Shark Week

Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest week of the year is upon us. 7 straight days of sharks-themed programming, that is Discovery Channel's "Shark Week." Sharp teeth, vicious attacks, immense power and virtually every type of shark you can imagine.

Last night a segment involved a photographer who was filming from a shark case, and the beast actually got IN THE SHARK CAGE WITH HIM. He somehow escaped out of a small door at the bottom, but for a few moments, the total occupants in the 8x8 cage were: two photographers, two video cameras, and one motherfucking angry great white shark.

Focus: Discuss the awesomeness of Shark Week. Your favorite shows. Coolest things you've seen.

Alt. Focus: Any personal experiences with sharks? Go swimming with them? Terrified of them? Would you be crazy enough to get into a shark cage and watch them?

 

All I know is that Jaws is one of the greatest movies ever. I would happily move to Amity Island even if there were sharks.

 

This is kind of on focus. Even though I think Shark Week's fucking sweet, I feel like I'm the only one that even knows about AMC's Mob Week, which isn't cooler, but arguably almost as cool. Kinda.

The Godfather trilogy, The Untouchables, Scarface, and Pulp Fiction (among others)? Sign me up.

 

Problem is, every second channel tends to run back to back marathons of Deep Blue Sea. I know we have DVR to help offset this shit, but for fuck sakes, does it need to be on loop?

 

I'm gonna get red-dotted like a mother fucker for this...but I cannot stand "Shark Week." Why would I give a shit about one big dumb animal that I *pray* I never come into contact with? One of my housemates is getting drunk and watching multiple hours of this shit everyday this week and I'd like to punch some sense into him. I'd rather see a week where they study gorillas, or cute ass seals that sometimes make their way onto the shark shows instead of some lame animal that could tear me apart. There are shittons of animals that could kill me, I'm not going to watch a week's worth of shows about them.

Also, mob week is infinitely better. I'm watching Godfather pt. 2 tomorrow, but not on AMC because I hate commercials. I'm breaking out the DVD.

 

I like sharks, and have gained a lot of respect for them with my time on the ocean. If you have ever watched the show Sharkmen on National Geographic Channel, they catch and tag great whites at a place 100 miles off the Baja California called Guadalupe Island. The long range sport fishing fleet out of San Diego has been fishing that island for years and refer to the white sharks as the tax man, as they collect their tax by eating 100 pound tuna that are caught in the area.
The last time I was there, we had 2 of them on us for a day, the larger one was 20 feet long lurked 100 yards from us and the one that stayed 5 feet from the boat was 14 feet long, that shark just stayed right on the surface and would wait for one of us on the boat to get a fish within 30 feet and then she would eat it in one bite, leaving only the head. The shark would get bored and swim off for an hour then come back. Those sharks are pretty smart, if you drop an anchor around that island you will have visitors and if they want what you have, you will no longer have it.

This year I was fortunate enough to see 3 very large basking sharks(15 feet), they are basically filter feeders that swim with their mouth open and eat plankton, they are very docile and not a danger to anyone. In the wild in the area we were in it was a once in a lifetime sighting.

I have experienced my closest encounters with sharks in the Sea of Cortez, our 20 foot boat missed a whale shark by about 1 foot, which would have probably sunk our boat. We watched a very large mako shark and a bull sea lion size eachother up and take runs at eachother while on the surface. We were throwing fish at the mako to eat and it just wanted to swim around and look at us. Stayed on the surface with its dorsal out of the water for 5 minutes.

It is good for sharks to get some positive publicity, they are important to the ecosystem and are an apex predator that needs to be respected. From a fishery standpoint, with a reasonable amount of sharks taken via hook and line the population is sustainable and the meat is very good.

 

I was out with my brother in law on our jetskis about a year ago and I fell off and into the ocean about 5m away from a large (large enough) dorsal fin. I’m sure that I gave the shark a decent scare but I’m fairly confident in saying that it gave me a bigger one.

Also, when I was a teenager there was an awesome fishing spot that required us to swim 20-30m onto a rocky outcrop that we would fish from for the night and head back across in the morning. We would regularly see schools of fish being chased by large (3m+) sharks while fishing there and I never gave jumping into the water a second thought… When we go to whitehills fishing we often catch small sharks at night right where we have been swimming during the day.

