'The Americas' BBC One Sunday 2nd March 18:45

‘The Americas’ is the latest landmark blue chip Natural History series produced by BBC Studios - it premiered on NBC in the USA on Sunday 23rd February and will be broadcast this Sunday 2nd March on BBC One in the UK.  Narrated by Tom Hanks, music by Hans Zimmer and featuring a number of world firsts, this 11-part series (which was filmed over five years and 180 expeditions) is set to be spectacular.

Watch on BBC One this Sunday 2nd March at 18:45 or catch up via BBC iPlayer
Mark filmed an underwater sequence for the series, which will feature in episode one ‘The Atlantic Coast’

In the summer of 2022, Mark filmed sand tiger sharks congregating off the North Carolina coast, in the 'Atlantic Graveyard', named because of all the shipwrecks dotted up and down the coastline. These wrecks, many of which are sunken vessels from World War II, have created an artificial habitat, perfect for these sharks and their prey.  With unnerving toothy smiles, sand tiger sharks are actually one of the most common shark found in aquariums around the world.

Mark spent the shoot diving with his rEvo rebreather, allowing him to sidle up next to and get close with these gentle giants, allowing for some lovely close up shots and behaviour. Adverse weather conditions during the camera team's stay meant the first 12 days of the shoot were spent on land, as the winds were too high, and seas too rough to venture out.  With the resulting reduced schedule, Mark had just four days in which to capture this sequence, so every minute of every dive counted.

“This incomparable project will employ revolutionary filmmaking technology that will showcase the wonders, secrets and fragilities of the Americas – Earth’s largest landmass and the only one to stretch between both poles – and reveal extraordinary, untold wildlife stories that deeply connect with millions around the world. ‘The Americas’ is executive produced by renowned Emmy and BAFTA Award-winning wildlife producer Mike Gunton (“Life,” “Planet Earth II,” and “Dynasties”) for BBC Studios Natural History Unit, the world’s largest production unit dedicated to wildlife filmmaking, in association with Universal Television Alternative Studio, a division of Universal Studio Group. ”
— BBC Media Centre

Production credits:
* Episode producer: Alex Griffiths
* Assistant Producer and shoot director: Chris Kidd
* Underwater DOP: Mark Sharman
* Rebreather buddy and underwater camera assistant: Toby Russell
* Scuba buddy: James Bell
* Topside assistant: Christopher Georgia
* Boat charter: Instigator Fishing & Diving Charters

The thumbnail photograph of a shark swimming through a shoal of fish is by photographer Tanya Griffen Houppermans, and provided an inspiration for the sequence. Tanya was Mark’s dive guide and buddy - showing him around the wrecks and sharks she knows well. 

'Secrets Of The Penguins' coming soon...

Three years in the making, 20 years after the Academy Award-winning March of the Penguins, ‘Secrets of the Penguins’ will tell a brand new, world-first story on the charismatic, plucky and sentient birds at the other end of the Earth. Using newly developed technology, world-class scientific research and unprecedented access, National Geographic will unlock the secrets of the species that make their home in surprising and challenging landscapes around the world.

The new series will be released on Disney+ and the National Geographic channel on Earth Day (22 April) 2025
More details to follow including Mark’s involvement in the series filming in Galapagos during May 2023.

Over three episodes, the series unlocks previously untold stories and revelatory behaviors from global penguin societies, quick to feel love, hate or fear. Antarctica’s strong, powerful but sensitive emperors battle to survive on the dangerous front line of climate change. The street-smart African and little blue penguins live in cities, deserts and beyond, relying on tenacious and “talkative” adolescents to forge new paths into the unknown. Powerful modern themes emerge among the macaronis and chinstraps of wild South Georgia, from strong female leadership to diversity, crime and extreme bravery. Their moving narratives will astonish and inspire, showing penguins to be more like us than we ever realized before.

“In the Secrets series we try to forge an even more intimate and emotional connection with nature – to illuminate how these amazing creatures think, how they feel, how they communicate, how they function as complex societies and cultures”
— James Cameron

'Our Living World' Netflix

From the Emmy Award-winning team behind Our Great National Parks comes a revealing look at the secret network of connections that unites us all and sustains our planet’s most magical phenomenon: life itself. Narrated by Academy Award-winner Cate Blanchett, this docuseries spans the globe to showcase the extraordinary creatures and ecosystems, great and small, that work together to help restore and sustain Our Living World.

The underwater footage below was filmed by Mark and features in the third episode of Netflix's new wildlife documentary series "Our Living World". Cocos Island, a volcanic island in the eastern tropical Pacific about 500 km southwest of mainland Costa Rica is a known haven for endangered hammerhead sharks, but scientists still aren't sure how and why so many sharks navigate across swathes of ocean to convene there every year. Watch hammerhead sharks swim in 'cyclones' around ancient volcano below:

"We don't really know how these sharks are doing this," Ben Roy, the series producer of Our Living World, told Live Science. "We know that they've got sensors in their heads and we know that these sensors pick up on the magnetic signature of these cool volcanic rocks."

The island formed when lava erupted from an ancient underwater volcano and solidified, until it eventually rose 3,660 meters above the seabed.

The episode followed a young female hammerhead shark as she left her coastal nursery and travelled 300 miles across the Pacific Ocean to the volcanic oasis, where scientists think the sharks assemble to relax, socialize and find a mate. The female instinctively knew the way to Cocos Island thanks to electromagnetic signals emanating from hardened volcanic rocks on the island's slopes.