Discovery's Shame

Here's the kind of thinking that comes from watching Discovery's Shark Week. Note: the author's attitude to sharks comes from Discovery Channel, and his resulting terror of sharks makes him strongly resist, and write about, how outrageous it is to try to save them from extinction. Government to spend money on sharks? by Justin Clarke June 29, 3:00 PM http://www.examiner.com/x-7564-SF-Libertarian-Examiner~y2009m6d29-Government-to-spend-money-on-sharks The house voted on a climate bill this weekend, so I thought I’d ramble o about conserving nature, and wasting money to do it as ineffectively as possible. I went to ocean beach (OB) on Saturday, hoping to sneak in a quick surf before my bartending shift started. Let me tell you friend, the sea looked angry; I opted to stay dry. Anyone who surfs at OB will tell you that it can get plenty creepy out there on the darker days. The six-mile stretch of beach means that it’s easy to find an uninhabited peak or two, and even easier to...

Discovery Communications has twisted and warped the interviews of researchers on sharks since 1987 in order to present them as scary and dangerous, while pretending to be telling the scientific truth. They themselves laughingly call it "shark porn." Now we are in the Year of the Shark and once again Discovery will make millions of dollars by casting sharks as monsters in Shark Week 2009. The new titles are: BLOOD IN THE WATER (focuses on shark attacks) DAY OF THE SHARK (focuses on shark attacks) DEADLY WATERS (focuses on shark attacks) GREAT WHITE APPETITE (focuses on the most frightening shark species) SHARKBITE SUMMER (focuses on shark attacks) As the large species of sharks approach extinction, Discovery's deliberate misrepresentation of them to encourage people to hate and fear them, is a crime against life. All efforts to reason with those responsible have failed, (see below) so the members of The Shark Group felt obliged to go to the next level of protest. We wrote ...

We, the organizations, researchers, and divers who foresee the imminent extinction of the large shark species, demand a stop to Discovery Communication's dishonest use of sharks for profit. Since 1987, Discovery Channel has annually presented 'Shark Week.' This week-long series of programs featuring sharks claims to present facts about sharks, and its popularity has earned the company billions of dollars. Discovery Channel is owned by Discovery Communications, which claims to be “dedicated to upholding the highest standards of professional and ethical conduct.” Discovery's scientific credibility and reputation has resulted in the wide-spread belief in the truth of the shows televised on Shark Week. In reality, Discovery uses sharks for the horror-show effect that draws a wide audience. Shark Week dramatizes shark attacks, blood and the animals' unusual dentition, to frighten viewers. Since no true sea monsters have been discovered, Discovery has cast sharks in that ...

Here's an excellent example of how Discovery twists and warps science to promote the idea that sharks are dangerous killers. To seriously compare the hunting strategies of any predator with that of an obsessive and murderous primate is absurd. From the perspective of an ethologist, for example, the observation that sharks know when they are visible and when they are hidden indicates self awareness. Discovery's interpretation couldn't be worse for sharks. If you have not yet signed our Manifesto regarding the wrong that Discovery is doing to sharks, please do so now: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Boycott-Shark-Week Great White Sharks Hunt Like Serial Killers Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News June 22, 2009 -- Sharks may only kill for food, but they share similar strategies with human serial killers: They lurk out of sight, stalking their victims. Sharks and human serial killers can both be tracked using geographic profiling, according to a new study that applied this in...

Since my posting resulted in much disagreement by those whose experience with sharks comes from watching television instead of sharks, this added explanation seemed necessary. I am not implying that sharks do not use their mouths and teeth. Indeed they do, since their mouths are their one part adapted for the manipulation of the solid fraction of their environment. They investigate objects by picking them up and feeling them with their mouths. My point is that they don't raise their heads and bite automatically in moments of aggression as terrestrial vertebrates generally do. Even people in extremis will bite; instinct takes over when survival is threatened. When my sharks got mad at me they didn't bite me--they slammed me. The late Arthur Myrberg, who was an ethologist, listed many shark species he had watched in nature, and he told me he had never seen sharks fighting. I never saw them fighting either. Further, they maintain little or no inter-animal distance. I have heard of...

As one of the few people who has conducted a long term ethological study of sharks, and the only one who went alone to watch them under a wide variety of circumstances, I have long acquaintance with the phenomenon of fear. Often it took all my psychological force to compose my mind in order to overcome it, when things went wrong, and I found myself in tossing waters opaque with blood, and solid with excited sharks, in an unexpected situation for which I was unprepared. For years, people told me, and I believed myself, that one day I would be bitten, and would bleed to death, or faint and drown, in consequence. Since I was alone, far from shore, often as night was falling, I could expect no one to save me. These circumstances enhanced what appeared to be an instinctive tendency to react with darkening consciousness and soaring terror to certain visual cues. Yet, no matter what happened, no shark bit me, time after time. Once I accidentally kicked one hard in the side--I didn...

June 13, 2009 Subject: International Boycott of Shark Week Programs Mr. John Hendricks, Founder and Chairman, Mr. David Zaslav, President & CEO, Dear Sirs, We, representing The Shark Group, wrote to you in July, 2007, with regards to the inauthentic material shown on Shark Week, portraying sharks as dangerous man-eaters. When your representatives contacted us, after what seemed to be a candid discussion of the problems involved, four of our people spent much time and money to travel to Silversprings, Maryland, to meet with them in your offices. While at the time it seemed that our points were understood, we have waited to see some results, and found that we were simply ignored. The new programs advertised for Shark Week 2009, make it very clear that you are continuing to use endangered marine animals to provide horror shows for profit, facilitating their mass slaughter with almost no public sympathy, nor protest. Indeed, Discovery Channel has so effectively convinced their millions...

(pictured above: Our representatives to the meeting with Discovery Communications. Left to right: David Ulloa, Paul Gasek, Steve Fox, Julie Anderson, Maris Kazmers) From: The International Shark Discussion List, SHARK -L http://raven.utc.edu/archives/shark-l.html July 18th, 2007 To the Discovery Network: Mr. John Hendricks, Founder & Chairman, and Mr. David Zaslav, President & CEO Members of our Internet shark discussion forum, SHARK-L, have been asked by your marketing representatives to help promote your famous Shark Week sequence. This letter, signed by list members and friends, is our formal response to the request from your grass roots agency, New Media Strategies, for our support of the programming. How can we support Discovery Channel when we are fighting for shark conservation, and its biggest obstacle is the monster image given to sharks by the media, including Shark Week programs? Further, some of us who have been directly involved in the production of your documenta...