All part of growing up in Australia I guess, there are sharks out there and if you spend enough time in the water you are bound to see some sooner or later.

 

On two occasions as a kid, I saw a salt water crocodile and a shark fighting over something. Presumably who was the badder mother-fucker. Seeing a dozen sharks rip through a school of bait fish though? That's fucking mind blowing. One one open water fishing trip as a kid, we watched about 30 sharks tear through a school of pilchard that was surrounding our boat to the extent of our field of vision. The ocean was fucking black as far as we could see with pilchard, and giant sharks ripping through them.

We pulled up lines and cut the motors and just watched. It was unbelievable.

I kind of don't get shark week. I like the Mythbuster's shark week episodes - but I mostly just got so much exposure to shark facts as a kid (the whole Australian thing) that it's not terribly interesting watching documentaries about them now.

 

The reason I will no longer go snorkeling/swimming in any water above my head without a floatation device is entirely because of one shark experience:

I was snorkeling off the coast of Hawaii, a little over 100 yards off the beach. Real cool spot, ton of fish, and also a shark that was circling around on the bottom. Not a big one, maybe 5-6 feet. But still, it was a fucking shark. And I was swimming in water I... realized... I had no substantial method for staying afloat.... FUCK!! Now salt water is ridiculously buoyant, but when you start to panic, like most rocks and anchors and other heavy things with little air in their lungs, you start to sink. Which is what happened to me.

So now I was in 30 ft of water, 100 yards off shore, with nothing to hold onto, a shark underneath me, and I was panicking and thus sinking. I made it back to the beach on sheer adrenaline, and swore never to fucking go back out there again.

So I didn't. And now I look like a sissy every time someone wants to go snorkeling and I'm like "no thanks, water makes me anxious."

 

You know, that's great and all, but the bottom line is that Jaws wants nothing more than to sink his teeth into my sweet, tender flesh, so I'm staying out of the ocean. And frankly I don't think I'll be flying into San Francisco anymore either:

 

I am a really good swimmer, and love being on boats etc. but my number 1 fear is sharks/crocodiles/shit that's in the water that can eat me. Mostly because of the idea of being in the water and getting dragged under and eaten. Fuck. I'd much rather get killed by a bear or something.

However, they're on my list of things to try eating.

 

I didn't get how awesome sharks were until I went snorkeling in a charming spot called ''Shark Bay'' in Thailand. Sure, sea turtles, sea snakes and funny-shaped and colored fish are nice to see, but sharks are on a whole other level. The way they move is hard to describe, it's like watching a living torpedo-missile-of-death, it's completely different from other sea creatures. It's just so... majestic.

I also don't get why people are so afraid of them. Sure, I'd be fucking cautious in waters with tiger sharks or great whites, but I've swam with 6-7 feet black tip reef sharks and they look pretty harmless.

 

huh?

 

I've been diving with sharks a bunch of times, even a feeding dive once, and they've never bothered me. I don't really like feeding dives much because it's really a pretty foolish risk and it screws with the natural order, but I had to do it once. You do, however, get a better feeling of how much speed and power a shark has watching them eat. Mostly they just cruise around and avoid people like any other fish. Barracuda are probably more of a danger most of the time because they're curious and like to bite shiny things like jewelry.

One time a curious white tip about 6 feet long swam up to me and bumped me with his nose a couple of times. That was pretty intimidating.

I've also snorkeled with a whale shark in the Sea of Cortez which was pretty amazing. Those guys are big.

 

Shark week? Meh.

Shark Night? in 3D!

 

People are afraid of them because of Jaws, and the fact that the media jizzes when they hear that there was a shark attack as it makes great news.

Count me in with the people who really don't like shark week. It used to focus more on the documentary aspect of, "this is the life cycle of the shark" "This is it in its habitat" "People are afraid of sharks, but really don't need to be"

The past couple of years, every time I turned on the Discovery Channel during shark week it was about nothing but shark attacks, and interviews with survivors, and the chum's friends. It went from something that actually helped the image of the shark to being reality tv snuff.

 

I participated in the "Mako Mania" shark tournament in NJ a few times. That's enough sharks for me.