NARRATOR: Around the world, crocodiles and alligators are on the move,
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heading out to sea and deep into shark territory.
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From mysterious severed heads.
NEALE: You can see where the shark's actually bitten it.
NARRATOR: To ambush attacks.
MIKE: Oh man. This is incredible.
NARRATOR: What happens when two of the deadliest
predators on the planet, go head-to-head?
The Everglades, Florida, a vast tropical wetland,
crisscrossed by a network of swamps, channels and rivers.
And an unlikely mecca for sharks.
MIKE: When you think about the Everglades, you don't really think about sharks,
but every year we get adults of Bull sharks, Lemon sharks, and Blacktip sharks,
coming here to have their young, because it's such
a great place for those baby sharks to grow up.
NARRATOR: Dr. Mike Heithaus has been studying
the predators here for almost 20 years.
He discovered young sharks can spend the first four years of their lives
hunting for small fish in the web of mangrove roots that line these waterways.
MIKE: As the tide goes down and there's less space to hide,
those fish have to come into the channel
and that's where the sharks have a really good chance of catching them.
But, they're not the only predators in town.
NARRATOR: Alligators also stalk these mangroves.
Able to hold their breath for over 30 minutes, they move silently through the water,
barely creating a ripple.
Feeding on everything from fish to small mammals.
But do they also have a taste for sharks?
In recent years, members of the public
have captured glimpses of shark gator clashes,
in the brackish borderlands that separate Florida's fresh and saltwater systems.
MIKE: We usually think of sharks as saltwater creatures and alligators
as freshwater creatures and they should never interact, but it's not that simple.
These sharks can come up and live in almost entirely fresh water
and alligators can survive where there's a fair bit of salt in the water.
My hunch is that these animals run into each other more often than we'd think.
Are they competitors or this predator versus prey?
And who's the predator?
NARRATOR: As dusk falls, the team prepares
for a groundbreaking tagging operation.
Their mission for the first time ever,
to put cameras on the backs of sharks and gators
in the suspected predator battleground.
As a thermal drone helps looks for gators from above.
MIKE: Jack, what you got? Point it directly at one, yeah.
NARRATOR: The team begins to explore a series of narrow channels
that carve through the shark nursery.
Gators are easier to spot at night.
Their eyes contain guanine crystals which reflect light back off the retina,
that gives them the effects of night vision.
But under flashlight, their eyes glow bright red.
HUNTER: There's one, there's one. Up on the left, left.
MIKE: That's a big one. Oh, he's down.
See him?
Oh, I think I got it! Yes, yes! Cut the ropes, cut the ropes.
NARRATOR: As the team wrestles the six-foot gator alongside the boat,
they need to be careful.
Alligators are armed with up to 80 teeth.
MIKE: Close that now, please. Just close it a bit.
NARRATOR: With a bite force of over 2000 pounds per square inch,
their jaws are nearly twice as powerful as a Bull shark.
MIKE: There, perfect. Very nice.
So, the impressive thing about alligator jaws
is they've got tons of force to close 'em,
but not a lot to open 'em, so five or six wraps of this tape
and it will not be able to open those jaws,
which makes it safer for the alligator and definitely us.
NARRATOR: As the team drags 150 pounds of angry alligator onto the boat.
There's a shocking discovery.
MIKE: Oh, look at that! Look at his tail or lack thereof.
NARRATOR: He's missing over a foot of tail.
Has this potential shark hunter, become shark prey?
Male alligators are highly territorial and regularly clash.
They can lose limbs and tails to these violent attacks.
But sharks are more than capable of inflicting similar wounds.
The team decides on a name.
HUNTER: I think Stumpy.
MIKE: Stumpy. He looks pretty fat and happy. HUNTER: Yeah.
MIKE: Not having any trouble getting dinner.
NARRATOR: Next, they ready the state-of-the-art camera system, Gator Cam.
Armed with depth, accelerometer, GPS and temperature sensors.
For the next 24 hours, it will record every move Stumpy make.
MIKE: That looks pretty good.
NARRATOR: If he has a run in with a shark, it will be caught on camera.
