Surfer, spear-fisher and free-diver Riley Elliott and marine biologist, shark diver and underwater photographer Kori Burkhardt put themselves in harm's way in don't-try-this-at-home "Shark Week" 2026 special "Secrets of the Great White Kill", and Live Science is here with all the TV and streaming details.

It doesn't always go to plan, as this seal uprising and vengeful turtle demonstrate, but great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) are known for attacking prey from below with such frightening speed and power it can propel their enormous bodies clear out of the water and stun or even kill their prey upon impact.

However, closer inspection has revealed that they can be a little more subtle when the need arises

In "Secrets of the Great White Kill," Eliott and Burkhardt aim to capture and unpack the full range of great white hunting techniques, including one or two surprising methods, the nuances of which have never been fully appreciated before.

How to watch "Secrets of the Great White Kill" in the U.S.

"Secrets of the Great White Kill" airs on Discovery at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Friday, July 31.

If you don't have the Discovery channel on cable, it's available on a streaming basis from several cable alternatives. Best of all, many of the services offer a free trial to new customers.

YouTube TV usually costs $82.99 per month but comes with a free trial and $15 off each of your first five months.

The DirecTV MyEntertainment genre pack costs $42.99 per month after a 5-day free trial, and Hulu + Live TV costs $89.99 per month after a 3-day free trial.

Alternatively, the HBO Max streaming service starts at $10.99 per month.

Can you watch "Secrets of the Great White Kill" in the U.K.?

"Shark Week" programming typically airs on Discovery+ in the U.K. at a later date.

At the time of publication, plans for "Secrets of the Great White Kill" and the other 2026 specials are still firmly under wraps.

If you're currently in the U.K. for work or on vacation from the U.S., you can still catch "Secrets of the Great White Kill" by using a VPN, such as Surfshark.

Watch "Secrets of the Great White Kill" from anywhere

If you're travelling abroad you can access your usual streaming services from anywhere with a good VPN.

A VPN, or virtual private network, is a piece of internet security software that can alter your device's digital location, unlocking the geo-restrictions on most streaming platforms.

Our expert colleagues at TechRadar rate Surfshark as one of the best VPNs. Not only is it great for unblocking streaming services, it has top-level security features, a reasonable price tag and, right now, a big discount.

We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.

Whale sharks may be the biggest fish in the ocean, but their feeding habits have remained mysterious. Now, new camera footage from the backs of these gentle giants has captured them doing something scientists rarely get to see: hunting for food far below the surface.

The footage reveals that whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) spend far more time feeding underwater than scientists realized and that they use a surprising variety of foraging techniques that had never been documented before.

The videos show whale sharks filtering food while cruising through open water, gliding downward as they feed during dives, climbing back toward the surface with their mouths still open, and cruising just above the seafloor to feed. Slow, steady underwater feeding turned out to be one of the sharks' most common activities.

Philip Motta, a professor emeritus of biology at the University of South Florida who was not involved in the study, said the videos provide "very valuable" new information on the variability of whale shark feeding behaviors, which have been poorly documented to date.

Cameras reveal whale shark feeding

Before this study, whale sharks had been studied from boats, from planes and by divers swimming alongside them. But those methods shared a blind spot: They could only follow the sharks when they were near the surface.

Earlier research had hinted that whale sharks spend a lot of time feeding out of view, at varying depths. In a 2020 study, researchers estimated that whale sharks may forage at these depths for up to 20% of the day and feed at the surface for less than 1% of their time.

In the new study, scientists strapped cameras directly onto the whale sharks, offering a rare shark's-eye view beneath the waves.

They deployed camera tags on 10 whale sharks at Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia and gathered more than 22 hours of footage from the sharks' own perspective. They combined that footage with a review of 106 previously published studies to build the most comprehensive catalog of whale shark behavior to date. Ultimately, they cataloged 36 distinct behaviors ‪—‬ 12 were related to feeding, and of those, six had never been recorded before. The findings were published July 21 in the journal Marine Biology.

Whale sharks can grow to 60 feet (18 meters) in length. And yet, this enormous fish survives on tiny prey ‪—‬ like krill, fish eggs and plankton ‪—‬ in tropical waters that are notoriously poor in nutrients. The ability to switch between so many feeding techniques may help to explain the long-standing puzzle of how such a large species can survive in these nutrient-poor waters.

However, even with a shark's-eye view, the cameras captured only part of the story. Whale sharks are known to dive hundreds of feet below the surface, where sunlight disappears and conventional cameras can no longer record.

"The most important new discoveries could be what these gentle giants are doing when they perform really deep dives," Motta said.

Shark quiz: How much do you know about these iconic ocean superstars?

"Expedition X: Atomic Sharks" – a "Shark Week" 2026 special – sees biologist Phil Torres and "Expedition X" host Heather Amaro explore the islands' waters, including Troy's Coral Head, to establish if nuclear fallout could be behind reports of sharks displaying unusual and highly aggressive behaviors.

The U.S. military detonated 67 nuclear bombs at Bikini Atoll and Enewetak Atoll over 12 years from 1946 to 1958, which inflicted catastrophic and irreversible harm on the local populace and environment. Cancer rates among residents increased significantly, and local produce was rendered unfit for consumption.

Half a century later, however, the Marshall Islands became the site of the world's largest shark sanctuary.

How to watch "Expedition X: Atomic Sharks" in the U.S.

"Expedition X: Atomic Sharks" airs on Discovery at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Wednesday, July 29.

If you don't have the Discovery channel on cable, it's available on a streaming basis from several cable alternatives. Best of all, many of the services offer a free trial to new customers.

