Oh yes! it’s that time of year again. The summer is dredging on, autumn is approaching and the Discovery Channel features it’s famed Shark Week! .
To recap, last year the highlight was footage of those huge goliath great whites careening their bodies up out of the water in full view. Stealthy beasts that no one thought could jump, flailing out of that deep blue sea for a chance at a tastey dinner. So precise and menacing at the same time.
This year looks like we’ll see things like Robo-shark (a six foot animatronic shark equipped with camera’s and the whole nine) And Shark Roulette, and of course last nights premier. Anatomy of a shark bite. Which I loved!!!
Even before Peter Benchley popularized the Shark in Jaws, as a man killing machine, people have feared this razor toothed marauder!
So I’d like to open this thread to those who love, hate, fear those fierce predator’s of the sea. Sharks!
So stories, personal accounts, discussions on the series anything is fair game in this thread!
To be honest I was a little disappointed by this year’s Shark Week lineup. Anatomy of a Shark Bite was pretty neat; it seemed like the engineer guys had a good time figuring out how to build their mechanical sharks. That footage of the woman getting her leg bitten off was on last year’s Week, I think. Listening to her screams and those of the people watching is the most awful part about that video.
I can’t say I’m too thrilled about Shark Boat, or Diary of a Shark Man. I watched enough of Manny Puig in his Speedos when he was doing Extreme Contact. Robo Shark and Jaws of the Pacific sound like good stuff, though.
Absolutely brilliant TV ad for it this year. Loved it.
I only watched the “Anatomy of a Shark Bite,” but missed the other shows. The mechanical sharks were really neat-- it was fun watching the engineers figure out how to make the bites have the right amount of pressure behind them, and how to make the head-shakes happen. Neat stuff.
Question: If “Shark Week” ever jumps the shark, how would we be able to tell?
Barry
Well Godzilla - if they start talking about hampsters or weasels that’d be a good indicator. Otherwise I don’t know.
I liked the mechanical sharks as well.!!
I actually had a chance to swim with some sharks off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island. We were out on a large commerical ship stripped down and made into a salvage rig. We were out there this day for the express reason to swim with sharks from with-in a cage. Some of the people got a rare glimps of a large female great white. I only saw her back. But thee were plenty of good sized blues when I was in the water. As a matter of fact I wager a guess that most people never think of small sharks as being abundant out there. Mainly because it is only when they bite you or are large that they are noticed. But When I was in that cage with bars spaced 6 inches appart there were plenty small blue sharks coming in the cage that I’d bat away! It was fun stuff I’ll tell ya.
Regarding the girl on Anatomy of a Shark Bite: who else thinks she had nightmares just standing near the mechanical shark, trying to describe to the engineers what 300 pounds of pressure felt like? I would have been traumatized enough to a) never swim in an ocean again and b) never step foot inside the Shark Bite Lab… That whole scene was pretty much my worst nightmare. I think I was too young when Mom let me watch Jaws. (I was six. Bad idea.)
I worked out with a guy when I was in college who had one leg. His other leg looked like it needed a few more surgeries before it looked right. But anyway he caught me looking at it one day when I was spotting him. He said “Oh just ask!!”
So I said how’d that happen? Car wreck?
“12 foot Bull shark off the coast of Florida” he replied!
He said it happened so fast and he was in such shock, that he just swam with his arms till he hit sand, when two other surfers grabbed him and then he remembered waking up in the hospital a month later. He said he thinks about it every day. Several times a day.