I'm jeremy wade.
I'm an explorer and biologist.
Fishing is my passion.
One of the most extraordinary catches of my life.
Time and again, this passion has helped me
Solve both freshwater and marine mysteries.
This thing really is a river monster.
Now i'm taking on the biggest
And maybe most complex investigation of my career.
This is an absolute beast.
A dramatic story of untold depths,
Of 2,500 souls shipwrecked in the mid-Atlantic,
And the horrific fate of over 1,000 who never made it.
The screaming — the screams were just terrible.
A story that's never been fully told.
Right here — fin on the surface.
This investigation will lead me on a global journey
To uncover what really happened in the water that night.
It will take me deeper than i've ever been before —
Down into the abyss
To confront sea monsters in their own domain.
I feel like an astronaut landing on the moon.
— captions by vitac — www.Vitac.Com
Captions paid for by discovery communications
The sinking of the british passenger steamer rms laconia
Has haunted me since i first heard about it.
It's one of the most famous stories
Of the second world war.
I've learned about dramatic new evidence
That suggests there's far more to this story
Than first meets the eye.
On september the 12th, 1942,
The rms laconia was sailing in the mid-Atlantic,
Bound for england.
She was carrying civilians and soldiers returning home
And hundreds of italian prisoners of war
Bound for internment camps in the u.K.
Several days from safety
And hundreds of miles from land,
She was attacked by a german u-Boat.
Two torpedos struck her starboard side
In quick succession.
The laconia started to take in water fast.
Accounts talk of stunned passengers
And crew scrambling to escape.
Italian p.O.W.S broke out of their holding cells
And tried to force their way off the stricken ship.
Some attempted to board the already overloaded lifeboats
But were fought off by allied soldiers.
The scene turned into a bloodbath.
At first glance, this is an open-And-Shut case.
For decades, it has been assumed
That most of the passengers and p.O.W.S drowned,
And those who didn't were taken by sharks.
But i've always wondered
Whether that was the whole story.
My previous investigations have often shown
That the answer is seldom what is first assumed.
And now i have a chance to find the true culprits,
Because buried deep inside this archive,
I've discovered a forgotten cache of eyewitness accounts
Full of clues that could turn this story on its head.
Many hundreds of people ended up in the water,
Where some mysteriously just disappeared.
Dragged beneath the surface
With only their life jackets ever re-Emerging.
Bodies found by rescuers days later
Had been attacked by creatures in the water.
And of those, a number showed bite marks
That still don't point to any obvious perpetrator.
This new evidence suggests multiple mystery attackers.
But what were they?
With over 1,000 victims,
This will be a huge and complex case.
But using the accounts of those who lived through it,
I'm going to find out what happened to those who didn't.
The people who wrote those eyewitness accounts
Are long gone,
But there is one survivor who i have managed to find.
I'm on my way to meet a woman
Who was actually on the laconia that night.
She is one of only a handful of survivors
Who are still alive today.
At the time, she was just a 14-Year-Old girl,
And she was fleeing the war in singapore.
And she was traveling with
Her mother, her father, and her brother.
What happened when suddenly it was no longer
Normality on the boat at that point?
It was 8:00.
And the first torpedo struck. It was awful.
But by the time you gathered your senses,
The second one hit.
Josephine and her family
Only had minutes to get up on deck.
My father threw the life jackets at us.
And he said, "come on, the lifeboat stage."
We dropped everything, rushed out of the cabin.
The screaming —
The screams were just terrible.
It was total — total chaos.
They lowered our lifeboat to the sea,
And minute it hit the water,
People were trying to climb into it, as well.
They were having to be pushed away.
We couldn't take any more.
I witnessed an italian prisoner of war
Being shot by a man in our lifeboat.
He was trying to get on.
And he was shot.
That was war —
War at its worst.
So the men rowed, and they rowed, and they rowed.
And we managed to get quite a way from the ship.
And when we looked, the stern came up,
And then it went down.
And then everywhere was pitch-Black.
The next day, i realized the water was pink
Because there was so much blood.
And that was when i realized that there were sharks
Because you could see the tips of the fins at one stage.
And then, you know, now and again,
You'd get one a bit nearer
Because they'd been circling the boat.
It was awful.
I'm not surprised that josephine saw sharks.
I know they are part of the story.
But tellingly, she says that she didn't see them
Until the next day.
I know that in the immediate aftermath,
People were attacked by something.
But if it wasn't sharks, then what was it?
This is the biggest case i've looked into by far.
When you're looking at something that happened
In the middle of 75 million square miles of ocean,
Where on earth do you start?
The laconia's last recorded position
Was 5 degrees south and 11 degrees west
In around 12,000 feet of water,
700 miles from mainland africa.
Trying to operate at the site of the sinking
Would be a logistical impossibility.
But i get lucky.
I receive permission to travel to a military base —
A tiny speck of land
Just 250 miles from where the laconia went down,
Known as ascension island.
Ascension is one of the most remote islands
Anywhere on earth.
It's right slap-Bang in the middle of the atlantic,
Sort of halfway between africa and south america.
But most importantly for me,
It's the closest i can get to the scene of the incident.
Ascension is a british and u.S. Military base,
And travel to the island is heavily controlled.
Evening.
Hello. Going to ascension?
Ah, yes.
Gaining access to ascension is one thing,
But now my whole investigation hinges on
What fish i find when i get there.
