Netflix Crew Survive Shark Attack 'Like Something Out of Jaws'

Our Planet II is now streaming on Netflix, the followup to the massively popular British nature documentary series that premiered more than four years ago. Crew members traveled to some of the most beautiful and remote locations across the globe to capture footage for the docuseries, even at the risk of their own safety.

At one point, the crew had an extremely close call with a tiger shark, which attacked them while filming in the seas of Laysan—one of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands located over 600 miles from the main Hawaiian Islands.

Laysan is so remote that it takes at least five days to travel there by boat, and it was the first time a nature documentary had ever filmed there. The crew were attempting to capture the maiden flight of a Laysan albatross, as the theme of the second series is to "unravel the mysteries of how and why animals migrate."

However, tiger sharks also migrate 2,000 miles to feast on albatross fledglings when they first land on the water, which is how the crew ran afoul of the giant creature. Director Toby Nowlan, who worked on the episode, recalled the horrific-sounding ordeal in a recent interview with UK's Radio Times.

"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," Nowlan explained. "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."

Given that the boat was inflatable, crew aboard were lucky enough that they were only about 100 meters from the shore, and had just enough inflation to reach land. Nowlan described the shark's behavior as "extremely unusual," as sharks typically do not attack boats.

"They were incredibly hungry," Nowlan added. "So there might not have been enough natural food and they were just trying anything they came across in the water."

Series Producer Huw Cordey likewise recalled the incident in an interview with Forbes, comparing it to the 1975 summer blockbuster Jaws.

"The original idea was to do an underwater shoot with the tiger sharks waiting in the shallows at Laysan, but the first day the tiger sharks were around, the crew got into these inflatable boats—and two sharks attacked them," Cordey said. "It was like something out of Jaws. The crew was panicked, and basically made an emergency landing on the sand."

All's well that ends well, and ultimately the crew got their shot and nobody was eaten by a shark. You can watch the trailer for Our Planet II below, narrated by Sir David Attenborough.