Enlarge / Excessive sportsman Ross Edgley comes head to head with an ideal hammerhead shark within the waters of Bimini within the Bahamas. (credit score: Nationwide Geographic/Nathalie Miles)
Extremely-athlete Ross Edgley isn’t any stranger to pushing his physique to extremes. He as soon as ran a marathon whereas pulling a one-ton automotive; ran a triathlon whereas carrying a 100-pound tree; and climbed a 65-foot rope again and again till he’d climbed the equal of Mt. Everest—all for charity. In 2016, he set the world report for the world’s longest staged sea swim across the shoreline of Nice Britain: 1780 miles over 157 days.
At one level throughout that swim, a basking shark appeared and swam alongside Edgley for a day and a half. That have ignited his curiosity about sharks and ultimately led to his new Nationwide Geographic documentary, Shark vs. Ross Edgley—a part of 4 full weeks of 2024 SHARKFEST programming. Edgley matches his athletic prowess in opposition to 4 totally different species of shark. He tries to leap out of the water (polaris) like an ideal white shark; stand up to the G forces produced by a hammerhead shark’s quick, speedy turns; mimic the acute fasting and feasting routine of a migrating tiger shark; and match the swimming velocity of a mako shark.
“I like this concept of getting a aim after which reverse engineering and deconstructing it,” Edgley advised Ars. “[Sharks are] the final word ocean athletes. We simply had this concept: what in the event you’re loopy sufficient to try to observe within the footsteps of 4 wonderful sharks? It is an unattainable activity. You are going to fail, you are going to be humbled. However within the course of, we may use it as a sports activities/shark science experiment, virtually like a Computer virus to carry science and ocean conservation to a brand new viewers.”
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