Shark Week Eats Balls

So, I used to get all jacked-up about Shark Week, and I know I wasn’t alone. Tracy Morgan used to tell us, "Live every week like it's Shark Week," because it used to be something to look forward to for interesting stuff. Plus, sharks are a topic that have grabbed attention since Jaws hit the screen. Credit to the Discovery Channel or NatGeo or whatever-weak-content channel started the concept. They understood that people have a real visceral reaction to things that will eat them. As long as we're not strapped to a buoy with a ripe sirloin, it's cool stuff.

(There’s also a broader spin-off discussion here about how insulating the entire population from every potential threat or predator weakens the human species. Maybe a topic for another day – why we’d all be better off if doughy fat kids with peanut allergies who get knocked out first in dodge ball should be food.)

But back on topic.

I have two big gripes now with Shark Week.

First, like just about everyone else in the entertainment industry, these producers are stupid and they've become lazy over time. They're now just rerunning episodes of the past, over and over again. The last, solid, original content for Shark Week was Air Jaws – 3000-pound beasts flying through the air devouring cute little fur seals. Great stuff. Now, all we get are repeats from 2015-2020 Shark Weeks, with one or two originals offering a celebrity diving with sharks, but still telling us all the same things we’ve been hearing for the past 20+ years.

That’s my first issue - how Shark Week has evolved, and that's the big one. My other issue isn't new at all. It involves one bullshit science point that Shark Week has been feeding us from the very beginning. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I’ve ranted about this in some past thread.

Breeze through hundreds of sharkumentaries and you’ll see dozens of examples where some science nerd explains all about the shark's keen senses, nerve endings, instincts, adaptability and so on. Sharks are a “miracle of evolution,” they tell us. Almost bionic in their ability to “sense a drop of blood in a billion gallons of water," "sense a struggling fish from miles away," hunt in dark or murky water and blah blah blah. Then, in the same episode, some weak-minded fishologist will offer theoughts about why sharks attack humans and leap right into a theory that the reason white sharks occasionally snatch a surfer is because they mistake us for seals. The fuck they do! Half a billion years evolving on this planet, all those laser-sharp senses, and you're telling me a white shark can't distinguish its everyday-breakfast from an off-smelling dude in a neoprene suit paddling around on a polystyrene plank?!

And, no, that cutesy demonstration showing the silhouette of a person on a surfboard looks not one goddamn bit like a seal floating on the surface. Turn in your fish school diploma, you C-minus putz.

Or, better still, here's an idea -- prove it! Go drift around off the coast of the Outer-Cape on a surfboard until you can actually prove your half-assed theory one way or the other. Here’s me, calling you out on a Jets messageboard, so you know this is serious. Are sharks magnificent, instinctive creatures that have survived millions and millions of years and evolved with miraculous senses, or are they nature's near-sighted doofuses? Put up or shut up. Because I might not have my own fish lab, but I have a much more plausible theory for why white sharks will occasionally snatch up a human for lunch -- because they fucking can! And, frankly, because I’m pretty sure we’re delicious. Kinda the same reason why dogs lick their own junk, and it's not because they mistake it for ice cream.

That’s all. I said it, and I’m glad.