10 craziest stories from ‘Shark Tracker’ by Richard Fitzpatrick (aka Australia’s shark guru)
Australia’s shark guru Richard Fitzpatrick seems as committed to crazy exploits as he is to conservation. Here are 10 of the craziest stories from his book Shark Tracker: Confessions of an underwater cameraman.
1. A bite on the bum
On Fitzpatrick’s last day working at the former Oceanworld aquarium in Sydney, he wanted to go out with a bang. The shark tank was overstocked, so he knifed a good-sized snapper in the tank. The fresh blood would excite the sharks more than their usual fare of frozen fish. But Fitzpatrick did not expect to be attacked…until he was. ‘The [grey nurse] shark’s entire jaw was embedded into my wetsuit and flesh,’ Fitzpatrick recalls. He managed to break free and decided ‘the show must go on’ for the shocked audience. Moments later, another agitated grey nurse shark bit Fitzpatrick, this time in the head. ‘It was time to call it a day and get the hell out of the tank.’
2. The dead turtle
Off Raine Island in the Great Barrier Reef, Fitzpatrick captured his first footage of tiger sharks feeding in the wild. Capturing the footage was a high-risk endeavour involving a large dead turtle. Fitzpatrick found the rotting carcass and decided to keep watch to see what it would attract. Before long he noticed a presence under his inflatable boat: a tawny nurse shark. Then another. The tawnies ripped in to the rotting turtle, adding blood to the water. Fitzpatrick was leaning over the boat filming when a tiger shark joined the feast. The ferociously strong tiger used its weight to thrash the turtle about, half-lifting it out of the water. Naturally, Fitzpatrick leaped in to the water, risking his life to get the footage.
3. Riding a shark
When the producers of The Island of Dr Moreau needed a shark wrangler, they called Fitzpatrick. He and his colleague Shane Down were to act as stunt doubles and to create ‘up close and personal’ shark footage. To get the close-ups required, Fitzpatrick and Down did what any self-respecting shark wrangler would do — they each jumped on a tiger shark. ‘Probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,’ Fitzpatrick remembers. Helpfully, Down managed to calmly and painlessly tie a rope around the tail of his tiger shark. ‘On a whim, we’d found a prototype for shark-friendly wrangling,’ Fitzpatrick says. He’d use this inspiration to go on and invent the ‘shark claw — a device to kindly and safely capture sharks for ongoing research.’
4. Shark bites inflatable boat
Fitzpatrick wanted to capture and satellite-tag a tiger shark in order to track its movements. He set off in an inflatable boat, accompanied by two nervous colleagues, and eight large tuna heads (the bait). The irresistible bait lured a tiger shark over 3.5 metres long. Problem was, the shark bit the boat. The 40- centimetre tear created a leak and a crisis for Fitzpatrick and crew. Luckily, they were rescued, as was the $200,000 video camera. Undeterred, Fitzpatrick took his camera and another inflatable straight out again and successfully satellite-tagged the shark.
5. Sharks in a cave
One day on Osprey Reef, Fitzpatrick and fellow adventurer John Rumney were reflecting on former exploits and lamenting the lack of adrenalin in their lives. They decided to use fresh bait to lure some sharks into a nearby cave. The idea was to have fun and take some footage for Fitzpatrick’s film library. But soon, the cave was full of too many worked-up whitetip and grey reef sharks. There were so many sharks in the small cave that the two men had to punch and kick their way out.
6. Rushed by reef sharks
While teaching his assistant Adam Barnett to film sharks, Fitzpatrick had another close call. A number of highly agitated grey reef sharks suddenly and unexpectedly rushed at Fitzpatrick. He had no choice but to use his video camera to belt them away. He thought he was about to get a serious bite. Barnett came to the rescue, but Fitzpatrick’s gratitude was tempered with annoyance that the rookie cameraman had turned off his camera and didn’t capture the crazy scene on film.
7. A kidnapping
Fitzpatrick ‘kidnapped’ a Japanese technician during the filming of the BBC series Great Barrier Reef. He needed the technician to stay in Australia to ensure a successful filming expedition. The tech said he had to go back to Japan, so Fitzpatrick hatched a plan. He pulled anchor overnight on their research boat, sabotaging the tech’s plans to get home on time. They got to ‘keep him’ for a week or so, and ‘taught him how to scuba dive…he actually had a great time.’
8. ‘Man, this thing almost bit your head off twice’
Happily for Fitzpatrick, this next near-death experience was caught on film. Back on Osprey Reef, Fitzpatrick wanted to tag some more sharks, silvertips this time. The largest reef sharks of the whaler family, silvertips are fast and elusive. Fitzpatrick and his team created a ‘feeding event…with 20 sharks swimming in a ball of craziness.’ In the midst of this, ‘someone grabbed my tank and shook me wildly’ — twice. Except it wasn’t ‘someone’. It was a silvertip. By pure luck, the silvertip copped mouthfuls of the top of the scuba tank instead of Fitzpatrick’s head.
9. Madonna the crazy silvertip
An imposing silvertip shark named Madonna was infamous for her dangerously bold and unpredictable behaviour around divers on the Osprey Reef. In 1997, during the filming of a French documentary, Madonna rocketed up from the depths towards Fitzpatrick, leaving him sure he had no chance of escape. ‘It was time for final farewells,’ he believed, as the handle of the boat he tried to escape to broke under the weight of his heavy gear. Luckily, some boat crew reached out and pulled Fitzpatrick roughly from the water, injuring him but probably saving his life.
10. Madonna strikes again
Fitzpatrick also worked as a shark wrangler on the film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Shooting shark footage 10 metres down from the surface, Fitzpatrick was alarmed when a colleague speared a large coral trout. He knew what this meant: the blood would attract hungry, excited sharks…including Madonna. Again, she went for Fitzpatrick. He managed to whack her away. ‘We never saw Madonna again [after that], and I was okay with that…I think it was only a matter of time before she bit someone. She just had no fear of people at all.’ Fitzpatrick thinks Madonna’s behaviour was largely a reaction to human behaviour, and talks about changes that dive boats and researchers have made to try to minimise human impacts on shark behaviour. At the end of the day, he’s all about conservation and ‘limiting our impact on the animals and their homes.’
For more stories of Fitzpatrick’s close calls with sharks, Irukandji, giant Mexican squids and many other deadly marine creatures, read Shark Tracker (published by NewSouth Publishing, 2016).
