Capturing the Shark White (Eco-)Masculinity and the Pursuit of Science in the Docuseries Expedition Great White 1 Michael Fuchs Expedition Great White is a docuseries that follows a crew composed of professional fishermen and scientists who conduct studies about great white sharks. This article explores three interrelated dimensions of the series. First, while the series repeatedly suggests that the actions performed in front of the cameras ultimately aim to study and protect great whites and that for both the fishermen and scientists, the well-being of sharks is of the highest priority, this masculine care is not only subjected to the pursuit of new scientific insights about sharks but also embedded in a discourse of competition. Second, this pursuit of new knowledge is coded in masculine terms, as traditional notions of masculinity (i.e., confronting and catching the dangerous animal as well as making scientific progress) become re-negotiated in view of the animals’ well-being and, ultimately, their protection. Finally, while the first two dimensions bespeak the desire for human control of the natural world, the digital lives of tagged sharks challenge this human control. In his influential essay “Why Look at Animals? ” (1977), John Berger suggests that nineteenth-century capitalism jump-started a process that led to the effacement of animals from the lives of people inhabiting the Global North: some animal species have been exterminated or driven close to extinction, while others have been displaced due to suburbanization, which has erased considerable swaths of wilderness areas from maps. However, animals have not simply vanished; instead, domesticated animals and pets have replaced wild animals, production and supply chains have effectively removed animals from the production of meat, and wildlife has “reced[ed] into a wilderness that exist[s] only in the imagination” (Berger 2009: 28; italics in original). Sparked by the developments of photography in the 1 I would like to thank the Volkswagen Foundation for funding received in the context of the research project “Fiction Meets Science II: Varieties of Science Narrative”. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 47 · Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ AAA-2022-0014 Michael Fuchs 244 mid-nineteenth century and motion pictures in the latter stages of the nineteenth century, animals have entered the realm of representation as they have disappeared from material reality; they have found, Akira Mizuta Lippit quips in his book Electric Animal, “a proper habitat in the recording devices of the technological media” (2000: 25). “The capacities of the technological media in general and the photographic media in particular to record and recall”, Lippit continues, have “allowed modern culture to preserve animals” (2000: 25). Joel Sartore’s ongoing National Geographicsponsored project Photo Ark, in which he photographs animals before their species vanish from the face of the Earth, makes this process of trying to capture animals’ spectral doubles in storage devices and representations (and sometimes also their DNA in cryo-frozen form) explicit. Like other animals, sharks are trapped in human discourses; they are not perceived as animals but rather as symbols that speak to human desires, dreams, and ideas; they are “stand-in[s] for humans” (DeMello 2012: 334). “[R]epresentations of animals in visual culture”, Randy Malamud has accordingly noted, “are inherently biased and self-serving”, which is why “[i]t is difficult, if not impossible, to find in these human representations an objectively true account of who animals are” (2012: loc. 232). Dan Rubey remarked in an early response to the representation of sharks in Jaws, both the novel (1974) and the movie (1975), that “Jaws is an expression of the society’s consciousness […]. Spielberg’s film and Benchley’s novel have cashed in on the emotions already attached to people-eating sharks by creating fictional and filmic structures which involve audiences with the shark as an image” (1976: 20). Ultimately, “representations of the shark repress that which they are meant to express: the fish, the animal itself, the shark” (Neff 2016: 52). In this article, I will draw on this idea to explore the docuseries Expedition Great White, in which sharks play an important role but are ultimately displaced, for the series is more interested in the hunt for, and capture of, sharks, and how equipping sharks with tracking devices may advance science and help us understand these marine predators. These focal points, in turn, reflect questions surrounding particular practices in the sciences and negotiate the masculinities on display. Expedition Great White is what Cynthia Chris has labelled “Fang TV”: