Totem Animals
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The great white shark, with its two thousand kilos of savage strength, prowls the south coast of Australia in search of its most coveted prey, the sea lion.
We found the great white shark in the waters of the south coast of Australia, a crowded fed by waters from the Antarctic ice continent life. With its two-ton, this great wild predator prowls the Australian beaches in search of its most coveted prey, the sea lion. We dive on the Australian continent to see the beautiful and varied creatures that hide in its waters feared of the white shark.
The waters that bathe the south of Australia are a link preserved from a former union. 50 million years ago, this island-continent broke away from the Antarctic, abandoning it to the cold currents which froze it.
Now, strong winds called the Roaring 40s, crash against this rugged coast, carrying with them life from the ice, in the form of rich nutrients transported by the currents from the South Pole.
Deep down beneath the ice of the Antarctic, 2,000 kilometres from here, the cold waters collect minerals, oxygen and carbon dioxide. Here, on the southern Australian coast, these waters come to the surface, giving to rise to a veritable explosion of life, an incredible proliferation of species, from plankton eaters to specialist predators.
For the sharks, this is a region of plenty. The basic design of their bodies is 300 million years old, and is literally perfect. But only one of them is called Death. Beyond the reef lies the kingdom of the great killer, the vast blue, the cold waters which are tinged with red when hunger demands. The great white shark, two thousand kilos of savage strength at the service of a mouth. A prodigious animal which, after hundreds of year of blind terror, we are now learning to admire. We are going to visit his dominions.
When Australia moved north and the Antarctic south, the system of ocean currents was changed. The Antarctic froze over, and the top of Australia came into contact with the tropical currents. Today, both influences remain, creating the two types of water we are going to explore.
People often think that the sea is full of life, that everywhere creatures of one size or another swim. However, that is not true. In fact, the open ocean is almost a desert, with nothing to eat and no one to eat it.
That is not the case of this coast. When the cold waters reach here and rise to the surface, they come into contact with the sunlight, and warm up. And it is precisely the presence of light that works the miracle and causes life to flourish along these beaches.
The sea birds catch small fish and crustaceans, which in turn owe their abundance to the plankton and microscopic algae that thrive close to the coast. These sea birds form colonies of thousands of individuals, and contribute to fertilising the water, with their excrement rich in nitrogen.
It has been scientifically demonstrated in other areas of the world where conditions are similar that when these bird colonies disappear, it is not long before the nearby waters lose a large part of their population of small fish.
This has not happened in southern Australia. Here, the chain of hunters and hunted is maintained intact and ready to take maximum advantage of the gift sent from the Antarctic, in the form of dissolved nutrients.