01x04 - Wilma the Whale, The Prinz Eugen, The Mysterious Hammerhead

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Back in 1996, I made a very special friend who lived in a bay in Nova Scotia Canada.

Her name was Wilma and she was a beautiful white Beluga whale.

Hi, I'm Jonathan Bird and welcome to my world!

Beluga Whales

Beluga whales normally live in the arctic. The white coloration helps them blend in to

sea ice.

Guysboro, Nova Scotia is a long way from the arctic. This rural fishing village is a lovely

quiet place where the people are friendly...

It's beautiful, peaceful and pretty far away from everything.

People go there in the summer time just to get away...

...enjoy breathtaking scenery...

...maybe play a little golf.

Wilma

And for a time at least, they went to see Wilma—a beluga that had taken up residence.

I went there in 1996 to see her as well, and what I found amazed me.

Every day dozens of people came out onto Chedabucto Bay to catch a glimpse of Wilma, who had become

a local celebrity. She became so popular that people were afraid a boat might hit her or

cut her with its propeller.

Wilma was such an attraction that some people started "Wilma watching" trips for tourists.

Wilma The Tourist

Despite the concerns, it was pretty obvious that Wilma loved the attention. She loved

to play, and seemed just like a puppy dog to a lot of people.

She gave more than one swimmer a surprise...but never hurt anyone.

JONATHAN: She lifting you right out of the water?

SWIMMER: Yeah!

And Wilma seemed to like everyone from swimmers to snorkelers to divers.

SWIMMER: HAHA. She's like "Out of the camera, this is my shot!"

Wilma The Adult

She was very young when she showed up in the bay. She still had a lot of growing to do.

As an adult Wilma could be ten feet long and weigh almost three-thousand pounds—as much

as a small car.

No one knows why she came here. Perhaps something happened to her mother and she was orphaned.

Perhaps she became lost and separated from her pod. She was all alone, but she found

friends Nova Scotia.

Belugas are known to be playful and pretty social. They often live together in large

pods of 25 members or more. So it must have been tough for Wilma, without another Beluga

whale nearby to hang out with and play. She seemed to welcome people as a substitute for

interaction with her own kind.

One of those people was Jim Johnson, arguably her best friend. Jim was a local diver and

underwater photographer, and for a while, he and Wilma were spending a lot of time together.

Jim The Photographer

Jim was one of the first people to spot Wilma. He saw her one day, a lonely little whale

hanging out by a buoy in the bay. He went out to visit her in his little inflatable

boat, and they became great friends.

It was Jim who introduced me to Wilma...

Wilma The Whale

And I remember the first time I saw her. In all my years of diving I've never known

a marine animal that seemed to have so much interest in me. She truly seemed to enjoy

my company and played for hours.

Beluga Whale Communication

Belugas are one of the few species of whales that can turn their heads. Wilma would look

at me and follow me. Some researchers think that Belugas communicate with each other through

facial expressions. I think she was trying to communicate with me. She was asking me

to come play with her.

And Wilma also talked quite a bit...she made all kinds of noises. Researchers think that

Beluga Whale Diet

Belugas use these sounds to communicate with one another, although no one really knows

what they're saying.

Although most Beluga whales live further north in the Arctic and her presence in Nova Scotia

was highly unusual, Wilma had almost everything she needed here. In addition to lots of human

friends, she found plenty to eat. There are fish here and fish is one her favorite foods.

Beluga Whale Diving

Wilma also spent a lot of time nosing around on the bottom where she found lobsters, crabs

and other bottom dwelling animals that make up her diet.

Chedabucto Bay is not very deep, but Beluga whales sometimes dive a thousand feet or more

to find food and they can stay down for minutes at a time.

Wilma, like many whales, probably used echolocation. She made clicking sounds that bounced off

of things that helped her find food and figure out where she was and what was around her.

Beluga Whale Bubbles

One day Wilma blew bubbles at me. It kind of blasted me back a little. I wondered if

she was angry with me. Turns out she was probably just playing, but Belugas frequently blow

like this to clear away sand on the bottom to find food.

One curious thing about Wilma: she seemed to like cameras and followed us around probably

looking for that great close up.

Boat Propellers

She even seemed to like engines and boats...she really liked rubbing up against the propellers—which

was probably not a good thing to enjoy.

Not everyone was careful around her and she did get some injuries...like these marks on

her back caused by a boat propeller.

Wilma also liked to spend hours scratching and rubbing herself on the soft sand on the

bottom, which may explain some of these other marks on her skin.

She also liked to dance, kind of like an underwater ballet, playing and entertaining herself for

hours at a time.

Friends

Lots of people tried to lay claim to Wilma. Researchers went out and studied her, but

didn't interact with her at all. They wanted others, like Jim, to stop interacting. They

worried that human contact wasn't good for her. They feared it would make her too dependent

on people.

But Jim refused to stop. Wilma was his friend and he believed she wanted to see him, and

that she benefited from their friendship.