wildlife programming “featur[ing] top predators such as sharks, tigers, crocodiles, and grizzly bears”, whose “violent natures” attract viewers (2006: 105). The series follows a group of professional fishermen and scientists studying great whites. Expedition Great White became Shark Men for its second and third seasons on National Geographic (the title subsequently also used for the first season and international broadcasts) before moving (in slightly altered form) to the History Channel as Shark Wranglers for one more season. I use the programme’s original title to stress that I will focus on the first season because starting with the second season, the docuseries becomes less coherent: all seasons revolve around a group of (primarily) Capturing the Shark 245 men (primarily white men, as a matter of fact) trying to attach satellite trackers to sharks, but, for example, whereas season one solely centres on catching and tagging great whites, season two even includes two episodes in which the Shark Men try to catch giant squid (with Australian colleagues, including two female PhD students), and season three features a new a chief scientist - a change that introduces new strategies of catching sharks and new conflicts aboard - and the Shark Men expand their range by catching and tagging other shark species, including tiger sharks and hammerheads. Finally, in season two, the frequency of using reality television conventions (in particular ‘confessionals’ in which crew members sit down and address the camera to comment on the goings-on aboard the ship) increases dramatically - a development that, admittedly, begins in the second half of the first season. Whereas Iri Cermak has reprimanded “pseudoscientific TV content” such as the Great White Serial Killer series of documentaries for “pos[ing] a real risk to sharks for its potential persuasiveness when coupled with particular entertainment techniques and the objectivity-based claims common in documentary” (2021: 585), 2 I will not interrogate the ‘factuality’ of Great White Expedition, even if popular television may be “the most common source of scientific information for the public” (Evans 2015: 271). Assessing the effectiveness of edutainment to teach its audiences about, and make them interested in, science is difficult, to say the least. As marine biologist David Shiffman has pointed out, Shark Week “inspires the single largest temporary spike in Americans paying attention to any ocean science or conservation topic. It therefore has the potential to be an amazing force for good in terms of promoting science, conservation, and public understanding of sharks” (2022: 50). However, Shark Week tends to botch this potential by relying on spectacle and stereotypical representations that effectively turn sharks into monsters (see, for example, Lerberg 2016). Instead of focusing on Great White Expedition as a means for science communication, my article is interested in two interconnected layers of the programme’s meaning: how the series negotiates what Antoine Traisnel (2020) has described as the development from the hunt to the capture regime, as sharks are caught before they are transformed into little more than dots moving across screens, and how both catching sharks and expressing concerns about the animals’ well-being perform particular (eco-)masculinities. 2 The Great White Serial Killer documentaries have been a semi-regular feature of Shark Week, the annual, week-long special on Discovery Channel that has been running since summer 1988. The first Great White Serial Killer documentary was broadcast in 2013, and the series returned in 2015, 2016, 2020, and 2022. Michael Fuchs 246 Catching the Shark The first episode of Expedition Great White opens with shots of the research vessel MV Ocean, accompanied by a foreboding score. As the ship casts anchor, the voice-over narrator opens the series with dramatic intonation, saying, “Forget crabs” (Christensen & Butler 2010a). By thus referring to Deadliest Catch (Discovery Channel, 2005-), the series about king crab fishermen in the Bering Sea (purportedly the deadliest job on the planet [National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 1997]), the first few words of Expedition Great White stress the risks that all men involved in the expedition to Guadalupe Island accept. Then, viewers catch a first glimpse of a shark, seen from the ship and accompanied by an excited voice exclaiming, “White shark! Right underneath your feet! ” (Christensen & Butler 2010a). The voice-over continues, “They are going after something bigger: the great white shark! ” (Christensen & Butler 2010a). In this moment, the camera provides underwater shots of a great white approaching, with its jaws wide open, before a shark bites (somewhat