MIKE: Cool? HUNTER: Yep.
MIKE: Clear.
Yes! Yes! Woo!
HUNTER: Yeah!
MIKE: Yes!
NARRATOR: For the first time ever, we're riding on the back
of an alligator as it moves through the Everglades.
Hugging the edge of the mangroves, Stumpy moves north,
just beneath the surface, at a steady speed of two miles per hour.
With pressure sensitive cells around his jaw that detect the slightest movement,
he's perfectly designed to hunt in these murky waters.
But how do gators like Stumpy, with a burst speed of just 20 miles per hour,
catch faster and more agile sharks?
Footage captured by a member of the public in South Carolina,
provides an important clue.
FEMALE: He is not playing.
MIKE: So, this victim is a Bonnethead shark,
you can tell right away from the shape of the head,
and they are a member of the Hammerhead family
and, you know, from the size of it,
you could say that's probably a three and a half
or four foot long shark, so that's an adult.
Bonnetheads are one of the species that we would expect to run
into alligators fairly often.
They live in shallow water, sometimes close to mangroves
and also where it's really murky.
But they're not an easy meal for a gator,
having that head helps them be super maneuverable, they can turn on a dime.
An alligator is not gonna be able to chase down and catch a Bonnethead,
but if that gator is lying motionless on the bottom and the shark swims along,
a lightning-fast strike and the gator gets a meal.
NARRATOR: Most of the victims photographed by the public
were struck from below on the abdomen, they were ambushed.
MIKE: You could see that these gators are able
to catch sharks that are three and a half, four feet long
or even a bit bigger, I mean, look at the size of that nurse shark,
relative to that alligator.
These are smash and grab killers and evolution
has honed those techniques over millions of years.
But what happens when they run into a much bigger shark? Who comes out on top?
REPORTER: Alligators had people scurrying for sand today in Collier County.
FWC officers told people, "Get out of the water."
NARRATOR: In recent years, there have been growing reports of America's
gators entering the ocean.
One was even spotted circling an offshore oil platform,
some 40 miles from the Louisiana mainland.
Like most crocodilians, alligators are freshwater creatures,
if they spend too much time in salt water they dehydrate and die.
So why are they heading out to sea and how are they doing it?
MIKE: The good news for most alligators is that they're fairly big,
so they can go out to the ocean, slowly take salt into their body,
it's a bit stressful, but then they can move back up to freshwater
and kind of flush their bodies out and reset.
So, some of the alligators we watch are commuters, they'll go out to the ocean,
then they'll come back.
Now if you're an alligator why would you go to all that stress?
It's pretty simple, food.
When you look at these coastal systems, there's just a ton of life,
here in South Florida that's especially true.
The further downstream you move and out into those coastal oceans,
there's a lot more food than up at the rivers.
NARRATOR: But out at sea, it's not just dehydration the gators need to worry about.
The coast around Florida is home to some of the biggest sharks on Earth.
Bulls, Hammerheads, Tigers and even White sharks all patrol this rich coastline.
So, what happens when a big gator and a big shark clash?
The discovery of a severed croc head in South Africa could hold the answer.
Saint Lucia beach, South Africa, 2013.
As Neale and Brigitte Cary-Smith take their daily walk along the beach,
they spot a strange shape on the shoreline.
NEALE: At first, we thought it was a log because a lot of
debris floats down the estuary which runs into the sea.
But about 30 meters away, I realized that it was a crocodile head.
NARRATOR: Turning their camera on, they carefully approach.
NEALE: Look how big that thing is.
As we got closer, we realized just how big this head was.
It was absolutely enormous.
BRIGITTE: Just come stand closer, my darling, just so people can see the size.
Put your hand on its head.
It's estimated to be in the region of about a 120, uh, pounds or so.
So, if that was the size of the head, imagine what the size of the crocodile was.
It was just very exciting, and we just realized
we had come across something quite special.
NARRATOR: Like their alligator cousin, Nile crocodiles are freshwater predators.
More at home ambushing wildebeest, than moving through the waves.
So, what was this croc doing out in the ocean? And what killed it?