I've managed to gain permission to travel
To one of the most remote and secretive islands on earth —
Ascension island.
No one lives here permanently.
The vast majority of the 800 or so personnel
Are on military contracts.
What they do is not public knowledge.
And some areas of the island are strictly off-Limits.
But it's the vast expanse of water
Around this speck of land that interests me.
Very few people get to fish here,
Either recreationally or commercially,
Which means that the species that are here now
Are gonna be the same ones that were here in 1942.
There'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.
To help me assemble a suspect list for the laconia disaster,
I've brought with me the eyewitness accounts
From the archive.
But 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 i.D.
But one thing does come across clearly,
And it flies in the face of conventional wisdom
In such cases.
The accounts are unanimous in stating
That sharks were not the first attackers on the scene.
So what was?
One 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.
Take this from ian peele,
Who was one of the many people who was in the water,
Who hadn't been able to get a place in a lifeboat.
"immediately, i heard cries of 'shark.'"
"but it wasn't shark i saw,
But huge numbers of large silvery fish
Slicing and attacking at will..."
"... Even more formidable than a shark."
The obvious culprit is the barracuda...
A fish i've encountered before.
But 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.
So, what exactly was ian peele describing?
The mid-Atlantic is new territory for me,
And i'm working with limited information.
But somewhere out there, there's the silvery predator
That was first on the laconia scene.
And i've got to work out a way to find it.
The best way to cover a large search area
Is to use a technique called trolling.
Whenever you're fishing, the biggest question is,
Where are you gonna put your bait?
And in this immensity of water, that's a very big question.
But with the island here,
There's a plateau where it gradually gets deeper
Out to a couple hundred feet.
And then in a very short space,
It plunges down to a couple of thousand
And then keeps on going.
And what we're gonna do is gonna fish on the move
And just go along the drop-Off with lures out the back.
The survivors' accounts
Describe the fish that drew first blood
As being medium-Sized and fast.
So that's what i'm going for.
On the big rod, we're gonna put this.
This is — you can see that mimics a fish in the water.
This is quite significant because what happens —
The water catches that as we're moving,
And it pushes it down. It makes it dive,
And it gets a good wiggle on.
Serious hooks on here.
Thick wire because quite likely if anything hits this,
It's gonna have teeth.
In fact, you can see it's been hit a few times
By some toothy creatures.
So off we go.
We work our way along the drop-Off.
To increase my chances of a take in the vast mid-Atlantic,
I have two different lures working at the surface
And two deeper down.
The lures have definitely got the attention of the birds,
So they got to look fairly convincing.
The fact is it's something happening on the surface here,
Which just triggers the attention.
And we're hoping the same will happen
Beneath the surface, as well —
Getting fish to come up and investigate.
As first on the laconia scene,
My silvery suspect was clearly curious and quick.
So who's going to be first to hit?
Steaming away. Steaming away.
I'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.
Screaming take.
After trying different lures, i finally have a hit.
Is that off, or is it just coming towards me?
Yeah.
That was hooked up for 20 seconds or so,
But it came off.
Sometimes happens. It'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.
But in this case, just as quickly, it's gone.
Dolphins beside the boat.
This is a really good sign.
The rod tip's really banging away there.
That's indicative of the lure down there
Really pushing out some vibrations.
It's like the dinner gong going off.
And i've got a good feeling about that.
Out here in the middle of the ocean,
There's no significant land mass
To stop the huge atlantic swells.
Then another take on the same rod.
This time, i'm hoping it will stay hooked.
This is steaming away, steaming away.
Haven't seen it yet at all.
It's quite a rapid kick, whatever it is.
I think i've got a bit of color.
I can see something down there.
Oh, there it is, there it is.
Got it, i think. Yeah, here we go.
I've landed a silvery fish and an energetic one.
But is this the fish that drew first blood?
Skipjack.
It's almost like a bit of metal, isn't it?
Amazing, the energy it's got.
It's actually very mirror-Like,
And actually, in open water,
That's very effective camouflage
If you're about the same kind of depth as that.
It's just gonna bounce the light off,
And it's almost gonna disappear into the background.
But if you're looking down on it, it's dark,
So it's perfect counter-Shading.
I don't think this skipjack is the silvery predator
That the eyewitnesses talk about.
These fish just don't have the hardware
To inflict the sort of wounds described.
Off he goes.
I'm going to try a different approach
By using to my advantage
The strong currents that swirl around the island.
Maybe it was scent rather than sight
That brought in the predators that night.
There's a whole sardine on the end here.
And the boat is drifting,
So we're just gonna slowly drift.
We'll keep some...
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.
Oils from these pieces of fish
Leave scent trails in the water.
And the predators here quickly find my bait.
Something fast almost empties my reel.
That fish took right next to the boat.
Look at that thing go, leaping in the air.
The fish is desperately trying to throw the hook.
Then...
My line goes slack.
Oh, it's still there. It's just running towards me.
If i had any doubt about these waters being rich,
Here's a bit of confirmation there.
This is a good-Size dorado on.
This clearly isn't a silvery assailant,
But it is a powerful predator in its own right
And worth a closer look.
Beautiful fish. Look at that.
Dorado means gold, but look at all the blue on there.
Also known as mahi-Mahi, dolphinfish.
Those acrobatic leaps are totally in character
For a hunter that takes out flying fish.
