David Attenborough film crew attacked by tiger sharks while shooting new documentary

‘It was like something out of “Jaws”,’ show producer Huw Cordey said

Crew on Netflix’s David Attenborough documentary series Our Planet II had a “horrific” encounter with “incredibly hungry” tiger sharks while filming.

The four-part climate documentary, narrated by Attenborough, was released on Netflix on Wednesday (14 June). It follows the first, eight-episode series of Our Planet, which arrived on the streamer back in 2019.

Now, it has been revealed that crew members had a close call with sharks, while filming for the show on the waters of the Pacific Ocean north of Hawai’i.

The Emmy winning team for the series were collecting underwater shots of whales near Laysan – one of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands – when they were attacked by the sharks. The animals ended up biting huge holes in their inflatable boats.

Speaking to the Radio Times, director Toby Nowlan said the sharks’ behaviour was “extremely unusual”, adding that the animals looked “incredibly hungry”.

“This ‘v’ of water came streaming towards us and this tiger shark leapt at the boat and bit huge holes in it. The whole boat exploded,” he recalled.

“We were trying to get it away and it wasn’t having any of it. It was horrific. That was the second shark that day to attack us.”

Fortunately, the team were about 100 metres from land, and were able to reach the shore before the boat fully deflated.

The sharks were shown in ‘Our Planet II’ (Ed Charles/Netflix)

“They were incredibly hungry, so there might not have been enough natural food and they were just trying anything they came across in the water,” Nowlan explained.

Series producer Huw Cordey confirmed to Forbes that two sharks attacked the team. “It was like something out of Jaws,” he said. “The crew was panicked, and basically made an emergency landing on the sand.”

Cordey said the original idea had been to do an underwater shoot with the tiger sharks waiting in the shallows at Laysan. “Suffice to say, they didn’t get any underwater shots,” he said.

Our Planet II is on Netflix now.