SHARK WEEK: BULL SHARK DINNER BELL | ©2026 Discovery Channel

It is once again time for Discovery Channel’s SHARK WEEK, which this year runs from Sunday, July 26 through Saturday, August 1, with twenty new programs premiering on the network and thereafter available on Discovery’s streaming platforms.

Discovery Channel was so generous in providing interviews – four in all, with five individuals –  that it’s effectively Shark Week here at Assignment X as well.

Shark expert Paul de Gelder participates in three of this year’s SHARK WEEK documentaries: INVASION OF THE MEGA SHARKS, premiering Sunday, July 26, BULL SHARK DINNER BELL, premiering Monday, July 27, and ULTIMATE SHARK DIVE, premiering Thursday, July 30.

De Gelder is a veteran of the Australian military, spending five years in the Army Airborne Division and then becoming a Navy bomb disposal “clearance” diver for the next five years.

In 2009, on a Navy dive in Sydney Harbor, de Gelder was attacked by a bull shark and lost his right forearm and right calf. While some people would have turned their back on the ocean entirely after this, upon recovering, de Gelder  developed a fascination with all sharks and has become a passionate advocate for their protection.

Contrary to the implication of its title, gigantic Great Whites are not mounting an incursion. However, researchers are finding more and more sizable members of the species.

The biggest known Great White shark has been dubbed “Deep Blue,” a twenty-plus-foot female who has been the subject of several documentaries. Deep Blue makes her home in the Pacific Ocean between Mexico and Hawai’i.

But another Great White of almost equal size, a twenty-footer nicknamed “Big Rose,” has been spotted off the east coast of North America. Much of INVASION OF THE MEGA SHARKS involves the efforts of de Gelder, and a team that also includes Dr. Neil Hammerschlag, to locate Big Rose in the waters of Nova Scotia.

De Gelder explains the main reason that really massive sharks are not seen more often is that most don’t get a chance to live long enough to achieve their potential growth.

“It just means that they’ve reached a certain age, and they’ve had enough food to support that size. The problem is that, with the commercial fishing industry and illegal and the unregulated fishing industries, [the sharks are] just getting caught up in by-catch and getting killed before they can get to that size. Because we’re competing with them for the same food sources. So, unfortunately, we very rarely get to see sharks, especially Great Whites, at full size, at twenty feet and above.”

While all mammals – “Except for the platypus,” de Gelder reminds us – bear live young, and all birds lay eggs, some fish species lay eggs and others are live-bearers. This dichotomy applies to sharks as well.

SHARK WEEK: INVASION OF THE MEGA SHARKS | ©2026 Discovery

“Sharks like the nurse shark, the Port Jackson, the horn shark do lay eggs and attach them to rocky outcrops and seaweed and stuff. But sharks like the tiger shark, the bull shark, the Great White, they all give live birth. Different species do it different ways. There are some sharks like the grey nurse sharks where, inside the mother shark, the shark embryos, once they get to a certain size and develop, they’ll actually consume each other inside the womb. The strongest survives.”

Great Whites give live birth to litters of between two and ten “pups.” While no one has yet managed to document exactly where Great Whites are birthing their young, “With INVASION OF THE MEGA SHARKS, off the coast of Nova Scotia, we did discover one of the smallest Great White sharks that I’ve ever seen. Nothing has been fully decided on where these sharks are giving birth, [but] that’s a pretty clear indication that, somewhere in that area, Great White sharks are birthing.

“The smallest one I’ve seen is about three foot, and that was in Australia. So, there’s not just one Great White birthing place for the whole world. They’re going to be all over the place, because a lot of these sharks don’t migrate between different countries. They stay in the same country. They might even stay on the same coastline of the same country.”

De Gelder notes that, while he finds it “very intrusive,” scientists have managed to track where certain sharks are giving birth via in vitro implants. “Basically, they take a shark and they implant a tracking device into its uterus, through its female parts, and then, when that shark gives birth, it all comes out with all the babies, and then they can track it. I don’t think they’ve done it with a Great White yet.”

With many species of shark, including Great Whites, as they get larger, they prefer deeper water. “Because at that size,” de Gelder relates, “they have a different food source. Up until about eight to ten feet, the Great Whites are still hunting fish, rays, squid, things like that. But as they get bigger, they need a higher-density caloric diet. So, now they’re looking at sea lions, seals, dolphins. And so, they need to be in the areas where those larger species of animal are.”

But aren’t those larger animals more surface-bound, due to their need to breathe air directly?