NEALE: The more I inspected the head, the more I saw
that there were teeth marks on the side of it.
BRIGITTE: And being a deep-sea fisherman,
he's sorts of quite knowledgeable about that kind of thing
and he said to me, "That's definitely a shark cut."
Something must have happened, some drama unfolded here.
NEALE: You can see where the shark's actually bitten it.
There's no doubt in my mind whatsoever that that was a shark
that had bitten that crocodile, none whatsoever.
NARRATOR: The wild waters of South Africa are world famous for sharks.
Tigers, Bulls, Bronze Whalers and White sharks all patrol Saint Lucia's shoreline.
But could one of them really have taken on the huge Nile crocodile?
Mike Heithaus is a world leading expert in marine predators.
He's convinced sharks, crocs and gators
could be clashing far more regularly than we ever realized.
MIKE: Looking from the size of this head,
this was a big croc, I mean probably over 10 feet long
and it raises a lot of mysteries like what was it doing out at sea?
And how did it end up a head on a beach?
This is a map showing where that severed head was found, and when we zoom in here,
what you can is that it wasn't too far away from two really major river systems.
So, it's possible that the crocodile died
in the river system and the head floated out
or it could have come into these coastal waters to feed
because those are really rich waters.
Now, there are White sharks in this part of the world,
but White sharks don't tend to be in those super shallow turbid waters
where you might find crocs and gators,
but it could also be a really big Tiger shark or a Bull shark.
And the Bull sharks in this part of the world do get really, really big.
They're one of the few species of sharks that will
tangle with animals close to their own body size.
So yeah, if any shark's gonna go after a bigger crocodile,
Bull sharks are definitely on that list
and those big Bull sharks do go up into these river systems.
NARRATOR: Just as at home in freshwater as salt water,
Bull sharks have a unique adaptation
in their kidneys and livers which allow them to thrive in both environments.
MIKE: They're famous for being in turbid murky waters
and that suite of sensory systems they have
helps them zero in on their prey.
NARRATOR: But could they really take down a huge Nile croc?
MIKE: Bull sharks when they get really big do have the teeth to get through it,
but it might be a pretty big effort, you know,
and that's one thing when you look at that head,
if a Bull shark had done that and the croc was struggling,
I would have expected a lot more slashes and cuts,
it wouldn't be a clean bite through,
they would not be able to get through that skin just in one bite.
Tiger sharks are really different predators, their teeth are curved and serrated,
they are built for cutting.
One of their favorite foods is sea turtles
and they can cut straight through the shell of a turtle.
You know, they've got this reputation of being the garbage cans
of the sea and I guess it's fairly well earned,
I mean, you know, they are the consummate scavenger,
but in the areas where there's lots of prey,
they can also be impressive predators.
They can eat big prey, they can cut through
something tough like the hide of an alligator,
so could a Tiger shark eat an alligator or crocodile?
If they ran into one, yes, they could.
But, without that severed head here in front of me, it's impossible to say if sharks
removed the head from that crocodile.
Was it poached?
Did this croc die and then something eat it?
Big boat propellor, there are lots of things that could have happened here.
This raises a lot more questions than answers.
NARRATOR: Four years later, Saint Lucia estuary
provides the backdrop for another even more
dramatic shark croc confrontation.
CASPER: The shark is just in front of the crocodile.
Did you see that?
NARRATOR: Wildlife guide, Casper Badenhorst,
is birdwatching along South Africa's St. Lucia river mouth
when he spots something strange in the water.
CASPER: It was a perfect day, it was no wind, it was quiet,
the water was flat and that's when I noticed something different.
I start seeing this shark fin and getting bigger
and coming out of the water and eventually
the tail of the shark and I knew this can be nothing else than a shark.
NARRATOR: Grabbing his camera, Casper begins filming.
CASPER: And as I videoed the shark, from the corner of my eye,
I was starting to see a crocodile swimming towards the shark.
A crocodile. A crocodile is going to the shark.
The crocodile was twice the length of the shark.
You could see his aim was to get the shark and to take it down.
(inaudible)
The crocodile was edging closer.
The shark is just in front of the crocodile.
