Shark Week begins on Sunday on the Discovery Channel.
I was a big time fan beginning somewhere in middle school and continuing into college and beyond. But a funny thing happened; along the way I began to see sharks on dives, their blue sleek forms cutting smoothly through the water, then I started seeking shark dives, and before I knew it I had fallen head over heels for sharks.
I will never forget the look on my mom’s face when, after picking my up from the airport after a dive trip to the Cayman Islands, I told her that the best thing I had seen while diving was sharks. “Real sharks. Not the tiny nurse sharks of aquariums. Nurse sharks as big as my (14 year old) self, reef sharks only slightly smaller than me, and on one exciting occasion having to cut a dive short due to hammerhead activity in the area (though I didn’t see them).” That was not what she had wanted to hear.
Shark Week wears two faces.
The first, the exciting mask of shark attacks and blood. My younger self ate it up. Sharks were something to fear or so the Discovery Channel showed me. I remember a Shark Week once nearly full of shark attack reenactments and survivor interviews. The endless reel of shark attacks made it seem like shark attacks, and deaths, were a common occurrence; though my preteen self did over look the “June 8 1980”, and other such historical dates, that would momentarily pop up on screen, cataloging an expanse of time to simply fill up a 30 minute time slot.
The appeal of shark attacks faded as my interest in sharks grew. I found myself having arguments with the TV about how they were misrepresenting shark attacks, and shark behavior as a whole.
Signage on Muizenberg Beach, South Africa
The second part of Shark Week, the science and learning seems to have blossomed recently. Now it covers more than just the ampullae of Lorenzini and a sharks ability to detect blood from 3 miles away. MythBusters even did a whole episode on shark myths. Footage of great whites breaching out the water send home a message of power and awe rather than death and destruction.
This is where viewers are shown that sharks are integral to our oceans ecosystems and that human activity is SO MUCH more harmful to them than the small number of shark bites, let alone deaths, are to humanity as whole.
Looking at this year’s line-up there only appears to be a couple of banner shows that might fall into the first category and the descriptions make me wonder if they aren’t just click-bait titles for a more factual scientific discussion.
I know the shark attacks of shark week are not going to go away. Maybe it takes a few sensationalized shark attacks to get a larger audience to pay attention to the bigger issue; a top predator that has survived for over 400 million years is rapidly approaching extinction due to fishing and fear.
Signage at San Francisco’s Aquarium of the Bay
July is Shark Month
So yeah, I will be tuning in for Shark Week as I have for the past whatever many years but I am also going to participate by hosting my own Shark Month! Come back to hear about my adventures with sharks, without the hyped up shark attacks, throughout the month of July.
Are you a fan of Shark Week? What is your favorite part? Is there anything you’d like to see on Shark Week or as part of my Shark Month?