“They are, and that’s why they have that certain technique of breaching, whereby they start deep, and you would have seen it on AIR JAWS, where they breach fully out of the water, using a surprise attack from underneath them.”

Then again, Great Whites also like to eat giant squid, which are dwellers of the deep. “There’s this place called the White Shark Café in the middle of the Pacific Ocean [between Baja, Mexico and Hawai’i]. These Great Whites are out into the middle of the ocean, and they were diving really deep and then coming back up, and [the researchers] couldn’t figure out what they were doing. And they’ve decided that they’re going down super-deep and hunting the squid in that area. And they’ll all go out there at the same time of year, hunt in the same area, and then they’ll go on their way off to their different grounds of either mating or pupping or whatever they’re doing.”

BULL SHARK DINNER BELL has apex predator specialist Rosie Moore joining de Gelder in an investigation of what bull sharks do and don’t like to eat. Without getting too spoilery, it seems like humans aren’t the sharks’ first choice. On the other hand, bull sharks have earned a reputation for being aggressive, so what causes them to bite people?

“It’s what we call an investigatory bite,” de Gelder says. “A lot of times, bull sharks are hunting in very murky water, be it a river, the ocean near the mouth of a river, or in the ocean after a heavy rainfall, after all the detritus is being swept into the ocean, that creates a murky environment where the bull sharks thrive at hunting. And they can’t see. So, the bull sharks aren’t eating people, but they are biting people. They come in, they give what’s called an investigatory bite, and then generally they let go when they realize it’s not food.”

Even though it’s not direct predation, the size and force of that investigatory bite can do considerable damage to a human on the receiving end, as de Gelder can attest. BULL SHARK DINNER BELL required him to get into the water with multiple bull sharks. Given his personal experience, does he feel any more apprehension working with bull sharks than he does with other shark species?

De Gelder nods emphatically, then laughs. “Absolutely. Bull sharks are my least favorite sharks to work with. We have a certain relationship, but I just don’t trust them at all.”

Besides making sure that the water is clear, so the bull sharks can see he’s not what they most want to eat, does de Gelder have added precautions – maybe someone else offscreen doing something to keep the sharks at a distance?

“No, there’s nothing like that. It’s just all up to me. I’ve been fortunate over the many years that I’ve been doing this to learn from the best in the world – the best scientists, the best shark experts, the best shark handlers – and so, I just absorb their knowledge like a sponge. And I’ve always been very good at replicating the things that I see. Never great sitting in a classroom trying to learn, but if I can see someone else doing it, I can usually copy what they do.

“And so, over the years, I’ve learned how to handle sharks when they approach me – where do I touch them, how do I push them away, how do I utilize my own body to keep myself safe from them, using fins, using poles, any manner of a thing like that. So, while I don’t trust [bull sharks], I do know how to manage them.”

While it is covered in minutes onscreen, there is a period of about an hour of real time when the company loses track of one of its members in the water, with the very real possibility that the person has been attacked. The fears of de Gelder and company are captured on camera. Is there an imperative for the cinematographers to keep rolling, no matter what?

“Yeah. You never put the camera down. Always shoot everything. And then later, they decide what they want to put in there. Not everything makes it into the shows. I had an experience in Nova Scotia for INVASION OF THE MEGA SHARKS where myself and my cameraman had to get out of that little homemade cage we had, but it wasn’t allowed to be put in the show, because we weren’t supposed to get out of the cage,” de Gelder laughs.

De Gelder is unabashed in his love for sharks. “They’re pretty amazing animals. They’re very special, and people just kind of throw them all into the same pot, and ‘sharks are dangerous. There are over five hundred different species of sharks, so what are we talking about here? Knowledge dispels fear. The more we learn about these animals, the less we have to fear from them. If we know where they are, we can stay away from them. Therefore, we both get to coexist. And that’s what the world’s supposed to be like.”

What else would de Gelder most like viewers to get out of his SHARK WEEK documentaries this year?

“I just want people to be safe. I want people to understand that, while sharks are dangerous, and the ocean is a dangerous, wild realm, we need to take the onus [of staying safe] upon ourselves. We have the wealth of the world’s knowledge in a few keystrokes, we’ve got the Internet, we can find out if there have been shark attacks in the area. Take some of that responsibility and stop pointing the finger at the sharks.”

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Article: Exclusive Interview: Shark expert Paul de Gelder on his new SHARK WEEK documentaries  INVASION OF THE MEGA SHARKS and BULL SHARK DINNER BELL

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