It’s crafty, fish-stealing sharks vs. anglers in NatGeo’s Bull Shark Bandits

Enlarge / Spydro camera image of a bull shark stealing a fish on the team’s line. (credit: National Geographic)

Weipa is a small coastal mining town in Queensland, located in northeastern Australia, particularly favored by sports fisherman because of its annual competition, the Weipa Fishing Classic. But in recent years, fishermen have reported an increasing number of incidents where local bull sharks are pulling off audacious underwater raids, literally waiting until a fish is hooked and chomping it off the line. Some fisherman estimate they can lose as much as 70 percent of their catch to the sharks, which seem to specifically target fishing boats.

(Some spoilers for the documentary below the gallery.)

It’s atypical behavior for bull sharks and it raises an interesting question: is this evidence that this species of shark—known (a bit unfairly) in the popular imagination for being aggressive “mindless killers”—are more intelligent than previously assumed? That’s one of the questions that shark biologists Johan Gustafson and Mariel Familiar Lopez set out to answer, and their initial field work has been documented for posterity in Bull Shark Bandits, part of National Geographic’s 2023 SHARKFEST programming. SHARKFEST is four full weeks of “explosive, hair-raising and celebratory shark programming that … showcase the captivating science, power and beauty of these magnificent animals,” per the official description.