There was a big splash and for a few seconds we couldn't see,
you know, what happened. The shark went under.
But then a few seconds later, the shark emerged and just keep on swimming.
This crocodile was clearly going for the shark,
going to have as his next meal and so the shark was lucky to get away.
MIKE: Oh man, this is incredible,
I mean, you just don't see footage like this.
You can see by the way the crocodile is shifting its body,
it's aware of that shark from pretty far away,
and even though it's aware of it,
it's not really starting to chase it,
it's just slowly kind of turning its body
and moving to be on an interception course.
Then it waits until it's really close and it makes that last
super powered kind of lunge swim to try to get the shark.
That's a predator trying to get a meal.
The shark doesn't look that much smaller than the crocodile
and so you'd think they'd be fairly
evenly matched, but the crocodile just doesn't care at all and, I mean,
if you think about crocodiles, they are really good at getting big prey, I mean,
zebra, wildebeest, they don't care that it's a shark.
So, you know, this starts to ask that question,
what happens when they're more evenly matched?
If the crocodile is in position, it's gonna have a shot.
NARRATOR: Back in the Everglades, the investigation
into the suspected shark gator battleground heats up.
MIKE: Clear!
NARRATOR: With the camera tag successfully deployed
on a big adult male gator called Stumpy,
MIKE: Yes! Yes!
NARRATOR: the team's attention now turns to sharks.
Setting a series of baited lines across the bay,
it's not long before they get their first bite.
MIKE: Hey shark.
That is bite size for a big gator.
NARRATOR: It's a Bull shark and at four feet long, a juvenile.
A miniature camera tag prepped, within minutes the
shark is released back into the battle zone.
MIKE: Yes! MAN: Woo!
MIKE: Good job. MAN: Good work.
MIKE: I mean that was amazing, you know,
for a shark in the trip and it was the perfect size
for the camera and that's a really cool size
of Bull shark in this area because it's small enough
that it could get eaten by a really big gator,
but it's big enough that baby gators could be on the menu for that.
Oh, aren't they cute?
NARRATOR: Over the next few hours, five more Bulls are caught,
and tiny acoustic transmitters inserted inside their bodies.
The data they collect could change our understanding of how these sharks survive
in such dangerous waters.
KRISTINE: So that tag has a Pinger essentially that sets off at a certain frequency,
roughly every 90 seconds, and all across the bay we have acoustic receivers
which are just these listening devices that will pick up those pings,
so that we can essentially track the Bull shark's movements
throughout the bay as it's passing each of those receivers.
NARRATOR: Will their movements overlap with Stumpy, the alligator?
And will the camera tags capture the first underwater footage of a clash?
If it does, it will be a world first.
MIKE: If you go that way, there are alligators,
that way, there are alligators and here we are with Bull sharks
all over the place.
So, it really shows this is the collision zone for these two big predators.
NARRATOR: As the team waits for their camera tags to pop off,
the investigation heads to Maryland,
where new research suggests shark gator conflicts have been taking place here
for millions of years.
And the sharks sometimes come out on top.
STEPHEN: A professional collector came to visit me,
his name is Dougie Douglas and he's well known in the area
for collecting fossils from along Calvert Cliffs.
And he came to my office with this coprolite.
Now a coprolite is the technical term that we give
to fossilized feces and we think that this
kind of coprolite came originally from a crocodile.
But when he first showed it to me,
I just could not believe what my eyes were seeing because
there are tooth impressions along both surfaces, deep ones on this flattened side,
but more shallow ones on this convex side and it's really clear that
these tooth impressions were actually made by a shark.
NARRATOR: 23 million years ago, ancient sharks
and crocodiles roamed this coastline hunting for prey like turtles.
But did they also prey on each other?
Stephen is convinced this fossil holds the answer.
STEPHEN: I thought to myself, "If I take a liquid molding, I'll be able to see hopefully
the shape of the teeth that penetrated into the coprolite."
Now, one of the amazing things about sharks
is that you can almost always identify the species of shark
by the shape of the tooth.