It's still got a lot of strength, actually.
I can feel it flexing.
But despite their obvious strength and agility,
Dorados have never been known to pose a threat to humans.
Off he goes. Ooh, strong fish.
These waters are teeming with predators,
But so far, my catches don't match the descriptions
In the eyewitness reports.
Doubts are creeping into my mind.
The information i have is just too scant.
My search parameters are too wide.
Given 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.
I go back to the eyewitness accounts
And come across one with an interesting clue.
Jim mclaughlin was deep inside the ship
When the first torpedo hit.
He 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.
He goes on to say that inside the laconia,
Pandemonium had erupted.
People screaming,
Everyone pushing and shoving, clutching at his legs.
Some of them falling back into the darkness of the hold below.
Jim made it off the stricken laconia
To the relative safety of an emergency raft.
But it's in the water where his problems really began.
He 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.
He drew his legs onto the raft in a blind panic,
And his first thought was that he'd been bitten by a shark.
But when he looked down at his calf,
He saw gruesome, fang-Like puncture marks.
There are any number of predatory schooling fish
Like the two i've already found in these waters.
But this new evidence narrows my search.
Jim's description of fangs is striking
And could be a breakthrough lead.
There is one schooling predator that might fit the bill
With silvery flanks and vicious fangs.
It's a member of the snake mackerel family,
And it inhabits a vast range throughout the atlantic.
It's called the snoek.
At this time of year, though, they aren't in open ocean,
But in vast breeding schools
Along the coast of south africa.
So that's where i'm headed.
The snoek could be the fish that drew first blood
The night the laconia went down.
But to be sure, i need to catch one.
I'm fishing out of cape town,
The port that the laconia sailed from
On its fateful final voyage.
It was a month northwest of here that she went down,
Leaving hundreds floundering in the mid-Atlantic waters.
Now, the snoek 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 at 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.
Before i can get one on my line,
I have to find out where the snoek are schooling.
And in such a huge expanse of water,
I'm going to need a little help.
Now, 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.
We'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.
But time might be against me.
This is cape point at the southerly tip of africa,
Known here as the cape of storms.
It's three hours before we get the first sign of fish.
Are they still there?
He's right here. He's right under us.
According to the sonar,
We're right above a school of fish.
There could be anything between
A couple of hundred to a thousand fish down there.
So what i'm using is this. This is actually —
It's lead with a bit of coloration on it.
And i'm just dropping that down to the bottom,
And that's what they go for.
These cape fur seals sense that
There might be an opportunity for easy prey.
Let's see what happens when
A small bait-Fish imitation runs the gauntlet.
The sonar only tells me so much.
I knows there's fish down there,
But are they snoek?
Here we go.
Whatever i catch, i'll need to get it in the boat fast
To avoid it being snatched off the line.
It's retrieving it a bit erratically.
Here we go. There's one, there's one.
I'm off the coast of south africa
Attempting to find out what happened
To passengers of the doomed rms laconia.
Here we go.
I'm chasing down a fanged open-Ocean predator,
The probable match for what some eyewitnesses
Described seeing in the water that night.
It's retrieving it a bit erratically.
Here we go. There's one, there's one.
This feels like a good size.
This is taking line out.
This fish is stronger than i anticipated.
I've got to bring it in quickly 'cause there's seals around.
That's the problem.
There it is, there it is, there it is.
It is a sleek silvery predator, but is it the culprit?
Here we go.
Right, i'm being very careful, actually,
Not to get too close to this
Because not only has it got very sharp teeth,
But also, apparently, if one of these does bite you,
If it draws blood, there's anticoagulant there.
You just won't stop bleeding for hours.
So i'm looking as close as i dare, but not too close.
Well, this is what i came here, all this way, for.
Open ocean, schooling fish.
They're fast, predatory.
Was this the silvery fish that they were talking about,
The survivors of the laconia?
And in terms of puncture marks,
Well, that is gonna cause a puncture mark.
What i'm seeing now does indeed point to snoek
Being the first fish on the scene
The night the laconia went down.
Whether it was just chance
Or the commotion of hundreds of people
Thrashing on the surface that brought them in,
We'll never know.
But it appears that the people in the water
Encountered a school of these fanged ferocious fish.
Snoek aren't going to kill you,
But perhaps their activity
Helped to call in other predators.
I've landed one suspect,
But i've got unfinished business
Back at ascension island
Because the more i dig into the eyewitness accounts,
The more they reveal.
The 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.
Some of the injuries described by eyewitnesses
Were clearly not caused by any of the usual suspects.
So it's these unusual wounds
That i now want to turn my attention to.
One account is particularly interesting.
Five days after the laconia was sunk,
A french rescue vessel arrived at the scene
To search for survivors.
Some of the bodies they pulled out
Were covered in highly unusual bite marks.
In the words of the account,
These were neat, round holes
As if made by a punch.
But then i see something matching this description
With my own eyes.
And fishermen here tell me that this is not uncommon.
This is a fresh one.
Look at these marks on this dorado.
Circular wound here.
Another one here.
The beginnings of one there.
And on the other side. These are all fresh.
These are caused by something called a cookiecutter shark,
Which is a small species of shark.
It lives fairly deep down during the daytime,
But what it does — it comes up at night.
And it's a sort of a sneak, stealth attacker.
I mean, you think of a dorado — this is a fast fish.
