Into the blue: American filmmaker Jeff Kurr swims with a lemon shark for the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. (Courtesy Discovery Channel)

American filmmaker Jeff Kurr is the brains behind Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, which sheds light on the carnivorous fish.

American filmmaker Jeff Kurr has been acting as the executive producer, director, underwater cinematographer, editor, writer and on-camera expert for 35 episodes of Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, including the ground-breaking “Air Jaws” episodes, since 1991.

His interest in marine wildlife had begun when he was a young boy watching the TV specials of legendary explorer Jacques Cousteau and he was amazed by the undersea world he presented.

“I’m just lucky because I’m one of the few people who can say that his childhood dreams of becoming a wildlife filmmaker came true,” he said during a conference call interview with Asian journalists.

He thought sharks were the most fascinating creatures in the world.

“Shark Week has become an incredibly popular program and sharks now are the most popular wild animal and I think that has to do with the fact that they’re such mysterious, beautiful creatures,” he says.

“Not a lot is known about sharks, relatively speaking, compared to land animals […] I personally have just grown to become more fascinated with them, every single year that I do Shark Week.”

Kurr produced “Great White Serial Killer” in 2013, which was the most-watched episode in Shark Week history and the highest rated cable program.

He initiated Shark Week’s kick-off program from 2010 to 2015 that propelled high ratings. His “Ultimate Air Jaws” drew 30.8 million viewers in 2010 and more for “Air Jaws: Fin of Fury” in 2014.

Last year, Kurr premiered “Island of the Mega Shark”, in which he’s also featured as a presenter, and the highly anticipated “Return of the Great White Serial Killer”.

An award-winning newscast director for seven years at network affiliate stations in the 1980s, the 50-something Kurr has also been the director of photography for reality TV hits such as The Girls Next Door, Super Nanny and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

Himself a big fan of the movie Jaws, Kurr said nothing in the film is factual when it comes to great white shark behavior.

While sharks make good bad guys for movies, people tend to fear what they don’t understand and what they can’t see, he said.

“Shark-type entertainment shows are one thing and documentaries are another thing. So that’s what we’re trying to do: that is, showing people the difference,” Kurr said.

“In my film we don’t portray them as killers or something to be afraid of. We look at some of the incredible adaptations that these animals have made. Once you’ve seen the show, I think you’ll come to have a new appreciation for sharks and that’s my goal as a filmmaker,” he said.

“I feel like it’s my job to promote sharks and just get people talking about them because once people talk about sharks and become interested in them, that leads to people going to their local aquarium and seeing sharks. It leads to people becoming marine biologists and it leads to people becoming shark filmmakers.”

He first dove with the sharks in 1991 and ever since he kept returning every year to take better footage underwater with better gadgets and more knowledge about the sharks.

With a dedicated crew — there were no insurance coverage for their work underwater — Kurr recorded many highlights in his work.

In his first “Air Jaws” episode, Kurr filmed 27 great white sharks feasting on the giant carcass of a dead whale.

He had a close call with a great white shark a couple of years ago when he accidentally fell on top of the predator off the back of a boat when a big wave came by. It turned out the shark did not bite him and he was pulled out of the water.

He also took the risk of being pulled behind the boat on a metal “seal sled” to get a shot of a great white shark flying out of the water from a seal’s point of view.

“It was an incredible shot. I also will say that it was probably one of the scariest moments I’ve ever had because I couldn’t see the shark coming. I didn’t know when it was going to attack near me and so that was pretty nerve-wracking.”

Kurr had used night vision, thermal imaging, remote operated submersibles and helicopters, robotic seals, towed underwater cameras, submarines and high-speed cameras to capture unprecedented shark behavior.

He was the first to shoot breaching great white sharks on a Phantom super slow-motion camera, earning an Emmy nomination in 2010.

One of his favorites, the robotic seal that cost US$10,000, lasted 15 seconds because Colossus, the name of the shark they often encountered in False Bay, South Africa, ate it as soon as the gadget was put on the water.

“Sometimes the gadgets that we have work really well; sometimes they’re chomped before we get a lot of data from them, but my stock in trade as a filmmaker has been coming up with innovative, new ways and using new cameras and I really enjoy that as a filmmaker.”

