- This is a specialized human-shaped shark cage I designed.
And this is me in the middle of a shark feeding frenzy
in that cage, which as it happens,
doesn't actually keep the sharks out.
They're in the freaking cage.
But to understand how I ended up
in the middle of The Bahamas with buckets of blood,
surrounded by a butt ton of sharks,
we've gotta go back exactly one year.
Because that's when I ran a test to see what really happens
if sharks smell a drop of human blood in the water.
For that experiment,
I pumped out 15 drops of human blood per minute for an hour,
pretty close to a bunch of sharks that in the end
just weren't really that interested.
So this busted the myth from the movies
that sharks are these ruthless killers that just go crazy
if they smell a drop of your blood from a mile away.
But those results made me really curious if the sharks
would react differently to fish blood versus human blood.
And if they did go crazy for fish blood,
could I use that to put myself right at the center
of a shark feeding frenzy?
And so to satiate my curiosity,
my friends at Discovery helped me make my way
back to The Bahamas as part of Shark Week this year.
But this time, I wouldn't be alone.
- What up, Robes?
- Oh wow.
Mark's jumping in on this?
- What's up, y'all?
- Look, last Shark Week, shark tried to kill me.
- Hmm?
- I figure we'd have a little bit of science with Rober,
a little bit of fun with Dude Perfect,
and a little bit of me.
All right, y'all ready to do this?
- We were born ready, sir.
- All right. (palms smacking) Chop chop.
Let's get to it, fellas.
- We will not let you down.
Looking forward to it.
See ya later. - See ya.
- Yeah, I've got this idea for a build
to just really get me in close with the sharks.
Last year- - Hey, Rober.
- I was in the water.
- Rober. Rober.
- Hmm?
- That was me saying I'm finished with the call, bro.
- No, of course.
- All right, see you guys later.
Let's get to it.
- Let's do this.
- Looking forward to it.
See ya.
- And so in the direction of Shaq Diesel,
it was time to head to The Bahamas.
All that was left was to swab my nose
to prove to the Bahamian government
that I didn't have coronavirus.
The only problem was my test came back positive.
And this just made me really sad
because not only was I gonna miss out
on this epic adventure,
but as far as I was concerned,
I was basically just waiting to die.
And I had to interact with my family through the glass door
to the backyard using a laser pointer and not even
Fat Gus would get within six feet of me.
Now, I'm happy to say I eventually beat the RONA
and tested negative, but the only problem now
is I missed my chance because they were no longer
accepting any commercial flights from America
'cause we're number one baby.
So I was once again incredibly sad until I found a loophole.
Because while you couldn't go to The Bahamas
on a public commercial flight,
there were no rules against going to The Bahamas
on a private jet.
And since this was the first and last time
I would ever have my own personal G6,
I acted like I'd been here before,
like the true professional I am.
I mean, mostly.
(bright upbeat music)
Put Elon on hold and transfer to Oprah.
(bright upbeat music)
I should mention, flying across country on your own plane
isn't the most ecologically responsible choice.
So while I was in the air,
I utilized this website called teamtrees.org.
You might have heard of it.
To plant enough trees to suck up the carbon
not only for my flight,
but the next 100 flights this plane would take.
(bright upbeat music)
In the end, it's important you guys know
I'm still super grounded
and I didn't let the experience change me one bit.
And so now that I was in The Bahamas,
the first thing I did was check in with my marine biologist,
shark diving expert buddy Luke Tipple,
because we need to figure out
how to somehow get blood out of a fish.
Oh. (giggles)
- [Luke] Just like that.
- This is how we do it?
The first thought is like, (fish thuds)
can you just freaking blend a fish?
- Give it a shot. I'll be over here.
- Dude, you've clearly never seen "Will It Blend?".
There's a whole YouTube channel dedicated to this.
Ready? (blender whirs)
Oh! (both laughing)
(blender whirring)
Okay.
I think if we add a little bit of water.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
(both groans)
This looks like the number 32 from Jamba Juice.
We tried a variety of other techniques
and eventually started hitting our stride
and the bucket started filling up.
(bright upbeat music)
If I couldn't smell this, that looks pretty delicious.
(bright upbeat music)
- The good thing about Mark is it's his stupid idea,
but he is not making other people do it.