Many were also angry at the tour boat that regularly brought paying customers out to

Wilma. They didn't want Wilma exploited for profit.

Finally, one day, Wilma just wasn't there. She didn't come out to greet Jim Johnson,

...or the charter boat full of people...or anyone.

Was Wilma gone? Perhaps she met another Beluga. Perhaps she reached maturity and decided to

go look for a mate.

But after six years how could she leave all the friends who loved her and came out every

day to play with her. But she was, it seems, gone.

Maybe humans just were not enough, and she needed to be with other belugas.

Nobody has seen Wilma in a few years. She vanished from the Bay. And nobody knows where

she went. I'm hoping my friend Wilma went back to the Arctic to be with her own kind.

Exploring shipwrecks has to be one of the most exciting things to do underwater. Shipwrecks

are not only fun to explore, but they are fascinating time capsules from another age.

I've explored a lot of wrecks, but the Prinz Eugen is one of the most interesting and unique.

I'm standing on Kwajalein, an island smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean—and

I think it might be the hottest place on Earth. A major battle was fought here more than 50

years ago between the United States and Japan, during World w*r II.

Today. Kwajalein is a restricted US Army base, and not many people get to dive here.

The lagoon is littered with the remains of many Japanese ships from the battle. But today

I'll be diving on the wreck of the Prinz Eugen, a German heavy cruiser built in 1936 by the

Nazis. How it ended up at Kwajalein Atoll in the middle of the Pacific, is an interesting

story.

The Prinz Eugen, along with the German warship Bismarck, was involved in the famous battle

with the British ship Hood in 1941. The Prinz Eugen escaped and survived the w*r, only to

be surrendered to the United States in 1945.

In 1946 the U.S. military took the Eugen, fully armed and provisioned, to Bikini Atoll

for atomic b*mb testing. By that time, Kwajalein Atoll was an important U.S. base and the center

of operations for the Bikini atomic test program.

Surprisingly, the Eugen survived not one but TWO atomic blasts.

It was still afloat, so they towed it to nearby Kwajalein for decontamination and study. But

before she could be studied, the Eugen unexpectedly rolled over and sank. The opportunity to study

her was lost.

Although many of the wrecks at Kwajalein Atoll can be hard to locate without a depth finder,

the Prinz Eugen is not one of them because it sank close to shore. The bow lies in over

a hundred feet of water, but the stern sticks up above the surface, with several props still

attached.

Analysis by the military has determined that radiation levels are now acceptable for exploration

of the wreck, so our team suits up to explore the Prinz Eugen.

Historian Mark Miller, expedition leader Tom Krasuski and I are going to explore to the

wreck and see what we can find.

MARK: Ready Tom?

TOM: Ready. Let's go!!

Entering the water, we head towards the bow. Everything looks confusing on this wreck because

it's upside down.

I'm the only cameraman on this expedition, so it's up to me to stay behind the camera

and follow Mark's lead.

As we enter the wreck, it's spooky. The ceilings are where the floor should be and

the floor is over my head. All the walls are rusting and coming apart. This once-mighty

ship feels like it could crumble around me. I am diving into a piece of history. Not too

many ships have been tested with an Atom b*mb, never mind n*zi ships!

We venture down a long hallway and into a galley. Part of the galley contains a bakery.

We carefully squeeze in there and find some cooking utensils still lying about. The ovens

used to make meals for the crew are still intact. Although rusting at the seams, the

white enamel fronts are in good shape. Even the maker's mark is still visible on the oven

door.

I can only imagine what it was like to be aboard this ship so long ago.

The ship's 8-inch a*tillery g*ns had gravity mounted turrets. They just sat there, unattached

to the ship. They weigh so much; they weren't going anywhere, unless the ship turned upside

down. But then it did, here at Kwajalein.

The ship was fully provisioned and rearmed for the bikini test. Authorities wanted to

find out what an atom b*mb would do to a typical ship; so they stocked the food lockers and

they restocked the arms. They replaced missing cannon and a*tillery shells so that the magazines

were full and they replaced any missing torpedoes. When they dropped the atomic b*mb on this

ship, it was loaded to the hilt.

And a lot of those munitions are still in place, and live. The torpedoes that we see

when we venture into the torpedo locker there are live. They have a couple hundred pounds

of TNT in each warhead. Even 60 years later, they can go off. So we are very careful when

we squeeze through that room.

The Prince Eugen is a very dangerous wreck to dive. It's not only upside down, but tilted

to one side, making the interior very disorienting. It's also silty so we have to be careful

not to kick up too much muck in the wreck. We could get lost inside.

What is especially surprising to me is that although atomic weapons were used on the Prinz

Eugen not once but twice, it appears to have no more deterioration than other ships of

the same age that were sunk with conventional weapons.

All too soon, with decompression time accumulating, we must end our dive and head for the surface.

I spend a few minutes under the boat decompressing on a special high-oxygen mix supplied from

the surface before heading up.