And by looking at the natural cast,
I was able to determine that these teeth came from
one of the extinct kinds of Tiger sharks that we find along Calvert Cliffs.
NARRATOR: The culprit is identified.
But one mystery remains. How were the teeth marks made?
STEPHEN: So, when I noticed that the shark tooth impressions
did not equally penetrate into the coprolite,
I wondered why that was?
Because if the shark had bitten the feces and they had been floating in the water,
I would have expected the teeth in the upper and lower jaws
to have equally penetrated into the fresh feces.
I realized that maybe the feces were not outside the body of the crocodile,
but still within the abdominal cavity and that's why the teeth
had not equally penetrated both sides of the coprolite.
That when the shark ploughed into the abdomen,
its teeth penetrated one side further than the other,
this then came detached from the rest of the crocodile's body,
sank to the bottom of the ocean, was entombed by sediments
and 15 million years later was found by Dougie Douglas.
Clearly, crocodilians, which are apex predators,
and sharks, which are also apex predators,
have been clashing for millions of years.
NARRATOR: Could modern day sharks take down a crocodile?
MIKE: I mean, this is really incredible.
NARRATOR: The investigation heads down under, in search of answers.
The Northern Territory, Australia.
Home to the biggest crocodilians on Earth, saltwater crocs.
In the rivers here, salties rule supreme.
Bulls, Sawfish, and Spear tooth sharks all patrol these waterways.
But they're no match for the salties, which can reach 20 feet in length.
In recent years, clash after clash has been recorded along these rivers.
With crocs coming out on top every single time.
Ten percent of the river sharks have scars from attacks.
Hunted to near extinction in the 1960s,
in recent years salty numbers have been exploding.
Now, up to 200,000 live in Northern Australian.
And running out of space in the rivers, they're heading out to sea.
MIKE: Saltwater crocodiles are the champions of the crocodile world
when it comes to spending time in the ocean,
and it's because they can get rid of the salt so well,
they have salt glands on their tongue, they keep pumping that salt out of there.
You know, it's not uncommon for them to make movements
of more than 100 kilometers out to sea
and that's one of the reasons that they've spread over such a big area.
NARRATOR: But despite their ability to spend several weeks in salt water,
growing evidence suggests they might not be as dominant over sharks here in the ocean.
Alan Withers lives and works in one of Australia's
most remote areas, the Cobourg Peninsula.
ALAN: We can go for two, three months without seeing other people,
we're cut off around four months a year,
during the wet season, by rivers which are impassable.
NARRATOR: While people are thin on the ground, turtles are not.
Throughout the year, they head to the peninsula's
isolated beaches to lay their eggs.
And the coastal crocodiles take full advantage.
ALAN: The crocodiles troll the beaches,
just waiting for a turtle to come up and nest,
and bang, gotcha.
NARRATOR: In 2016, Alan captured something extraordinary.
ALAN: We'd seen a crocodile a fair way offshore
heading towards the beach with the turtle in its mouth.
So, I put the drone up and sent it out.
NARRATOR: His footage was a first.
The croc was being tailed by a pack of sharks.
ALAN: They were pretty much onto it straightaway, they come in like bullets.
NARRATOR: As the croc tries to flee with the turtle in its mouth,
more and more sharks arrive including a large Tawny Nurse shark.
ALAN: And the big Tawny sharks and the Blacktips
were actually swimming up beside him and
nipping chunks off it while it was in the crocodile's mouth.
By the time the crocodile got to the beach,
all it had left was literally an empty shell.
The sharks had stolen the lot.
NARRATOR: Incredibly this clash between packs of sharks
and huge saltwater crocodiles is not a one off.
ALAN: It's a regular event, whenever a large crocodile catches a turtle,
there's certainly a percentage of body fluid
and blood in the water which attracts the sharks
and, indeed, pretty much most times that we've seen large crocodiles with turtles,
the sharks, they're present for an easy meal, ripping bits off as it goes.
MIKE: So, yeah, this footage shows just how complex
the relationship between sharks and crocs can be.
It's not just about who eats who,
this shows that sharks might actually take advantage of crocodiles,
none of those sharks on their own,
could really match up one on one with that crocodile.
