Calgarians learn about speaking to sharks, stalking jaguars with Nat Geo host

National Geographic explorer and filmmaker Filipe DeAndrade has spent a lot of time with the world's top predators.

So much time, in fact, that he says he has learned to speak shark and decipher messages left in Jaguar scat.

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, DeAndrade immigrated at the age of fiveto Clevelandwhere he discovered a deep connection to the outdoors.

"Nature became my saviour, because I very much identified with wildlife," DeAndrade said.

"I just felt an attachment to these animals and spending time in nature, spending time outside. It gave me meaning in my life, and then I made it a dedication, to give a platform to the animals that I felt like other people weren't listening to."

Now he's a 10-time Emmy-Award-winning director of photography inNew York and the host of National Geographic's web series Untamed.

This week,DeAndrade will be sharing adventure stories on this week's production of Nat Geo Live: Backstage, an online series presented by Arts Commons in Calgary.

"A lot of people say that animals don't speak but I don't necessarily agree with that; I think that animals are speaking to us all the time," DeAndrade said.

"I think it's our jobit's up to usto interpret what they are saying."

DeAndrade was interviewed on The Homestretch this week, and explained how he reads and communicates with his subjects and why his life depends on it.

Speaking shark

"I love speaking shark, and it's something that I have to be able to do as a shark cinematographer and photographer for National Geographic," DeAndrade said.

"The No. 1thing to remember, when you are in the environment where you are sharing the same liquid space as an animal that has been on the planet for 450 million years, [and] that has outlived the dinosaur ... is that eye contact is everything."

Predators respect predators, DeAndrade said. They will treat prey like prey.

Maintaining eye-contact is critical, because it establishes that you are not afraid to share its environment, and that you belong alongside it.

"It's going to determine a certain level of respect," DeAndrade said.

Meanwhile, the shark's body does the talking. As a person inhabiting its space, it's his job to understand it.

"When a shark is swimming around with its pectoral fins outward, it means that it's in a calm state, it means that it doesn't mind you being around," DeAndrade said.

"As soon as it puts those pectoral fins down, pointing towards the core of the earth, that's when it's telling you it's swiping left on you being there."

Stalking jaguars

DeAndrade doesn't only speak shark.

When he is out of the water and in the jungle, DeAndrade has other ways of understanding animals. And it involves living like them.

"You have to think, you have to breathe, you have to eat, you have to sleep like the animal that you are stalking," DeAndrade said.

During production of his Nat Geo film Jaguar Beach, DeAndrade stealthily tracked jaguars across Central America.

No easy feat, DeAndrade said, as jaguars are as sneaky as they are deadly.

"The jaguar is one of the most notoriously difficult animals to document in the wild and its native tongue, 'jaguar,' means: 'That which can kill within a single bound,'" DeAndrade said.

"They are the ultimate ambush predators. They have the strongest bite per square inch of any other big cat in the world, and they're the third largest big cat in the world. So this thing is a very formidable predator."

Reading cat scat

The only way to stay ahead of a formidable predator like that, DeAndrade said, is to do as the jaguars do.

This means examining jaguar scat to determine what they are feeding on, where their territorial range is, and what their behavioural patterns are.

"When another Jaguar comes up [and] smells that scat, it knows which individual jaguar it is -- the age, the diet, and how far its territory roams," DeAndrade said.

"The researchers, the photographers, and filmmakers try to decipher it to give us clues into its movements, into its behavioural patterns ... Why? Because I need to think like the cat. I need to get ahead of it. I can't only be behind it."

For the TV show,Jaguar Beach Battle, the practice paid off.

In Costa Rica, tens of thousands of sea turtles flock to beaches to lay their eggs, DeAndrade said.

They were hunted on those beaches by jaguars, who waited in the nearby jungle.

"When we see things like broken pieces of carapace shell, [or] even beak, inside the scat, we know that that [jaguar] is coming out of the jungle, onto the beach, and dragging that 115-pound turtle back into the jungle and feasting on it," DeAndrade said.

"These are all clues, all secrets, into that animal's life that we need if we're going to tell its story."

Nature as a saviour

Telling those stories is important to DeAndrade and so important that he made heavy sacrifices to pursue his aspirations as a filmmaker.

To afford camera gear, for instance, DeAndrade initially opted to forgo an apartment -- and instead refurbished an ambulance as a camper that he used to travel the U.S. during the filming of the first season of Untamed.

"When you're a conservation storyteller and filmmaker, you're not exactly rolling in the dough," DeAndrade said.

"On the Instagram surface, it looks like we're living our best lives, and that we're glowing up. But the true nature of it is, you know, there's not much money in conservation, and you definitely don't do it for the money. You do it for the love and the passion of protecting wildlife and their natural spaces."

Today, as a lauded filmmaker for Nat Geo, DeAndrade said he has accomplished his "ultimate dream" in life.

But he isn't done. Goals beget goals.

Through a grant, DeAndrade is now focused on implementing education surrounding conservation in Costa Rica, where he currently lives, into the entire public school system.

"I believe that a lot of times we as conservationists are reacting to fires, right? We're always trying to put out the mess that we created," DeAndrade said.

"So with environmental education, and with education being the most powerful tool given to us in this world, we can prevent those fires."