Jonathan travels to Bimini in the Bahamas to test a new camera system with Great Hammerhead sharks! Will the sharks show up?

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I’m testing the feasibility of using a special kind of camera called a RED to shoot a film for fulldome theaters, which are theaters with a hemispherical screen that make the audience feel immersed in the subject.

A good place for a test is nice clear water, so I have come down to West Palm Beach to board the Dolphin Dream, one of my favorite dive boats, run by one of my favorite captains—Captain Scotty.

Cameraman Todd has joined me and we also invited my friend Mauricio Handler, a cameraman for National Geographic who has volunteered to give us an introduction to the RED and let me learn on his camera system.

Once we reach the Bahamas and get anchored, the crew starts the process of chumming for sharks.

Hopefully all this chum will bring in the Hammerheads!

I suit up to have a look down below and see if any sharks are showing up for the party. Mauricio and Todd film me suiting up with the fisheye lens to see how it will look on the dome screen.

But things are looking up. A big nurse shark has come in. With its large entourage of remoras, the nurse shark works up the courage to come in close and snap up a delicious piece of fish.

Then, out in the hazy distance, a sharky shape! And it’s approaching!

A Great Hammerhead!

It circles around the bait box, looking for tasty treats. Great Hammerheads are notoriously shy, but this one managed to overcome its fear for a snack.

Seeing it up close, I now understand why they’re called “Great”. These sharks are much bigger than I imagined. They make scalloped hammerheads look like juveniles.

The hammer, otherwise known as the cephalofoil, is an arm’s length wide. And the dorsal fin is nearly as tall. Great indeed!

Soon I realize that there is more than one animal. Both are large females and this one has a bright yellow acoustic tag on it, likely from the nearby Bimini Field research station.

Great Hammerheads have a fierce reputation—for being shy. They are just not a species that is likely to bite a swimmer or a diver. It’s not just rare to see one in the wild, it’s actually pretty rare to even be able to get them close with bait. The only reason it works here in the Bahamas at this particular spot is because researchers have been doing it for years. The sharks are used to it and they have come to trust that divers mean them no harm.

Again, with no notice, one of the Hammerheads comes out of the distance. Her keen sense of smell tells her we have fish and she wants some. But when she gets close to our bright lights blinding her, she gets a little nervous and bolts away into the darkness.

Eventually she works up the nerve to come back in and tolerates our lights on her search for food.

At times she hugs the bottom, swaying her head back and forth like a metal detector, probably trying to pick up a whiff of fish on the sand.

Finally she finds a piece of bait, but she has a hard time eating it. Most dive operators use fish leftovers from fishermen as bait. There isn’t much meat on it and the bones get tangled in the shark’s teeth—so it’s actually really hard to eat.

I spend an hour with the Hammerheads and then its back to the boat. I’ll sleep well tonight.

Our expedition to the Bahamas to film sharks was a huge success. Not only did we see some amazing Great Hammerheads, but we used the experience to learn how to shoot with the RED camera and the fisheye lens for fulldome.

Practice with the hammerheads and subsequent screening in a fulldome theater showed me how to compose images for the dome.

Four months later, we used those skills and started production on our first fulldome film in collaboration with NASA.

We filmed at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston, where astronauts practice spacewalking. Then we followed the astronauts to Aquarius Reef base and filmed a NEEMO mission on the sea floor, testing equipment and techniques for exploring asteroids.

Space School was released in January of 2015. It’s about how astronauts train underwater for life and work in space. You can see it at your local planetarium or fulldome theater! It’s the closest experience to diving without actually getting wet!