So this is a little American alligator.

It's not a crocodile.

Okay, here we go, here's a couple more.

In fact, one of 'em just flew.

Port Royal Sound is heaven to sharks and rays.

In fact, these waters have just an astounding diversity of different types of plants and animals, and sharks are a really good example of this.

About 20 species of non-bony fishes patrol these local creeks and rivers.

Most of our sharks are relatively small species, but many of the larger species use these waters as well as pupping grounds, venturing into the Broad River and others to have their young.

The closely related rays are pretty abundant here as well.

We have southern stingrays, Atlantic stingrays, butterfly rays, cownose rays, and even an occasional manta ray.

This is a species that gets 20 feet across sometimes.

Port Royal Sound has some characteristics that make it really different from other aquatic systems.

These characteristics include deep water, high salinity, high tidal amplitude -- in other words, great distance between high and low tide.

All these features allow certain offshore species a place to spawn safely.

We have high shark diversity for the very same reasons that we have great habitat for cobia, red drum, and tarpon.

Over the next few days, we're going to be visiting local waters in search of sharks and rays, some of the coolest animals on Earth.

Many shark species can be found right here in our creeks and rivers.

The salt marsh is a great place for a lot of the smaller species, so what we're going to do is see what we can catch.

Now, I have my fishing license on me, 'cause you have to have a fishing license, even if you're fishing off a dock, and I've got a simple rig here.

I am using a circle hook, and circle hooks are important because you're very unlikely to gut-hook a fish with a circle hook.

They usually get caught kind of in the corner of their mouth.

The other thing I did with these hooks is I smashed down the barbs, and sharks have very tough mouths, so this will make it much easier to get the hook out.

For bait I'm going to use some cut bait, some menhaden and some mullet.

Those are great shark baits.

And then one of the other things I'm going to do is put out a little basket of chum so that it can create a slick of scent that will go through the water column and it will attract any small sharks that are in the area.

So I'm rigged up, I'm ready to go, so we'll see what we catch.

Okay, I definitely have one, and I'm not sure what it is.

Boy, it's really running now.

This is a decent-size fish, whatever it is.

Looks like a shark.

You can see him, it's a bonnethead shark.

There we go.

Okay, he's getting kind of tired.

Okay, let me see if I can get a handle on him.

Kind of want to be real, real careful.

And I want to be careful with the shark as well as with myself.

Beautiful and gorgeous animal, and this is one of the species I was hoping to catch.

This is called a bonnethead shark, and it's a beautiful individual.

Really strong, and I want to be a little careful of his gills, and sharks are amazingly strong, so you have to be a little bit careful that, as I said, he doesn't hurt me, but also that I don't hurt him.

And look at that, nice hook here, and we ought to be able to pop this right out.

Easy.

Wow, what an animal.

These things are just absolutely gorgeous.

So the first thing you look at -- I'm tired from fighting the fish -- this is not a hammerhead but a bonnethead shark, and if you look at the shape of his head, it's got that beautiful bonnethead shape.

A hammerhead would have much wider -- you know, that head would stick out much, much wider, and it would be much more like the shape of a hammer.

They've got a great tail, very powerful tail for swimming.

They've got these big pectoral fins, and this helps them to sort of stabilize in the water, and then of course the dorsal fin, and when you see a shark moving through the water, a lot of times you'll see just that dorsal fin sticking up.

Tremendous teeth, and the ability to, you know, grab ahold of things and kill it or hold onto it.

A couple of other things about sharks.

Sharks have incredible sensory abilities, and they can pick things up through what are called the ampullae of Lorenzini, and those are right up in here, and those allow the shark to pick up all sorts of electrical signals and it helps them to locate animals in the water.

The skin is fabulous.

They have this sort of sandpapery skin, and look at the spots.

Their spots are characteristic of the bonnethead sharks.

This is an adult shark, it's as big as they get, so if you see a bonnethead this big, I mean, this is a good-sized one, for sure.

Of course, the hammerheads get much, much bigger.

Some of the hammerheads get ten, twelve feet long.

Bonnetheads are awesome.

I mean, they are really, really neat sharks, but remember, this is just one kind of shark that lives in these creeks and rivers.

We collected some really cool animals earlier today in a trawl.

Thought you guys might get a kick out of seeing them.

These are butterfly rays.

Actually, they're smooth butterfly rays.

And let me see if I can pick this guy up.

These things do not have a stinger on them.

