“Torpedoes with teeth.” That’s how photographer Brian Skerry describes shortfin makos. “That conical nose just pierces through the ocean.”
When Skerry set out to photograph this story on mako sharks, his ultimate goal was to produce a video of a mako shark biting prey—in slow motion. The biggest challenge was devising a plan on how exactly to capture that footage, because the equipment he’d need didn’t actually exist. With help from the imaging experts at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, Skerry and his team designed a camera with a one-of-a-kind housing that would allow it to be towed behind a boat. After diving with makos off the coasts of Rhode Island and Southern California, Skerry finally got to deploy the contraption in New Zealand. He admits that there was a certain amount of luck involved: “I have no control over this. Once it’s being towed, I can’t move it left or right…It all happens lightning fast. So you have to hope that you’ve done all your preparations properly.” Ultimately, the team had one shot over a two-week period to make it happen, and the gamble paid off.
Read the entire August 2017 National Geographic article on mako sharks.