You know, normally, you're not gonna catch one of these things.
But the cookiecutter comes in very quickly,
And it bites a very clean plug of flesh out of it.
I want to learn more about this elusive and unusual creature.
Looking through pictures of other bites
Strengthens the case against the cookiecutter.
These wounds are significantly bigger.
Although this unusual predator may be small —
Less than 2 feet long —
It's bite can cause serious damage.
And yet, that signature bite mark
Is just about the only evidence that cookiecutters even exist.
One thing that is known about them
Is that they rise toward the surface at night to feed.
So in the evening,
I head out to try and find signs of one for myself.
As far as i'm aware,
The cookiecutter has never been caught on a line,
So this is a very long shot.
But at the very least,
I might see what else
Is feeding in these waters after dark —
The time the laconia went down.
We're just trying to get into position on the drop-Off.
About 300 foot of water is what we're looking for,
And then we're gonna drop down the anchor.
And we're gonna stay here into the night.
The laconia was hit at around 8:00 p.M. And sank by 9:30,
Leaving it stranded passengers
With a full night of horror ahead.
Here on the equator, you don't get long evenings.
It gets dark very quickly.
So if it's 7:00 or something like that,
And now 9:30, pitch dark —
Has been for a couple of hours.
I'm using pieces of tuna
That i'm gonna send down to the bottom.
I'm hoping this might
At least bring evidence of a cookiecutter.
The atlantic at night is eerily quiet
And, apart from the small pool of light from our boat,
Pitch-Black.
I can't help but make a connection between this boat
And the laconia and also this time of night.
This is about the time of night that the boat went down
And those hundreds of people ended up in this water.
Now it's just about keeping alert...
And feeling for a movement on my line.
The movement, when it comes, almost pulls me in.
That's quite a rapid tail on that.
Yeah, this feels quite heavy. It's... Interesting.
It's actually coming up quite quickly.
So...
Here we go.
Wow.
This is a horse-Eye jack.
Took down there at about 300 foot of water.
These are sometimes known as big-Eye jacks.
They see well in the dark and at depths.
They probably share nighttime territory
With the cookiecutter,
But there are no bite marks to suggest
That this one has had an encounter.
Okay, gonna put this back.
I load the hook again.
And it's not long before something else takes the bait.
After its initial pull,
It suddenly develops an extraordinary burst of power.
It's going.
Right.
Oh, it's just going.
It's just going. It's just going.
It's going, it's going.
It's going.
It takes everything i've got to stop it.
This was something that took it right on the bottom.
Here we go, here it is, here it is.
What's that?
I'm fishing in the atlantic ocean
In the same waters where the rms laconia went down.
Here we go, here it is, here it is.
I've just brought up a hefty amberjack from the deep.
But i'm not the only hunter out tonight.
Half an amberjack.
Shark's bit it already.
When i hooked it, it ran off, stopped,
And then it went a second time.
And actually, now that i think about it,
That second time was more powerful.
And what that was, was actually a shark hanging on to this.
Well, i think moving on — what i got to do,
I got to fish heavier line, bigger reel to hold that line,
Heavy wire on the end.
Possibly a bigger boat.
So i didn't find any evidence of the elusive cookiecutters.
But from what the fisherman showed me,
I know they're in these waters.
The question facing me now is,
What's down there that can bite a 25-Pound fish clean in half?
Perhaps now is the time to find out
What bigger sharks are hunting in these waters.
And this time, i'm well-Prepared.
Just getting some chum cut up to go in the water.
Just small bits of fish,
Which we'll just keep trickling in there at intervals.
This creates a certain amount of scent in the water.
The other thing it does — it will bring in small fish,
And then the activity of those will bring in larger fish.
So we're creating an event here.
We're creating something to make this bit of ocean
Stand out from all the other space out there.
I know that sharks have an extraordinary ability
To pick up scent.
But in such an immensity of water,
Chumming almost seems futile.
But i keep the chum going in,
Which keeps the baitfish feeding near the boat.
Then i get a faint movement on the line.
Oh, there's a knock. There's a knock.
Whatever has taken the bait speeds off.
What ensues is a battle
That's still in progress an hour later.
I winch it in turn by painful turn.
Sudden slackening then.
It could be the fish trying to roll up the line.
Thing is when it does that,
Is to basically not give it that slack that it needs.
Taking line again.
Which way is it going?
I think it's still here.
Yeah, we're close, we're close.
That's the leader knot.
I can see the fish down there.
This is a tiger shark.
Whoa, watch out.
Okay.
Is it under the boat?
This tiger shark is not giving in.
Definitely not coming quietly, this fish.
It thrashes and rolls as it attempts to free itself,
And it's all i can do to hold it.
Oh, sh...
It's gone. It's gone.
We got the whole bait back.
But the hook,
It was just somewhere inside the mouth,
And it hadn't completely penetrated.
The thing is what they do is they roll up the leader,
So you haven't got, very often,
That direct pressure on the hook.
The hook is — the line goes around the body.
And, i mean, you'd think, looking at the bend in that rod
And the amount of general strain on everything,
That that hook would've gone in.
But, no, it was...
It still had a lot of energy when it came to the surface,
And basically it just moved around enough
To just work that hook free.
So, yeah, there's more sharks here than we thought.
I've now encountered big sharks on two successive nights.
