Barricade former Showcase Pro Wrestling Champion featured on Shark Week Tonight starting at 9pm on Discovery Channel and Capenews.net article A local father and son spent four weeks with a film crew last summer working with great white sharks off the coast of Chatham for a television program that will be featured during the Discovery Channel’s upcoming Shark Week. The one-hour program is called “Return of Jaws” and is set to air Monday at 9 PM. It will include the first-ever footage of a great white filmed using cameras on a robot submarine, which followed a transponder that the team attached to the 18-foot shark using a specially designed harpoon. “If was four weeks’ worth of work, five hours’ worth of footage shot with the shark cam, and they were able to edit it down to a 42-minute show,” said Nicholas W. Chaprales of Sagamore, who piloted the boat during the project. His father, William C. Chaprales of Marstons Mills, did the harpooning. The father and son team work together as commercial fishermen. Based out of the Sandwich Marina, they lobster, harpoon giant bluefin tuna, and during the winter, fish for cod and haddock. In 2009, they began working with the state Division of Marine Fisheries and its leading shark expert, Gregory Skomal, tagging great whites. The Chapraleses operate this aspect of their business under the name Cape Cod Shark Hunters. That first year, Cape Cod Shark Hunters tagged five great whites with special satellite “pop-up” tags that were programmed to release from the shark during the winter. When each one released, it popped to the ocean surface and transmitted the wealth of information it had gathered, including where the shark had traveled, how deep it had gone, and what the temperature of the water was. Four of the satellite tags popped up off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida. The fifth one malfunctioned. In 2010, they started using new tags that allowed scientists to track the animals in real time. The elder Mr. Chaprales, who goes by the name Billy, is 61 years old. He has been a commercial fisherman for 40 years and has been tagging great fish, including blue fin tuna, since the early 1970s. “It’s about conservation,” he said. “We need to understand these fish so we can manage the fishery better. Any commercial fisherman who is in it for the long haul believes in conservation. I want to support the fishery so it will be here for the future—for my son. To do that, you need good science. Without good science, it’s just guesswork.” As part of the tagging process, Billy designed a special harpoon tip. While a standard harpoon is designed to penetrate deeply and kill quickly, the new tagging harpoon has a rubber stopper that allows the tip to only penetrate a few inches into the animal. “It’s like you going into the doctors for a shot. That’s it,” Billy said. Niko, as the younger Mr. Chaprales prefers to be called, is 26. A 2004 graduate of Sturgis Charter Public School, he has been fishing and tagging with his father full time for 10 years. He said that when it comes to fisherman, everyone seems to be an expert on fish behavior. “They just know it all. Where the fish go, where they don’t go, what they do,” he said with a laugh. “But how do they know it? Is it just their gut? My dad is doing the work to piece together the real story.” Although the Cape Cod Shark Hunters’ work benefits the fish themselves and the Atlantic fishing industry as a whole, their work is not funded by the state or federal government. “We are partners and we have their permits, but it’s not their money,” Billy said. “We need to raise our own money to pay for the tagging. This is funded all through private donations and charters. The state give us the tags but that’s about it.” A nonprofit organization has just been founded to help with this fundraising. It is called the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy. “Return of Jaws” will not be the Cape Cod Shark Hunters’ maiden voyage into Shark Week waters on the Discovery Channel. In 2011, they were part of a program called “Jaws Comes Home.” That year, they spent three weeks with the film crew, tagging sharks with Dr. Skomal. During that program, Niko piloted the boat near the shallows along Chatham’s coast as his father manned the harpooning “pulpit” that extends 20 feet off the bow of their boat. As with all their tagging trips, the boat was guided to the sharks with the help of George Breen of Falmouth, who circled overhead in his Piper Super Cub single-engine airplane, calling out directions over a specially encrypted radio that only the radio on the Chapraleses’ boat, Ezyduzit, can pick up. But the shooting of this year’s Shark Week show was vastly different from that first outing. That’s because the crew used cameras mounted on a robot submarine to do much of the filming. They called this piece of equipment the “shark cam.” “This was the first time anyone had tried to use one of these things to follow an animal in the wild,” Niko said. “It took some time to get it right.” At first, they had a hard time getting the transponder, which is big (about the size of a loaf of bread) and clunky, to stay on the shark. “It kept pulling free,” Niko said. They ended up having to use a different kind of harpoon dart, one with a slightly larger barb to hold it in place. Next, the shark cam was having trouble staying in contact with the transponder. “The shark would turn, and the submarine was slow to adjust course. Once, it ran into the shark. It also ran into the bottom,” Niko said. “The crew finally figured a way to boost the power so it could keep up.” Once all the glitches were fixed, Billy said the crew began capturing some stunning images of the shark. He said it was a thrill to see the shark free-swimming in its own environment. Both programs, “Jaws Comes Home” and “Return of Jaws,” are narrated by Mike Rowe, who won fame as the star of the Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs” and who also narrates “Deadliest Catch,” a program about Alaskan crab fishermen. Asked if they had a chance to meet Mr. Rowe, the Chapraleses said no. “All that narration happens after the footage is shot,” Niko said. But that might change on Monday. The Discovery Channel is flying the Cape Cod Shark Hunters out to Los Angeles, California, to take part in a live talk show called “Sharks After Dark” that will air at 11 PM. Mr. Rowe just might be on hand for the show. When he went into the commercial fishing business, Niko said he never would have dreamed he would end up on national television. “But I guess those guys on ‘Pawn Stars’ never would have guessed they’d be on TV either, running a pawnshop,” he said. Asked if they had ever felt their lives were in danger working with great whites, Niko was quick to say no. “No more than any other day on the water. Commercial fishing is dangerous work. Working with the sharks is no different than anything else.” He said probably the most dangerous work he and his father do is tuna harpooning, which involves an electrically-charged harpoon to kill the fish quickly. “If we hit a wave and I accidentally bump the button that send out the electrical charge while my dad is holding the harpoon, I could blow the eyes out of his head.” But Niko did admit that even after five years tagging great whites, he still gets an adrenaline rush every single time he first comes up on one of these sharks. Holding his fist over his heart, he said, “It’s like this thrill. You see that shark and think, ‘Man, that’s one bad-ass fish’.” Showcase Pro Wrestling 126 Main Street Woonsocket, Rhode Island Showcaseprowrestling
Posted on: Mon, 05 Aug 2013 15:05:05 +0000
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