YouTube TV usually costs $82.99 per month but comes with a free trial and $15 off each of your first five months.

The DirecTV MyEntertainment genre pack costs $42.99 per month after a 5-day free trial, and Hulu + Live TV costs $89.99 per month after a 3-day free trial.

Alternatively, the HBO Max streaming service starts at $10.99 per month.

Can you watch "Expedition X: Atomic Sharks" in the U.K.?

"Shark Week" programming typically airs on Discovery+ in the U.K. at a later date.

At the time of publication, plans for "Expedition X: Atomic Sharks" and the other 2026 specials are still firmly under wraps.

If you're currently in the U.K. for work or on vacation from the U.S., you can still catch "Expedition X: Atomic Sharks" by using a VPN, such as Surfshark.

Watch "Expedition X: Atomic Sharks" from anywhere

If you're traveling abroad you can access your usual streaming services from anywhere with a good VPN.

A VPN, or virtual private network, is a piece of internet security software that can alter your device's digital location, unlocking the geo-restrictions on most streaming platforms.

Our expert colleagues at TechRadar rate Surfshark as one of the best VPNs. Not only is it great for unblocking streaming services, it has top-level security features, a reasonable price tag and, right now, a big discount.

We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.

"Demon cavefish" have been discovered lurking in caverns beneath a contaminated U.S. Army base in Alabama, a new study has found.

Biologists have named the pale, eyeless creatures Demogorgonichthys arcanus, after the monstrous Demogorgons from Netflix's "Stranger Things" and the underworld demon of Greek mythology from which the Demogorgon name derives. They are likely among the rarest fishes in the world.

The find came as a shock to scientists because the cavefish's home, Bobcat Cave, has been extensively studied in recent decades. The subterranean system is part of U.S. Army site Redstone Arsenal, which was historically a center for chemical weapons production. Bobcat Cave is regularly subject to water quality monitoring and part of efforts to save endangered Alabama Cave Shrimp (Palaemonias alabamae), which also call the cave home.

In a new study, published July 6 in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers described the cavefish find as a "discovery in plain sight." Study lead author Matthew Niemiller, who directs the cave biology lab at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, encountered the cavefish by chance during a routine survey of Bobcat Cave's largest chamber, known as the Shrimp Room, in early 2025.

"I slipped in the mud at the back of the Shrimp Room and fell into a deeper pool," Niemiller told Live Science in an email. "During my graceful plummet, I disturbed a cavefish and crayfish underneath a rock ledge."

Niemiller quickly snapped photos of the animals using an underwater camera before silt clouded his view of them. It wasn't until several days later, when he checked the photos, that he noticed the cavefish looked different from southern cavefish (Typhlichthys subterraneus), a known species within the cave.

"The new cavefish had a pronounced hump behind the head, a longer, flatter snout, and unbranched fin rays," Niemiller said. "We returned a few days later, before a storm system forecasted to dump several inches of rain moved into the area. On the next trip, we confirmed that nearly half of the cavefish we observed were this new species."

Niemiller studied the cavefish with colleagues at Auburn University, The University of Alabama and Mississippi State University, with students performing much of the lab work. Genetic analysis revealed that demon cavefish didn't fit within any known cavefish group. Notably, demon cavefish carry unique disabling mutations for rhodopsin, a light-sensitive protein that would otherwise support dim light vision. Niemiller noted that this mattered for two reasons.

"First, it's a great example of 'use it or lose it' at the molecular level," he said. "In total darkness, vision is useless, so natural selection stops maintaining the gene, and mutations simply accumulate. Second, and more importantly, the specific way this fish's rhodopsin is broken is different from how it's broken in the related cavefish it lives alongside. That's strong evidence they lost their vision independently."

Demon cavefish and southern cavefish seemingly losing the ability to see independently is an example of how evolution can lead different species to converge on the same physical characteristics when they're suitable for an environment.

The conditions in Bobcat Cave have likely been influenced by the history of the military base above it. Redstone Arsenal made various chemical weapons during World War II. At the end of the war, vast quantities of chemical munitions were buried at the site, along with chemical weapons from overseas, like British mustard gas and nerve agents and other toxic weapons recovered from Nazi Germany. The site is the subject of ongoing investigations, clean-ups and storage.

Researchers have found that the cave contains elevated levels of trace metals compared to what would normally be found in such a habitat. However, Niemiller noted that the restricted-access status of the military installation does limit disturbance in the cave.

A bigger concern for the demon cavefish is that surface water connects to the cave's groundwater, so the life in the cave is also exposed to runoff, sediment and contaminants linked to the nearby city of Huntsville. As demon cavefish are, as far as we know, restricted to a single cave, they are very vulnerable to extinction.

The researchers concluded that demon cavefish would meet the criteria for becoming a "critically endangered" species, under the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List — a framework for determining a species' conservation status. It's unknown how many demon cavefish live within the cave, and it's likely that many of them will be in places that are inaccessible to researchers.

"Like other cavefish, these animals probably spend much of their lives down in the water-filled aquifer below the cave, beyond where we can observe them, so any single survey is a snapshot, not a census," Niemiller said. "What we can say with some confidence is that it's known from just one cave system, it's rarely encountered, and by every measure we use, it qualifies as critically imperiled."

Fortunately for the cavefish, Bobcat Cave is already known for being a home for endangered Alabama Cave Shrimp. Since 1990, the cave has been a focus for water quality monitoring, shrimp surveys, and other biological investigations that should also help the newfound species.

"What protects the shrimp's water protects the fish's water too," Niemiller said.