calmly) into a boat (Illustration 1). Illustration 1. A shark is first seen from the ship, before underwater shots revert to stereotypical shark imagery: jaws wide open, first biting into the boat and then taking a bait. Screenshots from Expedition Great White © National Geographic, 2010. “Catching [the shark] takes a team of expert anglers” (Christensen & Butler 2010a), the voice-over explains, as Chris Fischer, leader of the expedition and founder of the non-profit organisation OCEARCH, whose mission is “conducting unprecedented research on our ocean’s giants in order Capturing the Shark 247 to help scientists collect previously unattainable data in the ocean” (OCEARCH 2022), is introduced. Fischer stresses, “This is gonna finally allow us to actually get to know the shark” (Christensen & Butler 2010a). “Understanding it requires a renowned shark expert”, the voice-over notes and introduces Dr Michael Domeier, who wants to “crack open and solve the puzzle of the great white shark” by “us[ing] the newest technology” (Christensen & Butler 2010a). “They’re joining forces to protect the sharks’ dwindling numbers”, the voice-over continues, “but it’s going to take a revolutionary plan” (Christensen & Butler 2010a). This ‘revolutionary plan’ centres on towing sharks onto a cradle that lifts them out of the water, which allows the crew-members to measure the ocean predators and attach satellite trackers to the sharks; this tag is where ‘the newest technology’ comes into play, as traditional pop-up tags, which detach after some time, are replaced by tracking devices that are bolted into the sharks’ dorsal fins and transmit data for up to six years. About ten minutes into the first episode, the crew spot the first great white whom they want to catch on their current expedition. In the bombastic language characteristic of this type of television programme, the voice-over describes the great white as “bigger than anything they’ve caught before” (Christensen & Butler 2010a). Unfortunately, the female shark does not take the bait; however, misfortune quickly turns to blessing because “what shows up next is even more astonishing” (Christensen & Butler 2010a), the voice-over remarks. Fischer’s voice expresses this astonishment, saying, “Oh, my god! That is a giant […]! […] That’s a bigger one! ” (Christensen & Butler 2010a). As the hunt begins, the pace of the extra-diegetic music quickens, as do the movements of the shark in the water - after deliberately, nearly pensively, circling the ship, she suddenly bursts forward to swallow the bait (at least, that is what the editing suggests). The action stops for a moment when Domeier believes that she has (literally) got off the hook, but as one buoy after the other is pulled into the water, it becomes clear that they have successfully hooked the shark. As the “main battle” ensues (Christensen & Butler 2010a), Fischer, Brett McBride (the Ocean’s captain), Jody Whitworth (the ship’s co-captain), and the late actor Paul Walker (who, according to Fischer, “is a real adventurer and someone who really cares about the ocean” and who “has [thus] earned […] his spot on this crew” [Christensen & Butler 2010a]) man a small chase boat to tire out the shark in safe distance from the main vessel. Fischer muses, “This doesn’t make a lot of sense - being in the twenty-fivefoot inflatable, battling the great white shark”, which makes Whitworth grin and wonder, “What’s the line from Jaws? ‘You’ll need a bigger boat’? ” (Christensen & Butler 2010a). This explicit reference to the iconic shark movie is one of many that draw on shark representations in popular culture to evoke the terrors typically ascribed to the carnivorous fish. In this particular instance, the quotation serves to create suspense as the small boat Michael Fuchs 248 continues approaching the large predator. The mist surrounding Guadalupe Island combines with the slow, foreboding music to create an eerie atmosphere as the boat gets closer to the shark. With the exception of Fischer, who controls the wheel and assigns tasks, there is an uncanny silence and composure on the boat, as if this was the silence before the storm. However, the storm never really comes. Although both the crew-members and the narrator repeatedly stress how hard it is to manoeuvre the shark into the lift, the entire procedure unfolds rather unspectacularly. With the shark out of the water, the crew’s main interest quickly turns from catching the shark to not seriously injuring her. “It’s a fine line, with catching him, keeping him alive, and keeping him healthy”, McBride explains (Christensen & Butler 2010a). Somewhat surprisingly, the crew’s work on the lift, with the shark out of the water, becomes the real action of the sequence: taking