Bottom-feeding babies stir our fears

Babies can be quirky sometimes. They make odd choices, bite strange things.
And if the baby is eight feet long, with sharp teeth, there’s a problem. We learn that on the first night (July 5) of the National Geographic Channel’s annual “SharkFest.”
“At eight or nine feet, a shark is pretty darn young,” Mike Heithaus said by Zoom. That shark is still learning. “When he sees a surfboard, he’ll think, ‘That might be something I should bite.'”
He soon learns otherwise. Surfboards offer no nourishment; surfers — too much muscle, too little fat — aren’t much better.
Mostly, Heithaus said, sharks stay away from both. Experienced surfers feel the threat is minor. “They know it isn’t as risky as the drive to the beach.”
But the exceptions are what make “SharkFest” (rerunning on Disney+ and Hulu) and “Shark Week” (July 20-26 on Discovery) interesting.
“Fest” runs from 9 a.m. to 6 a.m. daily, mostly stuffed with reruns from previous years. The new shows include a few specials — the first is at 8 p.m. July 5, chasing great whites in South Africa — and some regular series.
At 9 p.m. nightly, “Investigation Shark Attack” has Heithaus and three other experts in a four-person studio team, analyzing things that go wrong. The opener asks about four great white shark attacks off California last year.
And for some of those, we might blame the babies.
Among the 500-plus shark species, Heithaus said, there are differing approaches to parenting. Some even lay eggs.
But most are indifferent parents. Among great whites, the babies are “pretty much on their own.” They’ve been blessed with “really big livers,” making it easier to survive.
They start at about four feet long and often stay in shallow water, where there’s more food and fewer bigger, meaner creatures. With no parental guidance, they occasionally bite a person or a surfboard.
Those are rare occasions, Heithaus said, and veteran surfers realize it. He recalled once tagging with Chris Lowe, a California shark expert:
One guy asked if there was a shark nearby. Lowe said there were several. “Cool,” the man said … and resumed surfing.
As a kid “in the cornfields of Ohio,” Heithaus said, he had little interest in sharks. He graduated from Oberlin College, in Ohio, planned to study dolphins, and got a doctorate from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.
Along the way, however, he found sharks far more interesting. Now he’s a professor and dean at Florida International University and a key figure in both “SharkFest” and “Shark Week.”
At times, sharks don’t stir much interest, Heithaus said. “Most of their lives are fairly boring. It’s just swim and swim and .swim.
But there are the exceptions. “Technology is showing us how little we knew.”
Only now did he learn about what seems like “crop circles in the ocean” — circular swimming patterns by great whites. Lowe explains those in the July 5 episode.
These days, there are better cameras in the water (some attached to sharks) and above, attached to drones.
Surfers, the drones show, might be near several sharks they’re unaware of. When they find out, some rush to shore; others say “cool” and resume surfing.