These waters are clearly
Teeming with active hunting predators.
Although last night's catch got away,
I've encountered the tiger shark's ferocity before.
This is a tiger shark, and this is a big one.
I have little doubt that the laconia victims
Would've had to contend with this powerful predator.
But tiger sharks in the open ocean
Usually hunt alone,
So they are unlikely to have gathered
In sufficient numbers to be solely responsible.
So, what else was there?
For a complete picture, i need to figure out
What sharks were roaming these waters in 1942.
Searching the historical records
Throws up useful information
That might help to give me the answer.
In 1942, the laconia was far from an isolated incident.
The battle of the atlantic was reaching its peak.
In that year alone, over 1,600 vessels were sunk,
Resulting in the loss of thousands of lives.
Going through the reports of these disasters,
I start to see a pattern emerging.
Account after account describes the same shark species
Attacking the people in the water —
A shark i have little experience with...
The oceanic whitetip.
But this shark, which patrolled the atlantic
In large numbers in 1942, is now on the endangered list
And can only be found in a handful of marine reserves
Dotted around the world.
The reason for this shark's rapid decline
Is simple.
Basically, not long after the end of the war,
From about the 1950s or so,
Commercial fishing on an industrial scale
Started in the open oceans.
And sharks are particularly vulnerable,
And it turns out oceanic whitetips
Are one of the most vulnerable species.
And it's very hard to come by any definite numbers,
But people are saying they've been almost wiped out worldwide.
So the fact that they're not here now
Doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't here in 1942.
But if i'm to study these now-Endangered creatures,
It's clear i'm gonna have to spread my search
A little further.
This is the bahamas,
And this is one of the few places left on earth
Where there is still a relatively healthy population
Of oceanic whitetips.
Although it's clear that sharks are a big part
Of this investigation
And i think there's enough historic evidence
To place oceanic whitetips in the dock,
There's still one question about their involvement
That needs answering.
According to the laconia eyewitness accounts,
Sharks didn't show up until many hours after the sinking.
The question i want to answer is why.
The laconia sank in a huge expanse of open ocean
Where there would undoubtedly have been
Lone, hunting oceanic whitetips.
But the chances of a large number of sharks
Being in the exact location where the laconia sank
At that exact time are slim.
So what was it that called in these lone sharks
In the vastness of the mid-Atlantic?
I think there's a clue in the eyewitness accounts.
Take this from squadron leader i j peters,
Who, along with hundreds of others,
Was fighting for his life in the water that night.
He'd swum some distance away from the stricken vessel.
By the time he stopped and looked back,
The laconia was almost gone,
And he found himself surrounded by debris
And burning oil on the surface.
Then, beneath him, he goes on to write,
He heard two huge, booming explosions.
Now, this booming sound is when the boilers,
Which are under, you know, intense pressure,
Super-Heated metal —
As soon as that hits the water,
You get a crack, and the whole thing just goes.
And this sound would've carried over an enormous distance,
Much further than the sound
Of anybody splashing in the water,
Any shouts, this kind of thing.
And i'm just wondering if this might have been
What called sharks in, possibly from, you know,
A very big area of ocean.
Now, i don't have the wherewithal
To duplicate that scenario —
To create a huge explosion underwater.
But maybe there is a way that i can investigate
The effect that sound has on sharks,
And maybe this is gonna help me.
This is a waterproof underwater speaker,
And if the weather's okay tomorrow,
If i can get out on the water,
This might just give me some answers.
I want to investigate
Whether the sound of the laconia's boilers
Exploding underwater
Could have brought in sharks from a distance.
My plan is to do this using an underwater speaker.
Once we're far enough away from the island reef,
We'll stop the boat's engines
And i'll continue silently by kayak.
I've heard that there have been whitetips spotted in this area.
And what i want to do — i want to, um...
Just put some pure sound in the water.
I don't want any scent,
I don't want any visual stimulus,
Just sound, and see if anything actually responds to that.
I've got all the equipment on board,
And i'll just leave the main boat
A little bit further behind.
Then i'll get the speaker in the water.
As the names suggests,
Oceanic whitetips are true open-Ocean predators.
They are able to travel huge distances
Between feeding when prey is scarce.
In the vast expanses of water they travel through,
They are constantly on the alert
For any unusual occurrence.
I'm going to test whether sound in the water
Can bring sharks in to investigate the source.
I'm putting a low-Frequency tone through the speaker.
A shark's hearing is adapted
To very low-Frequency vibrations,
Such as those made by struggling prey.
The sound from this speaker has an underwater range
Of around 800 feet.
Spreading out in three dimensions,
That equates to over 80-Million cubic feet of water.
Now all i have to do is wait.
Fin just broke the surface right here, right here,
Right here!
I'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.
I want to find out whether sharks
Could have been brought to the scene
By the sound of the ship's boilers
Exploding underwater.
Fin just broke the surface right there.
To test this theory, i'm not using bait or blood
To attract sharks, just sound.
There's one right here heading this way,
I'm guessing about six foot under the water.
It's a lone oceanic whitetip.
And it's coming in.
And it's just feet away from the speaker.
It's actually just within three feet of the speaker.
But one lone shark doesn't prove my theory.
One here.
Fin out of the water.
Right, there was just one.
I think, yeah, there's at least two now.
Ah, right by the speaker, just two, three feet away.
I think if i was actually in the water,
That would be very ominous to see that.