measurements, attaching the tracker, extracting samples of the shark’s body tissue, drawing blood, and removing the hook become the spectacle (featuring close-ups, quick cuts, and all) that the actual catching of the shark lacks. Here, Expedition Great White tries to impress upon viewers that the programme obeys the expedition’s creed, as spelled out by Fischer: it’s all “in the name of science” (Christensen & Butler 2010a). Performing White (Eco-)Masculinity The script consisting of baiting sharks, catching them, measuring them, taking samples from them, tagging them, photographing them, and releasing them is the key component in the serial structure of the programme. These sequences spotlight two different notions of masculinity that the docuseries presents as simultaneously in conflict with one another and similar in terms of their care for nature: the learned and somewhat feminised white-collar masculinity embodied by the scientist and the hands-on, bluecollar, ‘manly’ manhood represented by the fishermen, who are united in their desire to study and protect sharks. Expedition Great White is not subtle in how it introduces the different types of masculinities represented by the crew-members. In the first few minutes of the opening episode, Fischer’s evocative name is made explicit when the voice-over narrator describes him as “a giant at catching […] big fish” (Christensen & Butler 2010a). Fischer, in turn, labels his captain, Brett McBride, “the single greatest ocean predator” (Christensen & Butler 2010a), suggesting that while the crew might be after the most feared ocean predator, men tower above the great white shark in the food chain. Tellingly, the clips accompanying the introductions of Fischer and McBride show them in action: Fischer visibly sweats as he fights a marlin, while images of McBride standing on the bridge are intercut with marlins struggling on hooks and him getting uncomfortably close to a marlin’s spearlike bill while placing a tag (Illustration 2). In a later episode, the voice - Capturing the Shark 249 over narrator remarks, “When it comes to catching great whites, a rod and reel is of no use to these guys. It’s the sheer muscle power of hand-lining, sometimes for hours” (Christensen & Butler 2010d). Illustration 2. Physical activity characterises Chris Fischer and Brett McBride. Screenshots from Expedition Great White © National Geographic, 2010. Domeier, on the other hand, is instantly figured as a typical scientist, as he stresses, “Ecosystems are changing fast today, with the amount of overharvesting. We don’t wanna see white sharks wiped off the face of the Earth” (Christensen & Butler 2010a). The fast pace, established both by cuts and movements in the clips, that characterises the introductions of Fischer and McBride is replaced by a longer take of a great white peacefully swimming in the ocean as Domeier speaks. Whereas Fischer and McBride engage in physical labour, the scientist sits and types on his laptop (Illustration 3). Notably, as the introductions conclude, Domeier takes a more active role, drilling holes into a shark’s dorsal fin to mount a tag. Although the biologist seems to be in a hurry (because he does not want the shark to be out of the water for too long), the docuseries’s visual language remains calm: there is little movement in the frame and the shark seems to be asleep (even if she is not). Domeier’s work is precise and calculated (‘scientific’, if you will), while the professional fishermen react quickly, relying on their physical attributes and ‘instincts’. Michael Fuchs 250 Illustration 3. Dr Michael Domeier is working on his laptop. Screenshot from Expedition Great White © National Geographic, 2010. This basic opposition established in the opening minutes of the first episode defines Expedition Great White. Later in the episode, Domeier stops McBride from tossing bait into the water because “he wants to be more selective and cautious” (Christensen & Butler 2010a), highlighting their different approaches to catching sharks. Fischer notes in another episode that “[b]ecause [Domeier]’s so smart, […] he’s trying to be helpful, but he’s really creating a lot of confusion” (Christensen & Butler 2010c). Fischer understands that despite their shared goals, in various respects, there’s a gulf separating a scientist from a fisherman - and the biologist most definitely agrees with Fischer on this point: “The angle that [Fischer] comes from is very different from the angle that I come from” (Christensen & Butler 2010c). Notably, from the way that the docuseries frames Fischer’s critique, viewers are likely meant to side with the fishermen’s hands-on experience that contrasts with the scientist’s book knowledge. However, the clear dividing line separating the scientist from