In Sharkland, you’ll learn why species that are normally found oceans apart converge in this one relatively small stretch of coastline, and you’ll be introduced to many of these unique animals, including the catsharks of the Agulhas Bank a 155-mile-wide stretch of shallow warm seas off the southeastern tip of the continent, Southern Africa’s richest fishing grounds. You’ll also explore nature’s most extreme sharks – the fastest, fiercest, smallest, and strongest – and discover the innovative adaptations that have made the Great White such an efficient killing machine.

To order a copy of Sharkland, please visit the Nature Shop.

Online content for Sharkland was originally posted May 2007.

Imagine standing on the bottom of the ocean and looking up into a glittering kelp forest alive with darting fish, or watching five-foot-long sharks and giant tuna whiz by at arm’s length, or being surrounded by elegant, lacy white jellyfish as they soar, pulsing, through the water. Visitors to the Monterey Bay Aquarium on the coast of Northern California experience all this… and more.

For more than 20 years, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has entertained, educated, and fascinated its nearly 2 million annual visitors with pioneering displays of realistic undersea environments. Now NATURE gives viewers a behind-the-scenes look at one of the world’s leading centers for marine research and conservation — a marvel of engineering and biology that, literally, captures Oceans in Glass.

To order a copy of Oceans in Glass: Behind the Scenes of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for Oceans in Glass was originally posted January 2006.

Some 300 miles off Costa Rica is Cocos Island, a tiny Pacific outpost that was once a favorite haunt of pirates. Cocos, a designated World Heritage Site, lies directly in the path of powerful ocean currents that often collide with the island, churning the waters into an undersea storm.

These swirling currents carry rich nutrients to a reef teeming with brilliantly colored marine life. Residents include moray eels, hawksbill turtles, leatherbass, bigeye jacks, red-lipped batfish, yellow barberfish, hogfish, and sea urchins, to name only a few.

The currents bring more than algae to this island paradise. They also summon an extraordinary abundance of sharks, providing a golden opportunity to observe some of the most surprising and baffling shark behavior ever captured on film. The volume and variety of sharks that visit Cocos on a regular basis is staggering, and includes huge numbers of silkies, hammerheads, black-tip reef sharks, white-tip reef sharks, silver-tip reef sharks, whale sharks, and their distant cousins, the marbled rays.

A team of expert and intrepid divers, led by renowned underwater film specialists Howard and Michele Hall, leads viewers into this ultimate domain of sharks.

To order a copy of Shark Mountain, please visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for Shark Mountain was originally posted November 2004.

NATURE lifts part of the veil of mystery shrouding some fascinating — and often fearsome — creatures in The Secret World of Sharks and Rays.

Sharks and their biological cousins, the rays, are among the highest-profile denizens of the deep, thanks to the popularity of books and films that have cast them in leading roles — as antagonist, not protagonist.

But despite such worldwide media glare, sharks and rays are among the least-understood creatures that inhabit the world’s oceans. It’s a paradox: a high public profile overshadowing a relatively low level of knowledge about these primordial fish, whose existence pre-dates the emergence of humans by some 400 million years.

To order a copy of The Secret World of Sharks and Rays, please visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for The Secret World of Sharks and Rays was originally posted March 2003.