Shark Whisperer (2025)
100 million sharks are killed each year globally. It's worth talking about.
Jaws is fifty! Which may explain why there’s loads of shark content cropping up on the various streaming platforms. I get annoyed when I watch an Attenborough documentary and all he does is give ten minutes to Selachimorpha*. Sure, it’s interesting finding out that Pelicans are murderous bastards, and confirming that yes, insects are all gross, but where’s the sharks, Davey boy?
Shark Whisperer has to focus on sharks, and a bit on humans because sharks are too busy being all cool and beautiful to make a documentary about themselves. Subject, narrator and writer Ocean Ramsey is a feat of nature. Self publicist, yes, but she’s using herself to draw attention to a cause and I don’t think that’s unique.
I love swimming underwater, Ocean practically lives there. Watching her free dive and run with weights along the sea bed while holding her breath (for up to six and a half minutes!) is both impressive and for me, enviable. I can do maybe a minute, just enough time to swim past the viewing gallery on a glass bottom boat like an albino manatee in pink trunks.
As the film follows Ocean’s quest for equal rights for gay whales the criminalisation of killing sharks in Hawaii, she ups the ante on her social media and publicity drive, and takes bigger risks in the sea.
Blessed with some absolutely jaw dropping scenes, Shark Whisperer is overall a much more hopeful and positive documentary than it could have been. Perhaps because of that it isn’t hard hitting like an Attenborough affair, but Shark Whisperer is really about the beauty and intelligence of sharks. Saying that, Roxy will break your heart. 6/10
*Attenborough’s latest, Ocean, which is available on Disney, is excellent but will make you so angry you’ll want to cry.
JAWS
AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER
WATERSHIP DOWN
THE NEW WORLD
SOUL
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