the fishermen, with the fishermen being depicted in ‘manly’ fashion and the scientist portraying a more feminised masculinity, becomes blurry over the course of the season. As the first expedition in the waters off Guadalupe Island nears its end in the fourth episode, Domeier has one satellite tag left with just a few hours remaining on their permit. To better their chances, the crew decides to fish from the Ocean and their chase boat at the same time. Domeier boards the latter, which spurs Fischer to exclaim, “He’s not some guy who hangs out in a lab coat, waiting for some data to come in. He’s ready to get busy with some white sharks” (Christensen & Butler Capturing the Shark 251 2010d). The expedition leader clearly evokes one stereotype of ‘the scientist’ here; however, he does not challenge this particular stereotype. Rather, his emphasis on how Domeier, as a very specific example of ‘the scientist’, does not correspond to this stereotypical image - and notions of masculinity attached to it - highlights the biologist’s exceptionalism while simultaneously perpetuating the stereotypes that Fischer draws on. Whereas Domeier’s difference from ‘typical’ scientists and his willingness to “get[…] his hands dirty” (Christensen & Butler 2010d) allows him access to a more traditional type of masculinity, Fischer’s and McBride’s characters are also enriched by various layers that seem to challenge their hegemonic masculinities. After the initial expedition to Guadalupe Island (covered in episodes one to four), the team embarks on a journey to what Domeier calls ‘SOFA’, the shared offshore foraging area, a region between Guadalupe Island and the islands of Hawaii that “extends between approximately 32° and 16° N latitude and approximately 128° and 142° W longitude” (Domeier & Nasby-Lucas 2008: 230). The expedition is expected to last nearly four weeks. Episode five, the first of two episodes focusing on the trip to the SOFA, features scenes of how the crew prepares for the journey, including how they say good-bye to their families. The camera puts a particular focus on McBride’s daughters and him hugging his wife, showcasing his feelings for his family. Similarly, when the team returns to Guadalupe a year after the expedition covered in episodes one to four, Domeier decides to name one of the male sharks they catch Tairua, after an engineer who died the night they returned from Guadalupe the year before. Fischer first plays it cool, saying, “Cool. That just gave me the chills. Thank you for that, doctor, thank you very much” (Christensen & Butler 2010g). However, when he looks down on his clipboard to record the name, he begins to get emotional and wipes away his tears. The camera turns to McBride as he tries to keep his composure and looks in the other direction, tearyeyed and sniffling. After they have returned the shark to the water, Fischer explains, “We love everybody on this boat like family” (Christensen & Butler 2010g). The scenes surrounding the naming of Tairua are important because they showcase how Fischer and McBride try, to draw on Rebecca Solnit, to kill their emotions (2017: 30). To be sure, the homosociality aboard the ship (though Domeier’s longtime collaborator, Nicole Nasby-Lucas, joined the men for that particular trip) and the fact that the men have cameras stuck in their faces likely impacted Fischer’s and McBride’s urge not to display emotions, but these contexts only further highlight that Fischer and McBride seek to conform to the “rigid set of expectations and performances associated with the accomplishment of everyday masculinity” (Twine 2021: 125). Although the image of the man cut off from his emotions may well represent an “outmoded style[…] of masculinity […] built on simple masculine myths” (Braudy 2005: 86), the idea has far from vanished from the popular imagination. The scenes testifying to the love in the McBride family and Michael Fuchs 252 Fischer’s comment on why he appreciated Domeier’s gesture so much, on the other hand, exemplify that “[m]en can and do assume caring roles in society” (Hultman & Pulé 2018: 31). One of these traditionally accepted caring roles is fatherhood. In this context, Fischer’s emphasis that the Ocean’s crew functions as a family is notable. As the expedition leader, Fischer performs the paternal role in this construct. I do not mean to delve into the potentially queer implications of this notion (as there is no maternal figure in sight), 3 but conceiving of the crew as his family allows Fischer to care for his crew-members and to become emotionally attached to them, while simultaneously explaining his (short) emotional outburst. Significantly, Expedition Great White includes nonhuman life-forms in the realm of masculine care - great whites, in