I will probably never get to explore this remote wreck again—but I feel incredibly

privileged to have experienced this piece of history first hand before it crumbles and

decays into the sea.

Today, Jonathan investigates sharks that tilt when they swim!

Welcome to Jonathan Bird’s Blue World!

The underwater world is full of mysteries to be solved.

One such mystery involves the Great Hammerhead shark.

Divers rarely see Great Hammerheads…they are known for being shy loners, unwilling

to approach people.

But a few years ago, divers began visiting a place near Bimini Island in the Bahamas,

where Great Hammerheads have been caught by fishermen for years.

They found a special place with lots of sharks.

Over time, the sharks got used to divers and started coming in close for a snack, giving

people an intimate look at the Great Hammerhead shark.

I have been to Bimini several times and I am always amazed by how huge Great Hammerheads

are.

Not only does the head reach a meter or more wide, but the tall dorsal fin is a striking

feature of this unique and majestic shark.

And in spite of the aggressive appearance, Great Hammerheads almost never attack people.

They much prefer to eat stingrays in the sand.

But diving with Great Hammerheads has allowed divers to notice something unusual—the shark

often swims tilted to the side at an angle.

I also noticed this behavior in the Ocean Voyager Exhibit at the Georgia Aquarium.

My friend Andy Casagrande—one of Discover Channel’s primary Shark Week cinematographers—wanted

to help investigate the mystery of the leaning Hammerhead.

He attached a GoPro camera to the huge dorsal fin of a Great Hammerhead, to film the shark

for an extended period of time.

His amazing footage shed light on the behavior of these sharks…and it has to do with their

anatomy.

The hammerhead shark never stops swimming.

But, contrary to popular belief, many sharks do.

Most species of sharks, like the lemon shark, can rest on the bottom and move water over

their gills by simply gulping.

Biologists call it "Buccal Pumping.”

A few species of sharks, like the Whale shark and the White shark, are known as Obligate

Ram Ventilators.

They can only breathe by ramming oxygenated water into their gills through their mouths

as they swim.

If they stop swimming, they'll suffocate!

The Great Hammerhead is also an Obligate Ram Ventilator, and has to keep swimming.

Sharks such as the Blue shark keep swimming all the time too, but for a totally different

reason--because sharks sink if they stop swimming.

Fish, including sharks, are heavier than water, so they sink.

Bony fish have an organ called a swim bladder that they use to adjust their buoyancy.

By adjusting how much gas is in its swim bladder, a fish can keep itself perfectly neutral so

it doesn’t sink or float.

Since sharks have no swim bladder, they sink to the bottom when they stop swimming.

But some sharks like the Blue shark live in the open ocean where the bottom is thousands

of feet below where it’s dark and cold.

They can’t rest on the bottom.

So they have adapted to this environment by developing very large pectoral fins to act

as airplane wings.

As the shark cruises through the water, the fins provide lift to keep the shark aloft,

and prevent it from sinking into the dark, cold abyss.

The bigger the pectoral fins, the more lift they provide, and the slower the shark can

swim without sinking, which saves energy.

The Great Hammerhead on the other hand has small pectoral fins and a big head called

a cephalofoil.

The cephalofoil seems to accomplish several things for the shark, including expanded vision,

a larger surface area for electro-receptors, and additional front end lift like a mini-wing.

But it also has mass, and scientists think this mass, combined with small pectoral fins,

is the reason that hammerheads are so much more maneuverable than other similarly-sized

sharks.

But while those small pectoral fins help the shark turn quickly to catch prey, they have

a disadvantage: not much lift.

And this is where the tilted swimming comes in.

Andy Casagrande’s dorsal fin footage showed that when Great Hammerheads are on the move,

they are almost always swimming at a tilted angle of more than 45 degrees!

In 2015, Nicholas Payne, Gil Iosilevskii and 5 other researchers got together to investigate

this strange behavior.

They put sensors on Great Hammerhead sharks to measure the roll angles.

Then they used wind tunnel tests to model the effect and figured out what the sharks

are doing.

The sharks roll on their sides to use that huge dorsal fin as a wing and provide lift

while swimming distances.

It allows the shark to generate more lift, which means it can swim a bit slower without

sinking, and save energy.

In fact, swimming tilted to the side saves the shark about 8% swimming effort.

So when the shark needs to go somewhere, it tilts to the side and saves energy.

But when it needs to hunt, it swims straight up and down to take advantage of the increased

maneuverability.

The giant dorsal fin serves two purposes…a keel when upright, and a wing when tilted!

At this point, no other shark is known to use this technique, and it explains a mysterious

habit that divers observed in Great Hammerhead sharks.

Sometimes just being in the ocean creates new understanding of the life that lives there.

As divers, our time in the ocean is fleeting, lasting just an hour or so per dive.

But it affords us the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the lives of the animals that

live there.

This is one of the things that keeps me coming back over and over, for my short glimpses

into the Blue World.