I mean, i'm safely, or relatively safely,
Clear of the water at the moment.
But, um...
These sharks are definitely interested.
They've come in from — i don't know where they were,
But they've come in to check out the situation.
And the sharks aren't leaving.
They're sticking close to the speaker.
The sharks are circling.
They're just hearing the sound,
And they are — they're circling me.
I'm encouraged this experiment appears to be working,
But i'm now surrounded by sharks
Longer than my tiny kayak.
I'm a little worried they're becoming
Too interested in me.
Right here, fin on the surface going down.
I get the feeling that i'm being followed.
I think one of the creepiest things
Is actually the fact that when you're diving,
You've got a mask. You can actually see clearly.
When you're above the surface, the surface is broken like this,
You just see that very ghostly, gray shape.
Oh, here's one right here, right here, right here!
And it's coming back.
I've drawn in oceanic whitetip sharks
From a distance.
But without an obvious food source,
They've started to turn their attention to the kayak.
It's time to turn the speaker off.
Eventually, the sharks lose interest
In both the speaker and my kayak.
Well, i definitely got the impression
That the sharks were interested in the speaker.
For me, 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.
Once at closer range,
They detected the melee at the surface.
But this case isn't solved yet.
I'm uncovering evidence that suggests that,
As well as oceanic whitetips,
A bigger and more elusive predator
Came to investigate that night.
This is an absolute beast —
An absolute beast.
I'm investigating what happened
To the passengers of the rms laconia,
Torpedoed at the height of the second world war
In the mid-Atlantic.
My investigation has so far i.D.'d three hunters
That could've been present in numbers
At the scene of the disaster...
The snoek,
The cookiecutter shark,
And the oceanic whitetip.
But i'm uncovering evidence that a much bigger predator
May have been there that night.
I'm back in the area where the laconia sank
Because this investigation has one last twist.
I've unearthed something puzzling
Buried in the eyewitness reports
That doesn't seem to match anything
I've heard of before.
One man says that he saw somebody dragged,
In his words, "vertically downwards."
Moments later, just his empty life jacket re-Emerged.
What could've done this?
Accounts of oceanic whitetip attacks on people
Seem to follow a pattern —
Cautious circling followed by the strike.
And this is similar to some other shark attacks
I've investigated.
But this description just doesn't seem to fit.
The laconia sank in 12,000 feet of water.
I've looked far and wide for suspects,
But so far, i haven't looked down.
A memory surfaces.
I've seen photographs of monster sharks
Snagged in the nets of atlantic deep-Sea trawlers —
Huge, bizarre creatures that belong to another world.
Are these the creatures i'm now looking for?
Were the victims of the laconia
Dragged down by a leviathan of the deep?
My plan is to head out to deep ocean
Off the coast of ascension island,
As close as i can to where the laconia sank,
And fish as deep as my line will allow
To see what will take my bait.
This will be a journey into the unknown.
I don't know what we'll pull up from below.
We know more about the surface of mars
Than we do about the deep ocean.
A fishing expedition of this nature
Is highly unusual,
And whatever i pull up could be of huge scientific interest.
So i've invited shark specialist
Dr. Tristan guttridge to join me on the boat.
Whatever i catch, he will document and tag
To record its movements.
He talks me through the system he's devised.
So, we've got two components —
The transmitter to basically relocate the tag
And then the logger that takes the information —
The environmental information,
The depth and the temperature that the shark is at.
Fishing the depths of the atlantic won't be easy.
And catching a real-Life sea monster takes big gear.
Big circle hook on the end
Attached to about 30 foot of nylon-Coated steel wire.
And then the actual line is 130 pounds.
And on full drag...
So it's pretty well locked up.
So all we got to do now — get the bait on,
Big lump of rock on that, send it down to the bottom,
And i'm hoping fairly soon,
We will find out what's down there.
All around me, the pitch-Black
Of the mid-Atlantic adds to my sense of unease.
I've no way of gauging the horizon.
And i have the unnerving sense that we're floating in space.
Out of the darkness,
Something flies onto the deck of the boat.
Look at this.
This just flew into the boat.
It's a flying fish.
Look, amazing.
Flying fish have evolved their remarkable ability
To evade predators.
It's achieved by gaining huge speed underwater
Before they propel themselves into the air.
Never seen that before.
We rig underwater cameras to record anything
On its way up to the boat.
The bait is down on the bottom,
And yet,
Anything that happens down there will be transmitted up.
The rod top will move,
And i could also feel it through my fingertips.
It's almost like being a spider in the middle of a web.
So now i'm just waiting for a knock on the line.
In preparation for something huge,
I put on a fishing harness.
But if i'm honest, i don't really know
What monsters will be lurking at these depths.
Well, there's a knock. There's a knock.
Then i feel the gentlest of knocks on the line
Before the reel on full drag screams off.
It's going up to speed.
That is going very fast.
Whatever has taken the bait down on the bottom
Has really taken off.
Ooh, here we go.
Got something like a tail banging the line.
It doesn't feel like anything i've ever hooked before.
Mystery beast
That's been really steaming off,
Taking line.
That's a very strong fish.
I mean, that is a very strong animal —
Very strong animal.
It feels like a massive —
I was gonna say deadweight.
It's not — it's not dead.
It's definitely alive.
But it's a weight.
I'm breaking quite a sweat here.
