They’re gonna need a bigger boat.
A wildlife biologist recently went diving for massive sharks off the South Shore, and his footage of the 40-foot behemoths will be featured in a Shark Week show later this month.
Forrest Galante — who has more than 2 million YouTube followers — was a few miles off Plymouth when he got into the water with two gigantic basking sharks. Baskings are the second largest fish in the world, and they weigh several tons.
“They were big as hell, 35 to 40 feet,” Galante told the Herald. “When you see some of the drone shots next to the boat, it’s like a Jaws moment.
“It was this absolute Hail Mary,” he added about filming the sharks and diving with them, noting how weather conditions made it difficult on certain days. “It all came down to one day, and it was one of those things where the stars just aligned.”
Galante, who has hosted shows on the Discovery Channel, will be part of Discovery’s Shark Week at the end of July.
His show “Alien Sharks: Untamed America” will explore his nationwide quest to find the country’s “most bizarre and dangerous alien sharks” in celebration of America’s 250th anniversary.
Galante has spent time around large whale sharks, but the gentle filter feeding baskings are much more elusive.
“My whole thing is rare animals, and to find and swim with basking sharks in U.S. waters was far more rewarding than just going to some spot where you know you’re going to get a whale shark,” he said. “It was awesome, the experience was incredible.”
Galante was diving in deep water, about 300-feet deep.
The basking sharks in the murky, green water come up to the surface to filter feed on zooplankton.
“Seeing this very alien shark with this weird long snot and huge gigantic mouth, and these weird spaceship fighter fins and body shape, it’s just a very cool otherworldly creature,” Galante said. “And that’s what you can expect to see, just showing off this amazing animal that doesn’t get a lot of screen time.”
Speaking with fishermen out on the water, Galante worked with a spotter plane overhead to find the basking sharks.
Once the spotter plane sees a shark, Galante’s team launches a drone that hovers over the shark.
Then when the shark is near Galante’s boat, he dives in. He free-dives instead of scuba diving, noting that the sharks are shy.
“Diving with any animal is challenging enough,” Galante said. “Trying to do that on film and connect you with the creature and make it so the audience can connect to it is 10 times more challenging.
“It’s a big choreographed dance to get shots like the kind we have,” he added. “It’s a very strategic highly complicated thing to execute.”
Basking sharks can come close to shore, but the gentle giants are “completely harmless,” Galante said.
He urged people on the water to not harass them.
“Don’t hit them with your boat,” Galante said. “Don’t run over them. Don’t startle them. They’re big beautiful, slow-moving harmless creatures.”
He put this program together during the country’s 250th anniversary, as he celebrates America’s sharks.
“People think you have to travel to the Serengeti of Africa to see cool wildlife, and we have some of the most spectacular marine life on planet earth right here, in the greatest country in the world in America,” Galante said. “And we’re very lucky to have that. I think there’s this misconception that you have to travel and spend bazillions of dollars to see cool animals, and the whole point of this show is to celebrate our amazing marine life right here in the United States.
“I really hope that nerdy animal people like myself feel some patriotism towards how great our wildlife is once you see this program because that’s what it’s supposed to inspire,” he added. “It’s like, ‘Let’s go, America! You have awesome animals.’ That’s how I feel, and I hope that’s how other people who watch it feel.”
Shark Week starts on July 26, and “Alien Sharks: Untamed America” will be on July 29 at 10 p.m. on Discovery.
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