Sharks on TV: Shark Week, Hollywood Films and Media Reports
Shark Week is finally here, also known as Christmas for shark aficionados. If you can’t physically dive with sharks, tuning in to Discovery’s annual shark marathon is the next best thing to get your fix.
Sharks don’t get the attention they deserve for the other 51 weeks out of the year. The perils facing sharks - overfishing, finning, bycatch - are swept under the rug as the media chooses to instead focus on the rare shark bite. By the way, you’re more likely to be killed by a cow, lightning bolt, vending machine, power tool or court-ordered execution than by a shark.
Even so, sharks have faced years of backlash stemming from Hollywood movies and media reports that portray them as vicious, man-eating monsters. This is incredibly dangerous for a species that’s already on the brink of extinction. Sharks have been featured as A-List actors in more than 100 movies, and it’s time to start treating them as such.
If we want to save sharks, we need to change the way the public thinks about them. It’s a daunting task to undo the generations of damaging misrepresentation that have fueled the fear of sharks, and to replace fiction with a more realistic image.
We’re not saying to boycott “Jaws” (the book actually made our summer reading list) or any other shark movie. But when watching a film, we must differentiate between Hollywood and real life. “Jaws” was so successful and frightening because its plot and imagery hook into our primal fears – to be chased by a wild animal and to be grabbed by something lurking in the dark. But it’s simply a well-crafted piece of fiction and was never intended to teach us about sharks.
Shark Week, while not always entirely accurate, provides an uninterrupted opportunity for scientists, conservationists and explorers to educate the public about sharks and the issues they face. With that, let’s dive into Shark Week and remember the facts. Here’s what we’ll be tuning into this week:
FIN
Streams Tuesday, July 13 on Discovery+
Eli Roth, Joe Romiero and Lauren Romeiro will officially premiere “FIN” after years of collecting front-line footage and facing dangerous situations to expose the criminal activity driving the mass extinction of sharks.
“‘FIN’ is the scariest film I’ve ever made, and certainly the most dangerous, but I wanted to send a message of hope to end this needless massacre of sharks. They keep our oceans clean to produce half our oxygen, and they deserve our respect and deserve to be saved,” said Eli Roth.
Tiger Queen with Kinga Philipps
Airs Wednesday, July 14 on Discovery+
Join Shark Allies’ very own Kinga Philipps on a fascinating expedition to Turks and Caicos. The shark population here has a sizable concentration of female tiger sharks, leaving scientists wondering where all the males are hiding. Kinga joins Dr. Austin Gallagher to help solve this puzzling mystery.