- I respect that about me too.
- Yeah.
(bright upbeat music)
I also learned this is what fish gills
look like on the inside.
They're like pages in a book to increase the surface area
which maximizes the oxygen they can pull outta the water.
So we've taken about 20 fish
with a little bit of help from the blender,
turned them into this.
If I'm a shark, I'm like, that's freaking delicious.
Now that we had five gallons
of mouthwatering fish blood smoothie,
it was time to get some answers.
We already know that sharks don't necessarily go nuts
in the presence of a little bit of human blood,
but would they go nuts in the presence
of a little bit of fish blood?
And as a firm believer in the scientific method,
it was time to test our hypothesis by heading out to sea.
Once we were far enough from land,
Luke and I came up with a game plan for the experiment.
Basically we would have two surfboards in the water.
One would have a five gallon bucket
of our fish blood smoothie,
and then another would have five gallons of human blood.
We would also have a third board that just had seawater
as a control to make sure the sharks
weren't just interested in the surfboards.
Then we would pump out the contents
of each of the buckets over the course of an hour
and observe how many sharks approached each board.
Then, once we know which one they prefer after this,
we'll use that tomorrow in the cage,
just to create the most wild feeding frenzy, right?
- Which sounds super fun to me.
- 'Cause you're not in the cage.
(both laughs)
And so with the plan in place,
all that was left to do was put the boards together,
and get them out with the sharks.
(bright upbeat music)
One of the limitations to last year's test
was that the boards might have been too close to the boat.
So it's possible some of the sharks
actually smelled the blood but didn't investigate it
because they were just waiting for a handout from the boat.
So this time we basically placed the boards
in the middle of the fricking ocean
super far away from the boat,
so it wouldn't be a confounding variable.
Oh, and I should also mention we ended up
using cow's blood because it's really hard
to legally find five gallons of human blood.
And after talking with a couple shark scientists
they've shown experimentally that all mammal blood
essentially smells the same to sharks.
So, it wouldn't affect the results to use cow blood
in place of human blood.
So, now that all three boards were in place,
we double checked to ensure each was anchored down
to the ocean floor.
Then I just had to start all three custom-built pumps
using our custom-built remote trigger,
which is the exact moment I realized
it must have got busted while being shipped out here
because it wasn't sending a signal.
Which sucks because there's absolutely no way
to run the pumps manually.
Luckily, a trick I learned while working at NASA
is you always build redundancy into your systems
just in case.
So we have it in the code that if no remote start signal
is received after an hour, each of the pumps
will just automatically start up on their own.
It's just a feature we never had time to test,
so we just had to firmly cross our fingers
and hope for the best.
I'm hopeful.
We've had to overcome a lot to get here for this video.
What's one more little challenge.
And at exactly one hour,
right on cue, the backup code kicked in
and saved our whole experiment.
With blood now officially in the water,
we put the drone into the air and started our observations.
(bright upbeat music)
And things were pretty quiet for about the first 20 minutes,
but then we had our first hit on the mammal blood board.
Shark? - Yeah.
- Shark, baby!
We got a shark! - It's a shark?
Oh yeah, yeah.
- But pretty soon thereafter, things started heating up
for the fish blood smoothie board.
Oh my gosh.
There's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 sharks
around the fish smoothie board.
And then 10 minutes later, things were only more intense.
Here you can see the difference in activity
between the three boards.
And while you're running an experiment
and still collecting data,
you really need to keep an open mind.
But given what we were seeing,
it was getting pretty difficult to remain objective.
And so after an hour, we called the experiment
and went inside to officially tally up the results
using the drone footage.
And it turns out the mammal blood board
was approached eight times.
The seawater control board was at zero.
And the fish blood board
had a whopping 134 approaches from a shark.
Definitely seems like the fish smoothie
is where it's at, right?
- It was pretty obvious.
- Massive blob of sharks. No sharks.
- I think that's the go for tomorrow
for maximum feeding frenzy.
Now that we had a game plan
for my feeding frenzy cage the next day,
we headed back to shore and to our hotel
to get some rest for what was to come.
Oh and fun side note, if the only way
to get to a vacation destination is by private jet,
it really cuts down on the crowds.
(bright upbeat music)
We literally had this whole resort to ourselves.
Well, almost to ourselves.
