‘Captain America’ star Anthony Mackie’s own superpower is swimming with sharks

When National Geographic approached Anthony Mackie with an opportunity to swim with sharks to kick off its SharkFest programming, it was an easy yes for the Marvel star who is the new Captain America.

The water, says Mackie, is a “safe space” where he “can just tune everybody and everything else out”.

Mackie has been a certified scuba diver for nearly two decades. “I’ve swam with some crazy stuff, and I’ve swam with sharks before. I just swam with Great Whites in South Africa. I did whale sharks in Mexico. I swam with a blue whale off the coast of Cape Town.”

For Shark Beach with Anthony Mackie, debuting Thursday, he wanted cameras to visit the waters near his home in New Orleans, where he is a regular boater and fisherman. An increase of sharks in the area are swarming boats and eating fishermen’s catches, leading to a greater risk of hungry sharks becoming aggressive. This points to a larger environmental issue that the ecosystem is off-kilter.

“If we eat all the fish, the sharks have nothing to eat,” said Mackie. “Sharks have babies in Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Catherine. When their babies come out, they’re full-grown pups. They’re three-foot sharks ... They’re not predators, but they also need a substantial food source.”

Mackie says he was in the water for about four hours and “it’s not that hard to find a multitude of sharks in the Atlantic Ocean.” Seeing the sharks up-close reminded him “how majestic and powerful they are, but also you just see how beautiful they are.” He was accompanied by marine biologist Jasmine Graham, whom Mackie says was his “security blanket” if it got too intense.

“Every time it would get to be too much, I would grab her. I’m like, ‘They’ve got to pick one. So if one of us getting eaten, it better be you,’” he laughed. “She really looked out for me and gave me a lot of information that really opened my eyes to the community that we’re in and explaining the sharks’ behaviour.”

Mackie, whose show will be followed soon by Discovery’s Shark Week programming, also hopes to highlight the effects of global climate change on the coastline of New Orleans where the sea level is rising at an accelerated rate. Global warming has both caused snow and ice to melt and it’s led to more storms that cause flooding. Also, activity from the oil and gas industry weakens the soil.