Croc Attack

This is what Erin and I had to go through as part of our latest television show which airs this weekend on Discovery Channel. The blue Avatar suits are to protect us from deadly box jellyfish while carrying a saltwater crocodile, which sounds more dangerous on paper than it actually was.

The show is called "Croc Attack" which, amazingly enough, has never actually been used as the title for a TV show about crocodiles before. For some reason which I can't quite put my finger on, it's airing as part of Shark Week. Hey, if you don't tell anyone, I won't either, ok?

It's on at 9pm ET/PT Saturday 7th August, 12am ET/PT Sunday 8th August and 6pm ET/PT Sunday 8th August.

If enough people watch the show, and I hope you all do, we'll get to do more! It's our quest to get a bit more science and interesting stories in crocodile documentaries, which you know is the right way to go. If you're on the fence about it, bear in mind it features Smaug at 1,000 frames per second. He looks great at that frame rate.

Award-winning crocodiles

It's always great when crocodiles win awards. When a natural history programme featuring crocodiles wins an award, you know the toothy ones had a fairly significant role to play in it. Especially when the programme in question is Life in Cold Blood: Armoured Giants which just won the Golden Panda at the recent Wildscreen awards held in Bristol, UK. I like to think that our saltwater crocodiles had a part to play in winning, of course, as they featured in perhaps the most spectacular sequence in the programme - cooperative feeding on fish, which was filmed here in northern Australia. Being the scientific advisor for the crocodile half of the programme, I was able to persuade the BBC to bring Sir David Attenborough out to work with us on this crocodile sequence, because I knew exactly how spectacular it would be to get David and the crocs in shot. Working with David for a whole week was an experience we will never forget. This is someone who was responsible for getting me into a life of wildlife in the first place, and I felt this was a way of paying him back in some tiny way.