They're very hard to handle.

But they are one of the coolest animals you will ever see.

Note its little, tiny tail, big wings.

I've heard these called bat rays, but butterfly ray is the best kind of name for it, and I can tell this is a smooth butterfly ray because he has these little tentacle things in his spiracles right here.

Also, he does not have a spine like other stingrays.

There's one called a spiny butterfly ray that gets much bigger than this that has a spine and a tail they can stick in you like other stingrays.

This is a baby, a very small one.

In fact, I'll bet this is young of the year.

Stingrays have live young, and this is one that I'm sure was just born very, very recently.

So we're going to let this little guy go right here.

It's a great spot.

He was caught really near here, but I'm just going to put him down in, let him swim off.

What we want to catch is a shark pup, so we've come down to this pier, and there's several people fishing along here, but we're hoping to catch something small.

Okay, we've got a little fish on, not exactly sure what it is.

Looks like a little sharpnose.

Yeah, this is a young sharpnose.

This is a pup, so this is probably last year's baby.

It doesn't look like it's from this year.

This is one that only gets three or four feet long as an adult, but, of course, we catch pups like hammerheads, like scalloped hammerheads, blacktips, and other species that get quite big, and sometimes reaching, you know, eight or ten feet long.

But you can see this guy is -- yeah, this is probably last year's baby, and you can see the white spots here.

So this area's really special, because it's a place where some of the bigger shark species can come in and have young, so they can come up into the sound here, drop their pups, and then move back offshore.

The little guys get a chance to feed here, there's plenty to eat, salinity's high enough where they can exist here, and then once they're big enough, they can move offshore.

Okay, it's kind of a long drop here, but we're going to just kind of drop him back off the pier, and I think he'll be just fine.

There he goes.

We're here at the Mobley Nature Center on Spring Island, and I just wanted to show you a couple things about sharks and fish.

In fact, what we want to do is differentiate between bony fish and sharks.

So this is your typical bony fish, it's a sea trout, and bony fish have a bony skeleton.

Sharks, like this mount right here, they have a cartilaginous skeleton, so it's made of cartilage, so that's one major difference.

Fish are covered with scales.

Sharks are covered with what are called dermal denticles, and these are kind of tooth-like scales.

They're very small, and that's why when you touch a shark, the body feels very, very rough.

Another thing is buoyancy.

Fish like this trout have swim bladders that they fill with air and they can go up and down in the water column that way.

Sharks use something very different.

Sharks use oils that are lighter than water, and they have a large liver with lots of oil in it, and that oil helps them to float.

Okay, before we go, I want to show you one more really neat thing that we have here at the Nature Center, and here he is.

This is a neat little fish.

It's called a remora, and remoras are bony fish, but remoras are often on the backs of sharks or rays.

In fact, this one came off of a blacktip shark, and when the blacktip shark was caught, the remora came up with him.

We were able to catch him with a dip net.

This is kind of a neat symbiotic relationship, because what happens is remoras stick to the back.

Their dorsal fin is modified in kind of a sucker sort of structure.

They stick to the shark and they go anywhere the shark goes, or where the ray goes, and they feed on any scraps left over from the feeding from the shark, and also, they probably feed on little pieces of skin, parasites, or even things like bacteria and stuff that they glean from the back of the sharks.

They protect it.

You know, we can catch some of the smaller species of sharks and rays right here in these creeks and rivers, but if we want to catch something big, we're going to have to get out into some deep water, and believe me, we're going to need a professional, so we've enlisted the services of Captain Michael Perry, and he's been fishing these waters for 16 years, and so he's going to take us out and see what we can find.

Well, thanks, Tony, I appreciate it.

We've got a great morning today.

We're going to run out in the middle of Port Royal Sound and fish some big baits on the bottom and see if we can get a nice fish for you to pull on today.

Sounds good.

Let's get out there and get started.

We're out in the middle of Port Royal Sound.

We're actually between Hilton Head and Beaufort, and so why did we pick this spot, Mike?

Tony, we've got a lot of live bottom.

We've got contoured changes out here and we're fishing an outgoing tide today.

We're right on the top of the high tide, the first quarter of the outgoing.

We've got about a knot of current.

It's perfect flow right now for a few sharks to be in here.

I see you've got some choice baits, so what are we using?

Well, today we've got Spanish mackerel, very fresh, I caught 'em yesterday afternoon, we've got ladyfish, which is a very popular shark bait, and then we've also got some menhaden that we caught earlier this morning.