Not really gaining anything at the moment.
Ooh, there we go. So a little bit of gain there.
Whatever i've hooked is truly enormous,
And it has no intention
Of coming anywhere near the boat.
After nearly an hour of struggle,
I might finally see my opponent.
Whatever it is is now close to the surface.
I can see something down there.
Very interesting outline.
But nothing prepares me for what is revealed
On the end of my line.
What is that?
I'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.
I'm fishing in very deep water,
And something huge has taken my bait.
One way or another, this is sort of end game.
But nothing prepares me
For what is on the end of my line.
There's the fish — there it is.
What i've raised from the deep twists and turns on the line.
It's like nothing i've ever seen before.
What is that?
It's easily longer than the width of our boat.
I estimate around 12 to 14 feet long.
That's a big ol' fish, well-Hooked.
Whoo!
All right.
Shark scientist tristan identifies it
As a sixgill shark —
A primitive creature that inhabits the deep ocean.
Here we go, here we go, here we go.
This animal has more fossil relatives
Than living ones.
Ah, this is an absolute beast — an absolute beast.
It's an incredible opportunity for tristan.
A deep sea giant like this has never been tagged here before,
And the information we might gain
Could be vital to my investigation.
But we only have a short time to get a tag in.
- Perfect. - Quick, quick!
Yes. Are we there?
Fantastic.
Tristan has to rope the tail
To get some degree of control.
Then he can insert the tag into its dorsal fin.
Do you want this? Yeah, that's it.
So this is 48 hours, then it'll pop off.
Is that it? Yeah, this is 48 hours.
And this will log temperature, depth, and light,
And then pop off.
That's in?
Yeah. Fantastic.
Right, we've got the tag in,
And i think we've had as good a look as we're gonna get.
All right, get the tail rope off.
We're now releasing the fish.
There you go, girl.
Massive, massive fish, and a creature of the abyss.
With the shark released,
It begins its long journey back to the depths,
Taking with it the tag that we hope will give us
A unique insight into its movements.
Is this the first time tags of that kind
Have been used here, as far as you know?
First time anyone's ever put a satellite tag on a sixgill
In ascension island.
So it will be very exciting to see what this animal does.
We have a reliable estimate of well over thousand pounds,
You know, something like 1,100 pounds.
That is actually the biggest fish that i've ever caught.
So a very special place, very special catch.
But thrilling as this catch was,
I still can't place these leviathans at the scene
Of the laconia's sinking.
These are creatures of the deep.
What would they have been doing near the surface?
Later, after tristan has retrieved the data
From the tag...
He calls me with what might be
The glimmer of an answer.
Hello, tristan.
Hello!
So you've got something from the tag?
It popped up?
Yeah, so what's pretty exciting
Is we now know kind of what the sixgill was doing
Across that period.
And what's cool is that they make this
What's called a diel vertical migration.
So they travel down to the depths during the day
And up in the water column during the night.
It seems to be the light, so when it hits dusk and dawn,
That's when they make these migrations up and down.
And they're all probably just tracking prey —
Squid and things like that.
But horizontally, we saw no movement whatsoever.
So they're moving a lot,
But it's moving purely in the up and down direction.
The water column. Yeah.
What might be the point of coming up?
Are you thinking that they are doing the feeding
When they come up shallow?
Yeah. They probably scavenge
From carcasses and things like that.
I mean, who'd have thought that little thing
That we attached to that fish,
That it can give this information.
It's just such an insight, isn't it,
To what's going on down there?
Yeah, exactly.
All right, bye-Bye.
Take care. Cheers, adieu, bye-Bye.
Bye. Right.
Although there are many questions about sixgill sharks
Still to be answered,
This experiment demonstrates very, very clearly
This up and down migration that synchronizes absolutely
With the passage of night and day.
You know, they're down deep during the day,
Then they rise up at night.
And given the fact that the laconia went down
During the hours of darkness,
This could be very significant.
The only thing is, despite all this amazing technology
We've been using, the one thing that it can't tell us
Is whether sixgill sharks would actually feed on humans.
I have been known to use myself as human bait.
This time, i think i'll pass.
But i think i found a way to do the next best thing.
I haven't come here to top off 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 bathypelagic zone.
This is where no light ever reaches.
Thank you.
I've arranged to meet karl stanley,
Owner, builder, and captain of the idabel —
A two-Man submarine capable of descending
To over 2,500 feet.
We'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.
I want to find out if this will bring in the sixgills.
This 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.
Normally 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, and at that point,
I generally don't know what it is.
But i'm gonna be sitting
Literally a few feet away from this.
So if something comes along and shows an interest in this,
I'm gonna have a ringside seat.
I'm just a couple of feet away.
This is the pressure hull.
And that's made out of three high-Strength steel spheres.
Right, so i take it i'm in that bit there,
And is that where you're driving it from?
Yes.
I'm not ashamed to admit that mixed with my excitement
Is mounting apprehension.
That's —
That's where i'm going.
It's a wee bit claustrophobic,
And under 2,000 feet of water,
It's gonna be a whole new level of that.
The curved walls make it almost impossible
To sit up straight,
And i could be spending up to nine hours
Cooped up inside here.
I'm positioned up front at karl's feet,
In what he has dubbed the "passenger sphere,"
Which is a cramped 54 inches wide.
The 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.
