“Shark Week” Again Brings Us Up Close To Toothy Predators


Thirty-five years ago this summer, the movie Jaws scared audiences out of the water with its thrilling — if unrealistic — portrayal of a shark terrorizing a tourist community.

Twenty-three years ago this summer, Discovery Channel began helping to undo some of the bad rap sharks got from Jaws by starting its annual Shark Week event. Over the years, the network’s varied shark-themed specials have walked that fine line between exciting (and maybe scaring) us with the harrowing spectacle of these ancient predators in action, and educating us about their reality.

Discovery continues this with Shark Week 2010, beginning Aug. 1. As with the story of Jaws, some of the most interesting specials during the week relate to what happens when sharks and humans happen to come in contact with each other, whether it’s through purposeful research or unfortunate attacks. This premise is evident in two of the week’s standout premiere specials.

Ultimate Air Jaws premieres Aug. 1. You may recall the previous specials Air Jaws and Air Jaws 2. This one is from the same team of shark expert Chris Fallows and filmmaker Jeff Kurr. Fortunately, their latest follow-up fares far better than any of the Jaws sequels in terms of drama and thrills, as Fallows tries to find out why great white sharks are coming close to a South African beach (with very rare attacks). Throughout the film, he seeks ways to get increasingly closer to the behemoths, from kayaking among them (there’s a tense scene where a curious shark mouths his paddle) to maneuvering a mini-sub in their midst. Finally, he lies on a self-designed “seal sled” pulled behind a boat, the sled itself dragging an artificial seal-like decoy, in order to glimpse what a shark’s seal prey might see at the last moment as the fish rockets up to the surface to grab it. Fallows does come away with some amazing footage of breaching white sharks that outdoes his previous documentaries, thanks to enhanced HD equipment that shoots in super-slow motion and offers incredible detail.


Shark Bite Beach premieres Aug. 3 and is another example of human/shark contact, in a more fearful circumstance. The program looks back to the summer of 2008, when multiple shark attacks — several fatal — involving great whites and bull sharks occurred along the coast of California and Mexico. There are intense re-creations of the events, and gripping eyewitness reports from attack survivors, and those who saw fatal attacks while also in the water with the victims. The special does not demonize the sharks, but tries to find out why such attacks suddenly occurred in areas where there historically had been very few, and even the survivors and witnesses realize that sharks come with the territory and are an inherent risk when they perform the water activities they love.

Also making debuts during Shark Week 2010 are the specials Into the Shark Bite (Aug. 1); Shark Attack Survival Guide (Aug. 2); Day of the Shark 3 (Aug. 2); and Best Bites (Aug. 4, a look back at moments from previous Shark Weeks). Again, it’s a solid lineup of programs that continue to help us understand sharks much better than we did during the summer of Jaws, even if these fish still have a power to unnerve our imagination.

Shark Week Online

Along with watching the premiere specials airing on the network, shark fans can also visit discovery.com/sharkweek for more. The site will include access to all-new videos highlighting shark footage, in addition to shark behavior quizzes, a countdown of the top 100 facts about sharks, a profile gallery of the world’s most well-known and weirdest sharks, latest shark news, how you can help those who are helping sharks, and new Shark Week-inspired games and interactives, including Shark Munch and Shark Anatomy.