particular. However, the discourse of care that the crew-members repeatedly tap into alternates with a discourse of dominating the animal. As Fischer puts it very explicitly, “You go from trying to conquer this beast and break its will to caring for it like a baby” (Christensen & Butler 2010c). Fischer figures the shark as a baby here, in need of paternal protection. This symbolism ties in with the figurations of fatherhood mentioned above; however, Fischer’s statement reveals that violence undergirds this masculine role. What Hannah Hamad has labelled “protectorate fatherhood”, which she describes as “ideal masculinity in postfeminist […] culture” (2014: 65), may be extended to the more-than-human world in Expedition Great White, but its violent character highlights the undercurrent of domination that often underpins this role. Connected to the principle of domination that feeds into hegemonic masculinity, Fischer, in particular, repeatedly employs a discourse that “institutionalizes competition” (Connell 2017: 6). For example, when reminiscing about an expedition two years prior, he contends that they “were going out there to do something that had never been done on this scale” (Christensen & Butler 2010a). This rhetorical strategy takes its most extreme example toward the end of the first expedition to Guadalupe. After having caught, tagged, and released Keiko, whom Domeier estimates to weigh 4,000 pounds and whom Fischer describes as “the biggest [bleep; Fischer clearly says “fuckin’”] white shark ever caught” (Christensen & Butler 2010d), they hook another shark whom they believe to be even bigger. Excitedly, Fischer announces, “We’re gonna catch the biggest fish of all time right after we just got the biggest fish of all time” (Christensen & Butler 2010d). Indeed, she measures just over five metres in length and “help[s] set [a] team record[…] for size and girth” (Christensen & Butler 3 There is another potentially queer dimension whose exploration would lead this essay into a very different direction: Domeier’s and Fischer’s fascination with shark sperm and how a group of (primarily) men studies shark reproduction while the topic of human reproduction is largely ignored (except for the reference to McBride’s daughter for a few moments in the fifth episode). In episode seven, Domeier even points out that “being a male”, taking sperm samples “is a bit of an awkward situation” (Christensen & Butler 2010f). Capturing the Shark 253 2010d). Studying and protecting sharks increasingly takes a back-seat not only to the experience of catching sharks but also to besting themselves by catching bigger and bigger sharks. Writing about Shark Week, Stephen Papson has remarked that since “[o]vert displays of domination are less acceptable” in an ecologically aware cultural environment, “the destruction of the predator” is transformed into “the experience of domination. […] Consequently, environmental, educational, scientific and aesthetic discourses serve as justification for the encounter” with the shark (1992: 74). Although Papson’s essay was published in the early 1990s, his observation applies to Expedition Great White, too. While the fishermen and scientists seem to care about the sharks, worried that “entangling [the sharks] in anchor lines or propellers could spell disaster” (Christensen & Butler 2010a), the longer one watches Expedition Great White, the more one begins to wonder whether the performances of care are guided by practical concerns. After all, the sharks need to survive in order to ensure the success of Domeier’s study; in addition, killing a shark would likely mean that they would not be able to obtain a permit in the future. That practical concerns guide the masculine care for sharks becomes most apparent when Domeier explains how the satellite trackers work. He first notes, “The best place to attach the tracking device is the dorsal fin. It probably has less blood flow, fewer nerves, and less sensitivity” (Christensen & Butler 2010a). One is tempted to read a causal connection here: the trackers are attached to the dorsal fins because the sharks may not feel pain there. However, several times over the course of the first season, Domeier, in fact, stresses that the main reason for placing the tracker on the dorsal fin is because it is “the highest point on the shark”, which ensures that “every time it breaks the surface, the tag will relay its position in real time” (Christensen & Butler 2010a). In addition, even if the choice of the dorsal fin were driven by considerations of the sharks’ well-being, the explanation that “from what we know of their nervous system, they can’t feel pain like humans feel pain” (Christensen & Butler 2010a) is rather simplistic. While elasmobranchs lack nociceptors, which