Forrest Galante for ALIEN SHARKS: GHOSTS OF JAPAN

Forrest Galante in ALIEN SHARKS: GHOSTS OF JAPAN l Discovery

By Sarah Musnicky

"Shark Week" 2024 is nearing its end on Discovery, but that doesn't mean there isn't more to take in. Back for another "Alien Sharks" edition, wildlife biologist Forrest Galante journeys to Japan in pursuit of the elusive Japanese Angel Shark. Throughout the course of the episode, he and co-host Christine de Silva showcase Japan's amazing, diverse marine populations and more for viewers.

For "Shark Week," Creepy Kingdom's Sarah Musnicky chatted with Forrest Galante about his segment, ALIEN SHARKS: GHOSTS OF JAPAN. Throughout the course of their discussion, they touched upon what makes Japan so special for biodiversity, the amount of work that went into tracking down the Angel shark, and the challenges faced on the open sea of Japan in capturing the footage for the segment.

This time, you are off the coast of Japan in ALIEN SHARKS: GHOSTS OF JAPAN. While the focus of the episode was on finding the elusive and, dare I say, adorable Angel shark, we got a glimpse at the range of unique marine creatures that reside in Japan's waters as well. It's mentioned briefly, but I wanted to ask you what makes Japan's coast and its waters such a great place for this range of diversity in creatures.

Forrest Galante: Great question. Sarah, Japan is very unique in a couple of regards. Specifically, Suruga Bay, Japan, because it sits in a place where you get all this runoff from Mount Fuji, which is filled with nutrients, snowmelt, and river runoff. Then you have this massive amount of wind pushing along the shore. Then you have this incredibly deep continental shelf where there's upwelling, and so you have this mixing of all these nutrients and conditions.

It's actually a thing called the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, where it's just the right amount of disturbance to have the highest level of speciation and endemism anywhere in the world. So this perfect storm of conditions and nutrients and ocean situation makes so much speciation occur that you end up with more species of shark there than anywhere else on the planet because everything is just situated perfectly to allow these animals to evolve into unique species within the ecosystem.

You mentioned how many sharks there are. I was genuinely surprised that Japan's waters host one-third of the shark population or shark species.

Forrest Galante: Isn't that just a spectacular statistic? And it's so crazy to think that something like Shark Week, which has been dedicated to sharks for 35 years, doesn't frequent the place with a third of the world's known species of shark. That's not a dig at Shark Week, but I was thrilled to get the opportunity to go there and showcase this because it's underrepresented in the media, and quite frankly, it's underknown globally.

People don't think of Japan and think of, wow, this is some of the best shark diving on the planet. And when we got there, Sarah, we found out why, because it's freezing cold. It's turbulent. It's stormy. It's very difficult conditions, which we didn't really showcase in the show. It's very difficult conditions to actually see all those sharks there. So I'm thrilled that I can bring them to people in the comfort of their own living rooms.

Despite how diverse the sharks are, many are becoming increasingly endangered, like the Angel shark of this episode, where they're very difficult to find. The conditions are such that as their range gets progressively smaller, it's becoming harder to track. How has it made your job as a free diving conservationist more difficult?

Forrest Galante: Well, my specialty, Sarah, has been, and probably always will be, tracking down things that are really, really hard to find. From our earlier work, like Extinct or Alive on Animal Planet to many Shark Weeks to Discovery Channel shows, my speciality is really targeting these critically endangered/edge-of-extinction animals that are really, really hard to find. 

This Japan program has been six years in the making. We've been working on it for six years to track down where to find the Japanese Angel shark, what places to dive, how to search, and what the methodology is. That's why you see crazy things like underwater jetpacks in the show: We knew we had to cover a lot of ground, etc., so it's a highly stressful job. 

At the end of the day, if you said to me, Hey, Forrest, go to Tiger Beach and swim with Tiger sharks, like many other TV shows, I'd be like, great. I'll do it in two days. Instead, it takes us three to six weeks to make a program because we spend so much time searching for these creatures, but when we do, the reward is great. We get to help protect them, oftentimes, put conservation measures in place, share them with the world, and bring exposure to these animals.

I'm pretty sure very few people globally have ever heard of the Japanese Angel shark, and now there's going to be a show where millions of people get to see it. So it's a really rewarding feeling when you spend so much time tracking down something so rare and then feel like you're contributing to conserving it.

We've talked about technology before last year, right around the time of the submersible incident. One of the things that was included in a brief little clip was when you guys were working on assembling the deep sea tech. It was mentioned how just a speck of dust could ruin everything. What was it like using the technology, especially in those conditions that you mentioned, with the storm, with the stormy water temperatures, and all of that? 

Forrest Galante: I don't think most people can comprehend the hostility of the deep sea. It is freezing cold. There's so much crushing pressure that any one little minor flaw in any piece of technology or anything that goes down there and it completely ruins it. The hostility of the deep sea is unbelievable. And those bruvs, those baited, remote underwater video systems, they have the value of a car. They have an onboard computer smarter than the thing I'm talking to you on right now. They're an amazing piece of technology created by my co-host, Christine de Silva, and her company, and at the end of the day, it's still human error that if something goes wrong, that's the problem. 

Christine was kind of like, don't be such a jerk. Don't bring this up right now. But, like I said, one little grain of dust or sand in one of the seals, and the whole thing goes kaput. You have to be really focused, and when you're sitting on the back of a Japanese trawler in nine-foot seas with a 30-degree wind blowing 15 knots, it's really hard not to mess anything up. And I'm lucky that I have such a wonderful colleague, Christine, who is able to be so laser-focused on her area of expertise, which is those bruvs and that deep-sea technology. 

My area of expertise is just being a Loon, right? And jumping off the boat looking for sharks. Hers is focusing on this very scientific technology, and I think we complement each other really well, because a third of the species we captured on her cameras we wouldn't have gotten if it wasn't for those incredible pieces of tech.

And as you guys continue to look for deep sea creatures, the tech becomes sort of the star, in a sense.

Forrest Galante: There is no other way, right? We're not getting subs down there. And even if we did, you'd have a few hours at most in the depths; it's these pieces of technology that allow us a glimpse into this truly alien world down there.

Was there anything caught that we didn't see, or anything else you wish you could have included that we didn't get to see?

Forrest Galante: When we make these shows, and again, I produce them, so I'm there on the ground actually producing the whole thing. It's not just like I show up and host them. There's so much. We had crazy storms where we nearly sank a boat that didn't make the cut. We caught Birdbeak dogfish. We caught more Kitefins. We call all kinds of other animals and creatures, stingrays and cormorants diving underwater to feed, all kinds of stuff. 

But at the end of the day, we were there shooting for three weeks, which is really long for one of these programs. Most people are there for a week at most. We have to distill that down into 44 minutes that aren't just the most exciting 44 minutes but tell a proper story and let you experience the peaks and valleys of the emotional roller coaster that we went through to find the Japanese Angel shark. 

So, so much hits the cutting room floor, so much of becoming friends with the fishermen and eating sushi on the boat with them, and catching things that aren't sharks, that you know aren't going to make Shark Week, or just little moments that mean so much to us that last a lifetime in the memory bank, but will never make the show. It's hard to even say one thing, but there's so much that just goes into these, so much heart and soul and time, that has to get distilled down into 44 minutes.

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“Shark Week” kicked off on Sunday, July 7, 2024, at 8 PM ET/PT on Discovery Channel.

Check out Forrest Galante in ALIEN SHARKS: GHOSTS OF JAPAN, now playing on Max.