We're going down into the cayman trench,
Which at its deepest is about 25,000 feet.
We'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.
As we descend, the temperature plummets
From 84 degrees fahrenheit to a chilly 50.
We're just coming up to 500 feet.
And as we're descending,
I sort of can't help thinking about
When the laconia went down,
There 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.
And that is definitely a one-Way trip.
Sort of don't want to think about that too much.
That's 1,000 feet.
The pressure on the outside of the hull increases
As the weight of all that water above us
Bears down on the sub.
At this depth, that equates
To 430 pounds on every square inch.
We've got lights on the sub,
So the water here is illuminated.
Looking up, i mean, the surface is long past being visible.
And where we're actually going, it's —
We're going to the edge of the bathypelagic zone.
This is where,
Even during the daytime,
No light reaches down here.
The water basically swallows up the light,
So it's a very —
It's a very unfamiliar type of space.
It's not like the rest of the world.
That dark emptiness out there
Is actually what most of the earth is like.
What we see is a tiny fraction of our planet.
We cautiously approach the seafloor.
If we were to get stuck on anything,
There would be no hope of rescue.
We have enough oxygen for three days,
But there's no communication with the surface
And no vessel within 1,000 miles
Capable of descending this deep.
And in this complex underwater landscape,
It's doubtful anyone could find us anyway.
I almost feel like an astronaut,
Just minutes away from landing on the moon.
My first glimpse of life down here
Are sculptured lobster.
This really does feel like the surface of another planet.
No footprints —
This is a place where no human being
Has probably touched down before.
The depth gauge now reads 2,000 feet.
We are precariously positioned on a tiny ledge.
To my right, a sheer cliff face drops away
Towards the bottom of the trench,
Another five miles down.
The pressure on the outside of the hull
Now is more than 900 pounds per square inch.
A crack would mean instant death.
So, white light at the moment,
And we're now gonna switch to red light,
Which the sharks won't be aware of.
So we're about to go into stealth mode.
This means that although we can see what's going on,
The shark can't see us.
So what we do now is we wait.
Hagfish coming right in front of us.
So you've got a hagfish that's coming here,
And that's starting to feed quite actively.
What that's doing is that's stirring up
A cloud of scent in the water.
There's giant isopods scuttling around, as well,
Which have obviously got wind of something happening here.
So there will be a cloud of scent
Slowly spreading out in the water.
And what we're hoping is that
That's going to call in the sharks.
Isopods have been observed going five years between meals.
And in this environment, they live in a perpetual state
Of semi-Hibernation.
They typically scavenge whatever food drifts down
From the surface.
Shark. Shark, shark, shark. We've got a shark.
I'm 2,000 feet down in the cayman trench,
Trying to lure in a leviathan of the deep —
The sixgill shark.
I want to find out if this creature
Could've been involved in the aftermath
Of the wartime sinking of the rms laconia.
Shark. Shark, shark, shark. We've got a shark.
And the scent from my bait,
A dead pig strapped to the front of my submarine,
Has just brought one in.
Very faint, almost ghostlike,
Just drifting left to right,
Just on the edge of visibility.
But i'm guessing that wasn't
Just a sort of coincidental drift by.
I think it's probably picking up the scent.
It's turning 'round. It's turning 'round.
One, two, three, four, five, six — sixgill shark.
Wow.
That's a big animal.
Big, big, big, big animal.
I 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.
Oh, here it comes, right over my head.
And since we're not making any sound,
It has found us using its sense of scent.
It's now coming towards us,
And it seems to be very slowly zeroing in.
Is it gonna feed?
Where's it gone now?
There it is.
It's coming 'round again.
It's coming into the bait.
It's coming in. This looks quite purposeful.
Look at that!
Wow.
That is a feeding shark.
That's what a feeding shark looks like.
It's moving the whole sub.
It is actually moving the whole sub.
That shark is bigger than the whole sub,
In terms of length.
And i'm literally inches away —
Inches away.
Well, i think it's fair to say it's got the taste for the bait.
That's amazing.
The bait has been obliterated by the shark's serrated teeth.
Like a ghost, it vanishes into the darkness.
Every time you put a bait in the water,
You're asking a question.
And in this particular instance,
My question was, "is there life down below the surface layers
That might come up?" well, absolutely, there is,
And some very large and very impressive life.
And i have to say that i'm even less comfortable
About being down here, so i think it's high time now
To get back to the surface.
So what does this tell me about the victims
Of the laconia disaster?
Could the sixgill have been involved?
What i do know is that these rarely observed giants
Inhabit the same waters where the laconia sank.
They rise towards the surface at night,
The time when many hundreds of people
Were flailing in the water.
And from what i've just witnessed,
They tear into flesh with gusto.
The sinking of the laconia sent 2,500 people
Into the vast atlantic,
And this horrifying event
Must have attracted a multitude of predators.
A marauding school of fanged snoek
Which ripped through in a first wave.
Then bloodthirsty, parasitic cookiecutter sharks
That cut precision bites.
And later, tiger sharks and oceanic whitetips,
Drawn in first by the sound of the ship's exploding boilers
And then by the blood in the water.
And maybe they were joined by this prehistoric leviathan,
The sixgill shark, a true sea monster
As terrifying as anything
From the depths of our imagination.
The full story will never be known,
But i now understand in a way that i didn't before
Why so many of the laconia's passengers
Never made it home.