Thanks to a new video from an underwater robot, we now have an up-close-and-personal view of a shark attack without actually having to be in the water.
According to the Boston Globe, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) shot the video using its REMUS "SharkCam" in Oct. 2013. The robot is meant to act like a helpless underwater victim of a shark attack.
WHOI shot the video off the coast of Mexico's Guadalupe Island, about 150 miles west of the Baja Peninsula. "Shark Week" starts on the Discovery Channel on Sunday, Aug. 10 at 8 p.m. ET and the WHOI's footage will debut Monday at 9 p.m.
Ahead of the show, here is a sneak peak of the footage.
"Hitchcock would have been very proud," Roger Stokey, a WHOI senior engineer, told the Globe.
Stokey said he was on the beach when the shark attacked the REMUS robot.
"We had a vague notion something was going on," he said. "We were absolutely dumbfounded. We thought it was a machine and the sharks would have had no interest. There are a lot of fish that size down there. Clearly they thought it was something good to eat.
"If this was a seal, it would have bled out. But they couldn't kill SharkCam. I do not understand how that vehicle survived."
The popularity of sharks has skyrocketed recently due in part to "Shark Week." For example, the Cape Cod town of Chatham is selling "Jaws"-themed memorabilia and their beaches actually attract Great White Sharks due to an increase in on of their favorite foods.
The REMUS SharkCam has apparently returned groundbreaking data and viewers will no doubt want to observe a shark attack without actually being in danger.
"Almost all of our observations of white sharks attacking anything occur at or near the surface," Greg Skomal, a scientist who has studied sharks for 30 years, told ABC News. "Here we have observations that are occurring down at 300 feet deep.
"That's never ever been seen before."