are key to the experience of pain in humans and other primates, this criterion alone can only explain that sharks and other cartilaginous fish experience pain differently (see, for example, Rose 2016). To be sure, this article is not the place to review research on whether fish can feel pain, but I may refer to Matthias Michel, who has summed up the division among researchers, concluding that those who believe that fish can feel pain and those who don’t “will most likely never be able to convince each other” (2019: 2412). However, what is significant about Domeier’s casual remarks is the anthropocentrism on display - that drilling holes into the sharks’ dorsal fins is reasonable because sharks “can’t feel pain like humans” (and - implicitly - that it does not really matter because having the trackers attached to them is in the sharks’ best interest, as it should eventually lead to ensuring the species’ survival in a Michael Fuchs 254 human-dominated world). In this way, he does not even entertain the possibility that sharks may feel pain in a way that is categorically different from how humans feel pain. This anthropocentrism, in turn, reveals that human interests drive the entire project - “unravel[ling] the mysteries surrounding these vulnerable giants” (Christensen & Butler 2010a). Capturing the Shark At one point, Fischer explains the thought process unfolding during “the thrill of the hunt” (Christensen & Butler 2010e): “Do we have this shark subdued? Do we have control of it? ” (Christensen & Butler 2010c). The domination of the individual shark is the basis for studying sharks, reducing them to data and knowledge. The combination of these two dimensions echoes a process that Antoine Traisnel has identified to have taken place in the course of the nineteenth century, the development from “the hunt, which targets individual animals” to “capture[, which] attempts to seize something intangible, something presumably inherent to all animals” (2020: 2). “Rather than simply enabling their preservation and study”, Traisnel continues, “new aesthetic, scientific, and technological methods for pursuing live animals produced them as increasingly fleeting and endangered, making them all the more susceptible to new forms of biopolitical management” (2020: 2). “The regime of capture”, Traisnel explains, “privileges control over conquest” (2020: 4). Part of how the scientists in Expedition Great White gain control over the sharks is through photographs, which not only help identify individual sharks and draw conclusions about migration routes (among others), but also speak to how developments in (audio-)visual media have played a key role in “[p]rivileging knowledge gained through vision” (Traisnel 2020: 1). Although bloodless, the practice of taking photographs of sharks, to draw on Susan Sontag, “is to violate them” because photographing (and, consequently, documenting) them means “having knowledge of them they can never have” (2005: 10). To be sure, Sontag did not consider animals in her elaborations, but rather only humans. However, the implications about the predatory nature of taking photographs applies to nonhuman subjects as well. Indeed, as Brett Mills has provocatively put it, the question whether “animals assent to being filmed” (or photographed) is easily ignored (2010: 196). After all, “[t]o look at an animal - and to decide that humans have a right to look at animals because animals don’t have a right to privacy - is an act of empowerment, reinforcing the moral hierarchy which legitimizes the act in the first place” (2010: 199). In Expedition Great White, human moral superiority is supported by the notion underpinning the expeditions (and, arguably, the programme): ‘doing’ “real science, trying to solve the Capturing the Shark 255 puzzle of the white shark, figure out these multi-year, complicated migratory routes, figure out where they breed, where they feed, where they pup” (Christensen & Butler 2010b). However, Expedition Great White also more explicitly integrates the hunt into capture: catching great whites is not a bloodless endeavour. The wounds inflicted upon the sharks’ bodies by the hooks may be rather insignificant compared with the scars and gashing wounds from confrontations with other sharks, getting entangled in fishing lines, and other bloody encounters that many sharks bear; nevertheless, shark blood is a constant presence on the platform once the sharks are out of the water. The “thrill of the hunt” mentioned above, combined with expressions such as fighting the aquatic predator until “the shark surrenders” (Christensen & Butler 2010a) and “conquer[ing the] beast” (Christensen & Butler 2010c) highlight the conquest of the shark as part of the goal. This conquest is epitomised by