There were like 40 cats
who apparently must also fly private.
We woke up bright and early the next morning,
feeling refreshed and headed right back out to sea
where Luke and I prepared some massive bags
of fish blood smoothie
for me to burst open once I went down.
It just seemed like a cool idea to make a cage
to get in the middle of a feeding frenzy,
until this moment. (laughs dryly)
Now that they're making me put on freaking chainmail,
makes me reconsider my life choices.
If something terrible happens,
Shaq you gotta take care of my family
because this is all your fault.
- Yeah. Let's go.
- And after several months of prep,
unfortunately, it was time for me to get in.
It also just so happens,
I might have forgot to mention this part to my wife.
I'm not looking under the water yet on purpose.
She might have been under the impression
I was just doing another experiment
with surfboards and pumps.
Sorry, sweetie.
Not only was I wearing 10 pounds
of steel chainmail for protection,
but my vest is also filled with 20 pounds of lead weights.
That means I sank pretty fast.
But also that the buoyancy to weight ratios were perfect
for giving me practice for walking on the moon.
That's one small step for man.
Because like many of you,
I will definitely go to space in my lifetime.
Again, just haven't mentioned that to the wife yet.
Super Mario jump, here we go.
(water sloshing)
Let's do this baby!
- [Luke] All right, you ready for the top?
(gentle upbeat music)
Okay Mark, the bait is coming behind you right now.
(gentle upbeat music)
(water sloshing)
- Now that I have the fish smoothie bags
and everyone was back at a safe distance,
I decide to pop these stupid things.
Okay.
Here I go.
Oh, this is crazy. What am I doing?
(suspenseful music)
Okay, the bait is deployed.
Ah!
I got to get this stuff outta here.
Here they come.
(Mark screams)
Oh.
Oh my God.
Oh God, they're bumping the cage.
(suspenseful music intensifies)
Look at those teeth!
That could have been my hand
if I wasn't doing the T-Rex maneuver.
They want to eat me real bad.
Oh, now they're literally like moving circles around me.
Oh gosh.
Oh! His head's in the cage!
What the crap!
This is certifiably insane!
Oh!
The sharks were literally trying to eat me
through the bottom of the cage.
So, they left me no choice but to defend my honor.
Yeah, get outta my cage!
Get outta my cage!
I'm gonna kill you Shaq!
Get the heck out!
Ayyyy.
Awwww.
Yo bro, get outta my cage, all right?
They loved our blended concoction.
We knew all along that the most dangerous part
would be when I exited the cage
because they'd still be agitated
and they'd be stoked to finally have access
to the soft chewy center.
Okay, the blood kinda dissipated.
The sharks have gone a little bit.
- [Luke] Okay, we're pulling the bait away, mate.
- [Mark] So the plan was for one of the other divers
to distract them way off to the side with a bait box,
and then I would get out as silently as possible
so they wouldn't notice me.
Dude, that was insane.
Yeah, you're not so tough now, are you sharks?
- [Luke] Okay Mark, go ahead, open the door.
- Okay.
(breathing noises)
Oh crap.
(contraption thuds loudly)
That was loud.
(water sloshing)
Dude. Luke!
Holy crap.
I've gotta close this back up.
(suspenseful music)
Oh geez.
Luke, I need help, man.
Holy crap.
Geez.
- [Luke] Keep your arms in mate.
These sharks aren't going away.
I'm going to get you back to the surface.
- [Mark] Okay.
(screams)
Oh my gosh.
(water sloshing)
- [Luke] Top side, top side.
We're on our way out.
- [Mark] I think somewhere to tell Shaq
he can do his own stunts from now on.
Hey! I'm alive!
The main takeaway for me for this experience
is that sharks have been on this planet
longer than the dinosaurs or even trees have.
So, they've had 400 million years of evolution
to develop these instincts that are rewarded
for smelling fish blood.
Humans and cows will be an extremely rare delicacy.
So it makes sense that it's not just hardwired
into their brains.
And so with all my limbs intact
and with my curiosity fully satiated,
I will leave you with these profound words
that in my defense might have been the drama in me speaking.
As humans we're always the predator
and not really ever the prey.
But this gave me a sense
of what it's like to be a tuna fish.
(heavy drum beat)
(playful upbeat music)