Caterina Gennaro
Shark Week: The Podcast - Jeff Kurr on Filming a Life-Threatening Shark Encounter
Luke Tipple is joined by Emmy award-winning and longtime Shark Week filmmaker, Jeff Kurr to discuss his new documentary, Great White Open Ocean, and the life-threatening shark encounter captured in his film and seen in recent news.
October 03, 2022
Luke Tipple is joined by Emmy award-winning and longtime Shark Week filmmaker, Jeff Kurr. He discusses his successful and storied career, from being the first to capture a breaching Great White, to creating the Air Jaws series. Jeff discusses his latest project, directing Great White Open Ocean, a documentary about shark diver and Jeff’s good friend, Jimi Partington who experienced a life-threatening shark encounter in 2019, then a year later went on to swim with Great Whites again, and suffered a horrible stroke.
Kurr captured Jimi’s journey and his road to recovery, which he says has been the most rewarding experience he’s ever had as a filmmaker. Luke and Jeff discuss life-threatening shark encounters including a recent encounter that resulted in the fatality of a tourist in Plettenberg Bay, South Africa on September 25th, 2022.
Next Up
There’s a Lot You Don’t Know About Sharks
But in the meantime, here are some fin-tastic facts you probably didn’t know about sharks.
Shark Week: The Podcast - Shipwrecked & Surrounded by Sharks
This week, we do things a little differently, as Shark Week’s Luke Tipple invites Adventure Aaron into the podcast studio to talk about his incredible near-death experience on the open water. Adventure Aaron gets into what it takes to circumnavigate the world in an ocean rowboat, what it’s like to stare eye-to-eye with an oceanic white tip that probably wants you for lunch, and everything else that happened to him when his boat was capsized, and he was lost by himself at sea.
Shark Week: The Podcast - How Smart Are Sharks?
The discussion turns this week to sharks’ intelligence, and how it varies among species. Host Luke Tipple is joined by Dr. Tristan Guttridge, a behavioral ecologist and veteran of Shark Week whose research has tackled the social smarts, and even personalities, of different kinds of sharks. He sheds light on why we shouldn’t just think of them as dumb fish with rows of razor-sharp teeth. And at the end, our researcher Sierra Kehoe tells us about shark hypnosis.
Shark Week: The Podcast - How Shark Fishing Funds Human Trafficking
Luke Tipple is joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the Outlaw Ocean Ian Urbina, who has dedicated his life to chronicling crime on the high seas. They discuss the state of our world’s oceans, how nearly 20% of your seafood was likely caught illegally, and the surprising link between modern slavery and the killing of sharks.
Shark Week: The Podcast - Lights! Camera! TEETH! Making Shark Docs
Shark Week’s Luke Tipple is joined by longtime filmmaker and Emmy-award-winner Andy Casagrande. He’s filmed and appeared in dozens of shark documentaries, and might just be the most prolific shark cinematographer in history. He talks with Luke about his career, the contentious term “shark porn,” and the future of the industry. And at the end, our researcher Sierra talks about the unprecedented ways that sharks are currently endangered.
Shark Week: The Podcast - Do Scientists Need to Kill Sharks?
Host Luke Tipple welcomes two guests to discuss how researchers can kill sharks in the name of science – and whether they need to at all. The first is Dr. Neil Hammerschlag, shark researcher and founder of Atlantic Shark Expeditions, and an expert on data-gathering in the field. He’s followed by explorer Fred Buyle, a world-record-breaking freediver whose innovative methods of shark tagging are explored. Plus, our researcher Sierra tells us about how a 50-year study changed our understanding of tiger sharks – and much of the work wasn’t even done by scientists.
Shark Week: The Podcast - How Many Sharks Are Yet to Be Discovered?
Luke Tipple is joined by Shark Week host and all-around adventurer Forrest Galante. They discuss his upcoming special Alien Sharks: South Africa, Forrest’s remarkable talent for finding creatures once believed to be extinct, and how many shark species may still be unknown. Then, our researcher Sierra stops by to tell us about the world’s most prehistoric shark.
Shark Week: The Podcast - Undiscovered Sharks and the State of the Ocean
Luke Tipple invites “The Lost Shark Guy,” Dr. Dave Ebert, who is personally responsible for finding dozens of shark species that were either previously unknown to science or thought to be extinct. He and Luke discuss why shark populations are a direct indicator of how healthy the ocean is, how to find undiscovered sharks, and why diversity in sharks is essential for marine life.
Shark Week: The Podcast - How To Have A Career in Shark Science
Shark Week’s Luke Tipple tackles the question “How can I work with sharks?” alongside two experts in the field – and their answers are not always the obvious ones. Luke is joined first by Kelly Link, Associate Curator of the Georgia Aquarium who talks about what it’s like to be an aquarist, how it differs from field work, and how to get yourself noticed. The second guest is Dr. Neil Hammerschlag who goes into detail on what it takes to become a prominent scientist, and what other paths you can take if a PhD isn’t for you. And at the end, researcher Sierra stops by to tell us about the world’s smallest shark.
Shark Week: The Podcast - What is the Status of Sharks in our Oceans?
In this season’s final episode, Luke welcomes Emmy-winning filmmaker and conservationist Shawn Heinrichs to discuss the state of sharks in the ocean. They go over how both legal and illegal fishing operations are decimating the ocean’s wildlife, what it’s like to have a hit put out on you for exposing criminal enterprises to the world, and whether or not NOAA’s data on “sustainable” fishing can really be trusted.