nigel marven’s shark island

Coming soon to Five is another adventure for Nigel Marven, whose last outing saw him travel to the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia to track the resident penguins.

In this new series, Nigel heads to the real-life ‘Treasure Island’ –a spectacular atoll located off the coast of Costa Rica in the Eastern Pacific that inspired Stevenson’s classic novel. The island is so remote that pirate gold is thought to be still buried there; and so wild that Michael Crichton is thought to have written ‘Jurassic Park’ with it in mind.

This island holds another secret: its waters are home to more sharks than any other place on the planet and sometimes host huge gatherings of hammerheads. Over five days, Five’s intrepid naturalist is determined to find out the reason for these phenomena. He will try out the million-dollar miniature submarine ‘Deep See’; find himself in the middle of a real-life feeding frenzy; get into the centre of a hammerhead school; and decide to push his luck by seeking out the island’s rarest shark – the elusive ‘Prickly’. This shy creature lives far deeper than Nigel’s sub has dived before –more than 150 metres below the edge of Shark Island, at the very limits of safety. He also undertakes his most dangerous dive yet when he braves powerful ocean currents to swim with silky sharks offshore.

Will Nigel manage to unveil the secret of Shark Island and find out why there are greater concentrations of sharks here than anywhere else on the planet?