Ragged Tooth

It’s a shark that can change up to 30 000 teeth in its life. Needle-like teeth which it learns to use while still in its mother’s womb to kill and eat its siblings. The ragged tooth shark is the only animal on Earth that is a cannibal before it is even born. Its fearsome appearance, makes the “raggie” a potential man eater, and in the 1960s the animals were hunted almost to extinction around the coastline of Australia.

But in Ragged Tooth,  a very different picture emerges as we follow this incredible shark on its biannual migration along the South African coast. Here, the raggie population is healthy and stable and the shark is protected. As the animals move north towards their winter breeding grounds, they cross paths with the annual Sardine Run, taking advantage of this bounty of easy prey to fatten up before the mating season begins in earnest.

After the chaos of the baitballs, the raggies travel on into calmer waters, eventually arriving at the limestone caves of the Aliwal Shoal. This area provides the ideal environment for mating and hundreds of sharks gather here every year. Our specialised camera crew ventures into the deep underwater caves at night to film dramatic mating behavior which has never before been observed in the wild.

This extraordinary behaviour ensures the new generation of raggies is well prepared to maintain the ragged-tooth shark’s position as one of the most successful predators in the ocean, a predator that plays a crucial role in the ecosystem of the South African coastline.