Sometimes sharks are kind of like cats.

They're a little finicky sometimes, so we're going to try to find out what they like and then we'll rig all the baits up to see if we can get a big mouth for you.

Okay, good, I'm psyched.

-Good deal, man.

-To see what we're going to get.

Whoa!

This thing's taking some line out.

Wow!

God, these things are strong!

This is really something.

You can see he's just pulled out lots and lots of line.

Here we go again.

Oh, wow.

Let's see if I can get back some of that line.

He just took a lot of it.

It's just awesome, what lives out here.

I mean, one of the really cool things about fishing out here is you have no idea what's here.

I mean, there's just incredible things, huge things, obviously.

Whatever this is, it's big.

Look at this thing!

Oh, my gosh.

Wow!

This is about as big as stingrays get, at least this species.

Look at the size of this thing!

So this is -- looks -- it appears to be a Southern stingray.

That's what it looks like.

But this is, oh, probably a meter across, or better, maybe over a meter across, so probably about as big as they get.

You can see the big spiracles here.

Eyes mounted on the top of the head.

And this has a really impressive spine.

Let's see if we can get a look at it.

Just ama-- It looks like a little sword or something.

So bigger stingrays have got bigger spines, and you can see a little bit of the fleshy part of the tail there.

Wow, so this animal fought really well, because they can just stick to the bottom, stick in the sand, but this one came up to the surface, so we can get a good look at it.

We're going to slide this guy back in.

[Reeling] All right!

Neat animal.

So this is an Atlantic sharpnose shark.

These are beautiful sharks.

Look at the spots here.

They've got these -- oof!

They're really strong!

I mean, sharks are amazing for their size, just how strong they are, and they have a caudal fin, which is the tail fin.

They have an anal fin, which is right here.

These are pectoral fins, and, of course, the dorsal fin that we already talked about.

And the other thing you notice on this is these.

These are called ampullae of Lorenzini, and these are what a shark uses to pick up electrical signals.

And the other thing to notice is these right here.

These are called nares.

They're nostrils, basically, and what sharks like to do is they like to pull water into those nasal passages and analyze it, and it tells them that there's food around.

In this case, delicious mackerel.

So what these animals do is smell the bait, knew it was something good to eat using these nares or nasal passages, and then it hooked up on our rod.

This is a male shark, and I can tell because of these claspers.

And so sharks have internal fertilization.

Most bony fishes, it's external, but in the case of sharks, it's internal, so they actually mate internally and the male uses these claspers to inseminate the female.

This is an adult, so sharpnose don't get very big.

They grow to only three, three and a half feet long or so, so this one may have a little growing to do, but not too much more, surely.

Okay, let's get this little guy back in, but we want to make sure that he's fine, he's just, you know, just had a long fight, so we want to put him in the water and get a little bit of oxygen running through him.

Looks like he's just fine.

And get him back in the water.

Okay, now we've got something good on.

This is a bigger fish.

[Reeling] Ah, he's pulling a little bit better now.

I see the leader.

You can see him pulling the line back out.

You get him up pretty close and then he takes a bunch of line back out.

Oh, neat!

Look at this thing!

Yeah, so this is a little bigger shark.

And just look at it.

Sharks are notoriously hard to identify, and... After consulting the shark book and talking to some local experts, we came to a conclusion.

A finetooth shark.

And these things are spectacularly strong.

I'm surprised Michael's able to hang onto it.

But one of the things I'm going by is look how far back the dorsal fin is compared to these pectoral fins.

Also, this notch in the tail is diagnostic, and it doesn't have any black tips on the end of the fins, like blacktips and some of the other species.

This is probably an adult.

Beautiful fish.

What do you think this weighs?

I think around 20, 25 pounds, probably.

Yeah, so this is a pretty good-sized shark.

I mean, it fought really good.

I mean, think -- imagine a shark that's, you know, twice or three times this big.

I mean, the strength on these things is just absolutely unbelievable.

Okay, we want to get this guy back in, get him back in the water, and release him.

And there he goes.

Awesome animal.

Okay, while we're out here waiting for a bite, we can look at a couple of the other things that live out here, and this is a really neat little beast.

It's called Stomolophus meleagris, or a cannonball jellyfish, and you can see it looks like a little cannonball, and these things don't sting.

I mean, not to speak of.