But with those numbers, you know, in that ocean realm,
where they've got lots of space to maneuver,
the croc's got no chance if it wants to try to keep its meal,
'cause as soon as it, you know, looks at one shark, another one comes in.
But while this footage is unique, and I would bet that this kind of interaction
is happening a lot more often than we think because
sharks are kind of the ultimate opportunists,
and a free meal is not something they'll pass up.
NARRATOR: Across the mangroves and twisted waterways
of Rookery Bay in the Everglades,
a unique experiment is coming to an end.
For the past 24 hours, camera tags record every move
alligators and Bull sharks make
in the suspected shark gator battleground.
KRISTINE: Alright, it's like a lot louder over there.
NARRATOR: Now released, they're emitting a weak VHF signal
the team is using to zero in on their location.
KRISTINE: Woo! We did it.
NARRATOR: And the data inside shows Stumpy striking to kill.
MIKE: Oh man.
NARRATOR: Back at base, Mike analyses Stumpy's data.
MIKE: This is super cool, I mean, this is the first time
we've been able to put a camera on an alligator in these coastal
Everglades waters, you know, there's just so much we're gonna
be able to learn by getting this window into their world.
NARRATOR: Stumpy spends most of the night hugging the edge of the mangroves
and resting at the surface.
MIKE: But then at about 2:45 in the morning,
things change, and he goes into hunting mode.
You see him a couple of times make these big lunges to try to catch something.
You can also see in one of these,
a fish swim into the frame and then as it swims out,
Stumpy makes a big lunge to try to catch it as it's swimming away.
And alligators have these sensors called dome pressure sensors on their snout,
and those sense vibrations in the water.
So that fish swimming by would have triggered those
and he just lunged to try to catch it.
You can see from that speed, if a little Bull shark got too close,
Stumpy could catch it.
NARRATOR: GPS coordinates from Stumpy's tag
reveal exactly where and when he was hunting.
At two in the morning, he moves out into the canal
and his movements become a lot more purposeful
as he moves upstream looking for prey.
MIKE: You know, why did that change happen? We don't know.
I mean, maybe that's it's favorite hunting time and hunting ground.
But then, you know, as we get onto six thirty in the morning,
unfortunately something else happened.
The camera and the GPS stopped working,
but luckily the depth sensor and the accelerometer
kept on going and the data we got from those is really intriguing.
So, this graph is showing us the depth where Stumpy is spending time,
and the yellow shows us how fast it's moving.
Things change when the sun comes up, Stumpy's going down
to the bottom and just being completely
motionless for long periods of time, maybe 20 minutes or more.
And then you have these quick bursts up,
where he changes the depth and you see that kind of
explosive speed, which could be him lunging at prey
and that's kind of what we'd expect for a sit and wait predator,
especially during the day.
NARRATOR: It's a unique insight into how gators ambush their prey
and are able to bring down faster and more agile sharks.
MIKE: So, here's what we think is going on, those alligators are lying in wait,
their dark skin probably blends in with the habitat around them.
And then when something like a shark swims over the top, they detect it,
they can burst up from the bottom with that powerful tail
and grab that shark on the soft underbelly
before it even knows the alligator is there.
And, you know, that's really the only way these gators
are gonna be able to catch sharks
that are faster and more agile than they are.
NARRATOR: Footage from sharkcam reveals just how hard it is
for sharks to spot the gators in these murky waters.
MIKE: You can see that the visibility is terrible,
and this is really typical of the waters
that these Bull sharks are inhabiting.
Virtually zero visibility, so they can't rely on
their eyes to find a meal or avoid predators
which can include big alligators.
NARRATOR: Despite the dangers, evidence from the acoustic tags
fitted inside the sharks,
shows just how close they come to gators on a daily basis.
MIKE: The baby Bull sharks are spending the majority of their time
in the mouth of the river here,
they're in these very shallow bays.
Occasionally though, they are going upstream and, in fact,
when we look at the monitors here,
there's a shark that hits them all pretty much every day,
and we know that alligators go
further down than Stumpy did, we've seen them right here
at the very base of the habitat,
where all of these sharks are spending a lot of time.
