data. How huge is that data point for you guys . My gosh. Data point is, you know, is the holy grail. I couldnt believe it. I was thinking i hope its, you know, one of our sharks. Thats why we are here. To try to determine things. If we protect those important areas we can have a substantial conservation impact on these animals. There are over 100 million sharks being killed every year. Not just for food but as by catch so something needs to be done. You cant conserve animal unless you know something about it. Mysteries as big as they are and as much as they talked about, we know very little about that. Are they starting to see tangible results. Conservation measures. I think especially with looking evidence that could point to whats important to when the female is pregnant to be warmer, increase her gestation, maybe to get more food. All of these things that they have been toying around with, i think now they are starting to get some solid answers. How dangerous is that . You i have noticed the wound . I probably should have covered up a bit more. Shark skin is incredibly rough, and its basically like sand paper. You dont notice it. Our shins are cut up. You can actually see here on my instagram. I was my own fall because i suit. They have a reputation of being aggressive but it seems like thats not the case. Going in to this piece, i had a certain opinion about sharks and the danger of them. What i realized, what you will see in part 3 is the passion behind these people and evidence when they are out there petting these sharks in the ocean. It convinced me. And now, i love them. You guys will check that out after the break. Im joie chen, im the host of america tonight, were revolutionary because were going back to doing best of storytelling. We have an ouportunity to really reach out and really talk to voices that we havent heard before. I think Al Jazeera America is a watershed moment for american journalism Al Jazeera America gives you the total news experience anytime, anywhere. More on every screen. Digital, mobile, social. Visit aljazeera. Com. Follow ajam on twitter. And like Aljazeera America on facebook for more stories, more access, more conversations. So you dont just stay on top of the news, go deeper and get more perspectives on every issue. Al jazeera america. This, is what we do. Al jazeera america. Guys, welcome back. I am phil torres. Guys, you are about to see the final part of this shark expedition. It was an incredible intention week of hard work but it was all driven by passion for sharks and helping serve them. You are about to see just what i mean. Sharks are nice, and the world doesnt know this. Jim abernathy loves sharks and he wants you to love them, too. Thats one of the reasons he became a pioneer in cagefree shark diving, offering people the chance to encounter them up clos close. Its up to us who have the ability to know whats going on to project them the way they need to be projected so we can protect what we love because we only protect what we love. Dispel . I wish we could put a stop to the monster shark thing. Almost every animal on the pl planet attacks and kills more people than sharks. Dogs in america bite somebody every 40 seconds and kill 16 people a year. We dont have dog meat . Do we . In florida, we have a dozen fatalities from vending machines. Week. He shot most of the ut water video you have seen here. You were bitten a couple of years ago by a shark. Safety . No. I am not concerned at all. The shark that actually bit me happened while i was tending to the bait. Hundreds of pounds of bait in my hands in rough seas. It bit me in the right arm and released me. So this further proved to me that sharks dont eat people. Only way that they are going to bite someone is a case of mistaken identity. Oh, my god. Feeding on tutle. Gorgeous. His crew are all divers who run the shear water and take care of its passengers, including us. They all want to spread the same tiger shark love. I feel more like the tiger sharks we named these guys emily, emma, stephanie, julia. They come by and want us to rub their noses. I wish everyone could appreciate them for what they are. A smile comes across my face as soon as i see them. Its nothing else matters. Down to the last week, we havent seen julia for a while. She showed up on the third or fourth day. I remember, she is here. Its embarrassing now that i think of it. Your crew gives affection to sharks on a daily basis. Sounds crazy. The reason we started doing that was because years ago, i was trying to remove the hooks from the sharks without pulling them out of the water and i quickly realized that sharks like afection and i could give a shark a head massage so to speak and then eventually when it was very, very trusting, i could pull it in close to my face where i could see the hook right in its jaw and simply pull it out. It doesnt take very long to figure out that neil really loves sharks. He is answering the questions that the nonprofits need in order to put the right rules into place where it can be very impactful for the future of sharks worldwide. Dr. Hammerslag is hoping his research at tiger beach will help answer those questions. Do you have any data on the shark we recaptured. Sure do. That was the first thing i looked at. Stuck around. You know, we know that sometimes when we last saw her and now, she gets hurt. Is it possible . If you look, there is some days where there is a gap in the data by, you know, just a handful of days. So the question is does she quickly move off . Give birth and come back to tiger beach . Cant really put my finger on it yet. Recaptures. Up here, you guys are processing it. Swims away. Doesnt end there. What you are seeing is th precursor. While we are having this conversation, sharks are doing my work and collecting data. It brought me back to my days in the rain forest. I love that feeling of working with a team and working hard in these tough physical conditions. I was just amaced. There were two young women there who were juniors in college and are out there doing this work. I am always aplamazed with scie years. A lot of people dont realize what they could be doing as 20. That was some incredible footage. How did we get that . What was the setup . We were shooting above water. We got slowmonth. Jim abernathy had this great setup in there. Just the perspective angles they were get can and the fact that we caught 15 sharks and processed 15 sharks. So each time the cameras could focus on a different aspect of the operation. I am guessing shark fin soup was not on the menu . Not. They were against all. They said donate shark fin soup. They were up front about that. Keeping down the food, i was thankful. A good sea sickness medicine. A wonderful journey. You were able to take us all on. Thank you for jumping on that shark and taking us with you. Listen. I hope it affected you as much as it affected me and my view on sharks completely different. I love those big animals. We will see you next week on techno. Stories go behind the scenes at aljazeera. Com techno follow us on twitter, facebook, google and more. S said the sunni advance in iraq signs the rebels are gathering pace on the road to baghdad. Hello. Welcome. Im stein coal. Steven coal. Youre watching al jazeera from doha. A shoot out. 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