It doesn't hurt at all to handle them.

And they get quite big.

They get as big as a cannonball.

And of course they're fed upon by spadefish and lots of other things.

A lot of times, if you look inside these, you can find a little crab, and here he is, a little Libinia crab, and these things live in these cannonball jellyfish, and pretty much every one you pick up is going to have one of these little crabs in it.

Really, really cool little jellyfish.

Very, very common out here in the sound.

I'm going to put this guy back in.

We'll let him just kind of float off.

[Reeling] See a leader.

Oh, yeah.

Nice.

This is a nice fish.

Yep.

This looks like a blacktip shark, an adult.

This is really a big, strong shark.

The state record was actually caught right near here.

So they get -- they get bigger than this, but look at the teeth on this animal.

I mean, spectacular teeth.

Blacktips are very athletic sharks.

You know, they'll jump and do all sorts of things when they're caught, and they provide just incredible angling opportunities around here.

I mean, they're really, really neat sharks.

If you look at 'em, it looks like a great white from this angle, doesn't it?

Really, really amazing animal.

So we want to get this guy back in so that we don't hurt him in any way.

Beautiful animal.

Well, that's what you call self-release.

We've got something good on.

[Reeling] Very good.

You can actually see he's pulling a lot of line out.

This is a big fish.

[Reeling] -Do you have to chase him?

-Yeah.

All right, so we're going to -- we're going to follow this one because he's taking too much line out.

I may lose him.

And he's off.

The point of that is there are some sharks out here that are certainly too big for this rig, and there are some very, very big sharks in this area.

Hammerheads and tiger sharks, some really, really big ones, and I think maybe that was one of them.

[Reeling] You on?

[Reeling] All right.

I'm putting a belt on.

Wow.

This is a strong fish for sure.

Boy, this is a much stronger reel.

Whoa!

It's a big fish.

It's a lemon shark, isn't it?

MICHAEL: Yeah, the double dorsal in the back.

TONY: Yeah, it's got that huge second dorsal fin.

Looks like a lemon shark.

Look at the remora swimming right next to him.

Look at the teeth on it.

Huge second dorsal fin.

How big -- how big is this shark?

MICHAEL: I'd say that's 150 pounds.

TONY: The circle hook did exactly what we wanted it to, right in the corner of the mouth, which is exactly what we're looking for.

What a beautiful animal this is.

Boy, they have huge, huge pectoral fins, too.

Look how big those pectoral fins are.

Those are great for stabilizing the shark when he's swimming.

We talked about the dorsal fin, and this guy has basically the first dorsal and the second dorsal are almost equal in size.

You can see the notch in the tail right here, in the caudal fin.

A lot of sharks have that.

It's definitely characteristic of lemons.

Yeah, don't -- No injuries, guys.

So this is obviously a formidable animal.

This animal, although it's very capable of doing a lot of damage, these sharks just don't mess with people very often, and in fact, they're very good for fishers and it's good that we have them around.

Since about 1860 or so, there's only been five unprovoked shark attacks in this county, and there have been zero fatalities.

So the fact of the matter is sharks just are not attacking people out here very often.

Okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and just cut the leader on this one.

He's got the hook pretty deep.

This hook will probably rust out, but we want to get as much of this leader as we can.

And there he goes.

So that was a great fishing trip, we saw a lot of neat things, and it is incredible what we have here.

One of the reasons that we have such a variety of fish, sharks and other fish, is because this area's still in really good shape.

We have good water quality, we have deep water, we have high salinity, high tidal amplitude, and all those things are a recipe for great fishing and great diversity of life around here.

Anyway, I'd like to thank Michael Perry.

That was awesome.

-It was.

-Remember what we did today, especially dealing with some of the bigger sharks.

You've got to know what you're doing, and that's why I got a professional like Michael to come with us today.

Anyway, thank you, obliged.

Appreciate it, buddy.

My pleasure.

And generally they have five gill slits.

One of the biggest challenges that we face is educating the public about sharks.

Working with schools and educators is an important first step to ensure that future generations realize how important the species really are.

You know, a lot of people might think that it's kind of a horror story to have so many shark and ray species around here, but in reality, it's probably a good thing.

We need to do all we can to protect this ecosystem.

Now, with sharks, we can't protect them all their lives because they're only here part of the year, but we can do a pretty good job of protecting them while they're in our waters.

Thank you for joining us on "Coastal Kingdom."