the tracking devices, which scaffold human superiority over the nonhuman animal. Attaching these satellite trackers to sharks may be considered “utterly continuous with the technologies and dispositifs that are exercising a more and more finely tuned control over life” (Wolfe 2013: 96-97; italics in original); however, drawing on Donna Haraway, one may wonder whether the sharks are “just objects for the data-gathering subjects called people […], just ‘resistance’ or ‘raw material’ to the potency and action of intentional others” in this naturalcultural assemblage (2008: 262). Writing about Crittercam (i.e., video-cameras attached to animal bodies), Haraway concludes that “the hermeneutic agency of the animals is not voluntary, […] not intentional, not like that of coworking or companion animals” (2008: 262). The same may be said about the shark-tracker assemblages produced as part of Domeier’s study. Nevertheless, the sharks play an important role in data collection. Exploring tagged sharks’ digital lives on Twitter and websites and apps such as SharkTracker (run by OCEARCH, but launched a few years after Expedition Great White), Sean Morey explains that “[s]cientists certainly collect data from these sharks, but the sharks themselves now have a certain amount of digital agency in their data submission, even if they are unconscious of the fact” (2017). Similar to how human-technology assemblages endow humans with new abilities, “these sharks, to however small an extent, have abilities they otherwise would not” (Morey 2017). The shark’s dorsal fin, Morey continues, opens up a wormhole to another environment that [the shark] cannot see as she writes herself onto online maps and enters into new relationships with far removed environments that can nevertheless feedback into her environment, for good or ill, as new laws and scientific theories are written based on her own feedings. (2017) Michael Fuchs 256 The dependence on the sharks to break the surface repeatedly takes centre stage in Expedition Great White, as some sharks ‘ping’ instantly, while it takes others weeks to do so. Significantly, the tracker is not just an ‘innocent’ technology separate from the animals: it is the shark-tracker assemblage that allows Domeier to conduct his study. And, theoretically, the numerous shark-tracker assemblages roaming the oceans might help the sharks change their future - with the help of humans. To return to the very beginning of this essay, John Berger remarked that “animals are always the observed. […] They are the objects of our everextending knowledge. What we know about them is an index of our power” (2009: 27). Although Expedition Great White stresses that the ultimate goal of Domeier’s study is to protect sharks, this very idea exposes the underlying notion of being in control of the sharks’ lives. The techno-scientific tools employed in the series not only expose the ‘natural world’ as a human construct (because tagging the sharks transforms them into naturalcultural hybrids, among others) but also support the belief in human dominance over the natural world and, along with that, having power over sharks and their collective fate. However, some of these tools, in fact, subvert human control (at least to some extent) by endowing the techno-natural shark-tag assemblage with an agency outside of human command: the researchers not only depend on the technology to operate but also on the sharks’ swimming close to the surface. Even though related to a later OCEARCH expedition, this lack of control became apparent in spring 2022 when a Twitter user tracking the sharks’ movements noted that one shark’s route between the North American Basin and the Atlantic Coast resembled the sketch of a shark (Marie 2022). While most definitely involuntary on numerous layers and dependent on a human user to look at the route at the right moment before new pings would have changed the ‘picture’, the self-portrait (of sorts) interrogates the very idea whether knowledge of sharks can be gained through visual means and, in a second step, whether humans can ever truly understand shark behaviour. References Berger, John (2009). Why Look at Animals? [1977]. In: Why Look at Animals? London: Penguin. 12-37. Braudy, Leo (2005). From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity. New York: Vintage. Cermak, Iri (2021). Jumping the Shark: White Shark Representations in Great White Serial Killer Lives - The Fear and the (Pseudo-)Science. Journalism and Media 2. 584-604. Chris, Cynthia (2006). Watching Wildlife. Minneapolis: U of M Press. Capturing the Shark 257 Christensen, Rich & Michael Butler (dirs.). (2010a). First Bites. Expedition Great White. [TV Series]. Season 1, Episode 1. 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