For this year’s “Air Jaws” episode, his crew used new see-in-the-dark cameras to film great white shark behavior, omitting the need for bright lights that often affected the animal’s behavior.

“I have more shows in progress using incredible new technologies, but I always keep that very secret until right before the show comes out.”

A father of 11-year-old twins, the California native enjoyed horseback riding with his daughter and helping to coach his son’s baseball team on his down time.

Although the kids love the shots of the sharks, Kurr said they have yet to appreciate his career much.

“My family for sure understands that I have a lot of experience with these animals and I don’t like to take unnecessary risks when filming them,” he says.

“I’m on the lookout for a shark and that’s actually what makes me safe because he can’t ambush you. So that’s part of the reason I think that people don’t worry about me swimming with sharks for a living.”

‘Shark Week’ returns for bigger chomp

The annual Shark Week specials on the Discovery Channel have more under the fins to warm up viewers to the carnivorous fish.

Aired on the same day in more than 72 countries starting Monday, the cable channel has promised less pseudoscience and more real science in the 16 documentaries to mark its 28th anniversary.

Filmmaker Jeff Kurr, who has been involved in the specials for 26 years running, corroborated the fact that the cable channel produced more shows as Shark Week grew in popularity.

“The shows this year run the gamut when it comes to sharks. I think Discovery has done an incredible job finding new stories about sharks and looking at a lot of species, like the mako shark, that we haven’t seen a lot on Shark Week in the past,” he said through a conference call interview with Asian journalists, including from The Jakarta Post.

This year, the world’s leading tiger shark expert, Neil Hammerschlag, conducted research on the nature of tiger sharks in the waters of the Bahamas, while professional shark tagger Keith Poe and marine biologists Greg Stuntz and Matt Ajemain documented a 500-kilogram mako shark off the East Coast of North America.

Award-winning shark cinematographer Andy Casagrande and marine biologist Jonathan Werry followed the great white shark migration route, while Kurr and Hammerschlag documented the nocturnal hunt of the great white sharks using the latest camera technology.

There would also be a show about bull sharks and crocodiles in Costa Rica, as well as about the disturbing nature of the relationships between sharks and dolphins. As an addition, the Shark After Dark talk show hosted by horror filmmaker Eli Roth will be aired five days in a row with experts, divers and shark fans on the guest lineup.

Having been active in wildlife protection, Shark Week will again try to get the message across that, according to Kurr, “sharks are beautiful and misunderstood creatures that face a lot of challenges created by humans out in the ocean”.

Citing reports that sharks were heavily overfished, an estimated 75 to 100 million being harvested every year. Since a shark only has four to a maximum 10 pups depending on the species during the course of its life, Kurr said that sharks were under threat.

“I know Discovery has worked very hard to not only entertain people and have people appreciate the beauty and the majesty of sharks, but also to inform them that sharks are definitely in trouble and we should do everything we can to support conservation groups that want to save sharks,” he says.

“In some places, not all, protective measures have been successful in bringing sharks and their prey back from the brink of extinction, but a lot of works remains to be done to ensure the survival of these animals.”

— JP/Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak

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Shark Facts

American filmmaker Jeff Kurr is a shark expert from his 26 years of experience filming the predator. Below are the things he unraveled underwater:

◊ Sharks are actually very sensitive to metal and electronic fields. The filming equipment and tracking devices initially will attract the shark to come closer, but they’ll be repelled by the electronic devices.

◊ Sharks are not interested in humans. People are occasionally bitten by sharks in circumstances when they mistake them for regular prey.

◊ There’s a lot of data that indicates sharks don’t even like the taste of humans and the taste of wetsuits and surfboards and all the things that humans usually have on them when they are in the water.

◊ Sharks have different personalities; some are aggressive while some are safe to swim with. They are very cautious and for the most part they want nothing to do with people unless we have some food in our hands.

◊ A shark hunted for meat will only be worth US$50, for example, but a shark tourism industry could bring in many thousands of dollars.

◊ A lot of sharks do quite well in captivity; some sharks don’t. It depends on the species. Great white sharks don’t do well in captivity and they usually end up dying.

◊ Sharks are extremely intelligent, well-adapted and highly evolved creatures. They can learn and remember. That’s why they are on top of the food chain.

◊ Shark fin soup and the meat in general can be highly toxic as sharks have the highest levels of mercury ever recorded.

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