Discovery's Shame

My personal campaign to raise shark awareness began when the entire community of hundreds of sharks that I was studying, as animals and individuals, were finned for shark fin soup, and when I tried to get help in protecting them, I came up against the Shark Week mentality, the mentality that declares that sharks should be slaughtered to extinction. Yet sharks had turned out to be the most interesting and intelligent animals I had ever studied, so different from the way they are shown on Shark Week and other media extravaganzas, that it was hard to believe that they were the same animals I knew so well—sharks are simply not the dangerously stupid automatons that popular media will have us believe—they are not low, cold, and murderous monsters. They are ordinary animals, thinking about the events in their lives and responding intelligently. By their actions, sharks reveal that they are self-aware, form companionships, make swift decisions depending

In 2014, Discovery Channel again followed its tried and true formula of using sharks to generate millions of dollars, by presenting them as monsters just waiting to get their teeth into the viewers.  Discovery's angle seems to hinge on the fear people have of the unknown, and especially the unknown in the water where they swim. Shark Week has been so good at tweaking and magnifying this fear, that generations of viewers who grew up watching the show are afraid to go in the water. Yet, all over the world wild sharks are welcome visitors during shark dives. How is this possible, without the divers being torn apart? I asked divers to describe what they felt on finding themselves deep in the sea, surrounded by sharks, and they used similar words to describe their feelings. In every case, they spoke of being thrilled by the experience. Not frightened. Many expressed having a transcendent experience on meeting sharks for the first time, saying that nothing had prepared the

Shark Week in 2014 reveals the same old Discovery Network continuing to rake in a fortune by portraying sharks as the monsters of the human imagination. By convincing viewers that sharks are man eating killers just waiting to saw them apart, since 1987, the company has facilitated their mass slaughter, including in monster tournaments along the east coast of the US, with almost no public sympathy nor protest. And now, even non-fishermen can participate in the massacre by consuming the flesh of endangered shark species in American restaurants devoted to the Shark Week carnage. The sad outcome underlines how the Discovery Network has erected an impenetrable barrier to their protection, of which the larger species of sharks that are accessible to fishing, are threatened with imminent extinction. It is daunting to look out at the sheer power of destruction exercised by just this one corporation, in the results of its work. Reflection on the mega death it has caused jus

Since 1987, Discovery Channel, owned by Discovery Communications, has presented ' Shark Week ' each summer. The week long series of shows promotes these endangered marine animals as man eating monsters, facilitating their mass slaughter with almost no public sympathy, nor protest. The company has so effectively convinced their millions of viewers that sharks deserve to be hated, that many people think that sharks should be hunted to extinction. The company has created a wave of fear of the sea, in people who grew up watching Shark Week . Discovery executives know exactly what they are doing, and call it 'shark pornography,' while they rake in billions of dollars. They excuse themselves by claiming they are only giving the public what it wants, but the public's love of horror shows has nothing to do with Discovery's responsibility for having made sharks the subject of that horror. Through their dishonest use of sharks for profit in horror shows,

From: THE SHARK GROUP http://groups.google.com/group/The_Shark_Group?hl=en September 3, 2009 Open Letter to the Discovery Network Object: Shark Week 2009, Discovery's Tribute to The Year of the Shark Mr. John Hendricks, Founder & Chairman, Mr. David Zaslav, President & CEO Sirs, We, The Shark Group, wrote to you in June, about the nature of the new programs created for Shark Week 2009. We were concerned that you were focusing once more on sharks as dangerous man-eaters, thus misleading your viewers about their true nature, and facilitating their mass slaughter with almost no public sympathy, nor protest. Not only did we not receive a reply, but the programs themselves were worse than their titles and advertising. You have misread and discounted your viewers in presenting such an extreme shark horror show, with absurd special effects. The contrast with your conservation message was so blatant that it has lost you your credibility. The reports received predominantly reflect v

August 1, 2009, 9:43 am Shark Week, or Human Week? By Andrew C. Revkin http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/shark-week-or-human-week/?hp The Discovery Channel’s “ Shark Week” is here. There’s a decent amount of conservation info on the Web site and amid the saturation programming that’s otherwise focused on Carcharodon-style carnage. That may work as a kind of bait and switch, drawing eyes with fear and giving them data on environmental damage. (Here’s our review by Mike Hale.) But I know more than a few marine conservationists and biologists who would rather see a week-long special, call it “Human Week,” on how humans have devastated marine ecosystems, and in particular have devastated shark species. (More here on overfishing, and prospects for change.) Discovery’s Shark Week Web site asks, “What kind of shark are you?” Many biologists would ask, “What kind of species are we?”