NARRATOR: The team may not have captured a clash on camera,
but it's groundbreaking evidence
that the Everglades is a shark croc battleground.
MIKE: Yeah look, when you see these tracks and you look at the data we've collected,
there's no question that Bull sharks
and alligators overlap a ton and that's why we're
starting to see more and more pictures
and videos come in from around the world of crocodiles
and alligators that have eaten sharks.
NARRATOR: But do meetings always end in confrontation?
Back in Australia, the death of a whale brings a ten-foot
shark and a 13-foot croc face to face.
Around the world, evidence of crocs and gators clashing with sharks is on the rise.
In Florida, research shows their territories overlap
and sharks sometimes end up on the gator menu.
In South Africa, Nile crocodiles attack Bull sharks
and mysterious severed heads wash up on beaches.
And off the coast of Australia, sharks use their strength
in numbers to mock crocs and steal their food.
Now, remarkable new evidence suggests shark croc encounters
might not always end in confrontation.
The Kimberley Coast, Western Australia.
Jeremy Tucker is skippering a whale spotting cruise
when he comes across the body of a huge
50 foot Humpback floating four miles from the coast.
JEREMY: We realized that it was upside down and just floating,
so we went over to the whale,
and we realized that there was a few sharks feeding on it.
And as we got closer, we realized that they were Tiger sharks
and there was a couple of really big ones.
NARRATOR: Around the world, the death of the whale
often triggers a shark feeding frenzy.
Whale blubber is one of the most energy rich foods in the ocean.
Every pound contains over 3000 calories.
A single whale can attract over 200 sharks.
But today, the sharks have company.
JEREMY: I decided to put the drone up,
and there was a lot of bite marks out of the whale.
As we got closer, we realized that there was a croc there feeding on the whale.
It was really unique, and we all realized that.
He was probably about three meters long
and he wasn't fussed about the sharks around,
he just did his own thing, and he was sort of trying
to sit on the pectoral fin and, and get a feed.
The bigger Tiger shark actually went underneath the whale
and sort of stayed in the shadows.
They didn't seem to be too worried about each other, I think the food was there
and they had plenty to eat, so they were happy.
NARRATOR: For 45 minutes this unique footage shows
the two predators feeding on the huge whale carcass.
JEREMY: I think they were pretty full.
We noticed the Tiger shark swimming around and just having a bite,
and a little bit of a shake and then swimming off.
But there was no aggressiveness or there was no feeding
frenzy or anything like that.
So obviously they had been feeding on that whale for a while.
NARRATOR: As Jeremy is about to leave, something extraordinary happens.
The croc and the shark begin feeding within inches of each other.
JEREMY: And when we first saw it, we seriously thought it was quite unique, I mean,
you just don't see that.
MIKE: I mean, this is incredible, I mean,
you know, sharks feeding from a whale carcass,
that's something you're used to seeing, but a crocodile?
Yeah, I've never seen that.
We usually think of crocs, gators and sharks
as the consummate predators, you know,
chasing or ambushing their prey, but they are not gonna pass up a free meal,
and they are amazing scavengers, and when you find a bonanza like a whale,
these animals can fill their stomachs up
and go many months without having to eat again.
So, this is a real windfall for them.
And when you've got this much food around,
you wouldn't expect there to be any aggressive interactions,
the predatory instincts are put aside
and it's all about just having a free meal.
But if you took that food source away, things could be very different.
Crocs and sharks are two amazing predator groups
that have been interacting for millions of years.
But in the 20th century their populations have plummeted.
Now they're just starting to rebound
and we're seeing the interactions happen more often,
and there are more people out there filming and photographing it.
When you go up into the rivers and estuaries,
it looks like the crocs and gators reign supreme.
They've got the size, they've got the burst speed,
you know, small sharks that live there, they can be on the menu.
But as you move out to the ocean, that is the shark's ground
and the sharks those gators and crocs run into
are gonna probably be a lot bigger.
So, if I were a croc or a gator in the ocean,
I'd watch my back a bit more.
Captioned by SubTitlePro LLC