Shark Week 2017 Preview + PHELPS VS SHARK Live Blog

It’s July 23rd and Shark Week 2017 is officially here!  The mid-July timing feels weird as opposed to the muggy, end of summer break, August week my brain associates with Shark week but I’ll take it any time I can get it. Shark Week is about pure elasmobranch saturation of your brain for 7 straight days.  It’s convincing yourself you are a professional Marine Biologist by Tuesday night at 10pm and going “OOOO SHIT LOOK AT THAT” even when you’ve seen the same shot of a seal getting blown up like Reggie Bush by Sheldon Brown (or me getting blown up by Nate on Friday) 1000 times.

The tentpoles of this years week include the most obvious topic of conversation, our favorite Chronic loving gold medal collector, Michael Phelps facing off against… well a Great White Shark.  Carcharodon carcharias.  Bad Fish.  Now Nate covered this when it first came out, but details were still guarded and sparse.  A lot of people speculated that it wasn’t going to be all it was cracked up to be and some reports suggest that it may not.  Recent articles have reported that Phelps was “surrounded by 15 safety divers” and “requested a cage to ensure his safety”, and wears a monofin to increase his speed. I have a suspicion that not every detail of this may not be true but who knows.  If they are, other than a cultural vacation to South Africa, why not have him swim the “race” in a pool in Baltimore?  Another speculated rumor is that no sharks were present during the “race”… which makes me afraid this could end up as disappointing as we first feared, but that shouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

As Discovery has tried to stay modern during the changing social media age, Shark Week, much like the creatures it covers, has had to evolve.  I understand that they have to respect that the landscape of TV and social media but I think everyone feels naturally resistant to some of the  programming decisions that have resulted in Shark Week becoming fake Megalodon mockumentaries and now Michael Phelps swimming with a safety army around him.  We can sit here and just talk shit about the gimickization of a topic that seemingly has unlimited natural interest, but when you boil it down, Discovery has to compete in the clickbait universe. Things are declared old and outdated at the first sign of bad ratings or aging and never taken seriously again.  So if having Michael Phelps “race” one of the oceans fastest predators is necessary attention grabbing content that enables 17 very expensive hour long shark shows in one week, its a pretty fair price to pay.

Now that we’ve addressed that, there is no doubt we are all obviously rooting for Team Shark here.  This is the equivalent of Floyd and Conor in the sense that if Michael Phelps, no matter how many gimmicks, beats a Great White Shark, it may be all over for the ocean. That’s bad press and there may be no coming back from a credibility hit like that.

I mean if Phelps wins after making THIS promo!? That’s a wrap.

I’m very excited for the other shows premiering tonight.  Before the “race”, the opening show, “Great White Serial Killer Lives” follows the search for answers after two fatal shark attacks occur off of the same beach in California.  This one seems somewhat goofy as well because the notion has been dispelled time and time again that sharks do not target humans as prey. The idea of a “serial killer” shark that targets humans but only feeds every 2 years is straight up bananaland. However, once again I realize that talking about Shark Attacks puts asses in the seats.

Out of 489 known Shark Species, only 3 are accountable for double digit fatalities.  The last 3 fatalities in the United States occurred in 2015, 2013, and 2013 respectively and all in Hawaii by what were presumed to be Tiger Sharks.  Two of these attacks were while the victim was snorkeling and the other happened while the guy had his foot hanging off the side of a kayak.  Definitely awful and scary, but when you consider the MILLIONS of people swimming in the ocean between now and 2013, the threat is infinitesimal.  Simply extorting the .0001% chance of a getting eaten by a shark makes for a whole lot of speculating and inferring danger that takes time away from really learning about the animals.  But that’s where the night turns around!  After the dog and pony show ends and everyone is done going “I wish he would have actually swam next to one or something” the REAL Shark Week starts.

Paul De Gelder, who I interviewed on Thursday and will be releasing in the next few days, heads into some wild ass land in Northern Australia to check out an area where Sharks and Saltwater Crocs have been reported to fight over sea turtles… SIGN ME UP.

This is the type of shit I can’t get enough of.  Give me adventure,  give me rural Australia, give me a former Australian Navy Clearance Diver exploring two enormous apex predators fighting over food!  This is the type of adventure that we grew up watching on Wild Discovery on Friday nights.  And after that, the next show consists of diving into Volcanoes to investigate why they are such hotspots (spoiler – because of magnetic signatures that help sharks navigate the world and come together for mating events… nice) which again illicits the reaction – SIGN ME UP!  I can’t get enough of this shit!

The formula of an adventurous place, a mission, and not just Great Whites every single time is so simple and so much more attractive than the generic Great Whites are enormous and jump out of the water while eating Seals.  Let’s TEACH people about sharks and how diverse each individual species is!  There are hundreds of species that have never even appeared on Shark Week.  In 2017 where the underdog is now the favorite, maybe let us get involved with some Cookiecutter Sharks huh?  Maybe illuminate the life of the Greenland Shark which becomes sexually mature at 150 years old!!! Scientists used radiocarbon dating to determine the age of one Greenland Shark to be over 400 years old in 2016!  An animal living on this very same planet that was alive when The United States of America didn’t exist!  Jesus Christ!  Let me clarify that.  The scientists who conducted radiocarbon dating on the lens of the Shark’s eye estimated the date of its birth sometime in between 1501 and 1744!  Bill Shakespeare was born in 1564.  A creature swimming around without getting killed for 400 years is one of the most remarkable things I’ve heard of in my life.  How cool would a big budget Discovery Channel show on these creatures be.  My pants look like Robbie Fox’s just thinking about it.

In short, Happy Shark Week 2017!  I will be back to recap what you may have missed from each night and preview each night’s shows as well as drop a few interviews I did with the stars of Shark Week.

—-PHELPS VS SHARK LIVE BLOG HERE —-

“We need to measure their speeds because we can’t put the shark in a lane next to it”

That’s not encouraging for the “is he going to swim next to it” crowd.

First Commercial break. We’ve seen a lot of Michael Phelps swimming footage, a lot of cool drone shots, and a whole lot of excuse making. NO SHIT you can’t put a shark in the pool next to him. We didn’t say he was racing a shark, you did! What if instead of putting it in the pool we put Michael Phelps in God’s giant pool.

Also in a stunning take, Phelps is skeptical he will be able to beat the shark that swims 20 MPH faster than him.

This was a real sentence

Now we’re back to Phelps training in a pool and explaining how swimming in the ocean is different than swimming in a chlorinated swimming pool. The good news is people are talking about it.

Now it looks like they are giving the shark 36 seconds for 100 meters. As a member of #TeamShark I feel a screwjob coming in fast. If the shark was trying to get to 100 meters fastest it could burst longer than 1 second. Classic human trickery but hey that’s why we’re the ones making shows about them and not the other way around. Also, that was a cool lightning bolt graphic where his sharkskin suit bolted on, credit where its due.

THE SHARK WINS!

So Phelps ended up not swimming near a shark but he did swim in the ocean! Where there may have been sharks at some point! I said it in the preview and it stands the same… what is the difference between this and the simulation they showed earlier in the show?

Reactions

Now its time for real Shark Week with Shark vs. Croc. This is going to be 10 times more unreal than the fake race. However, how many people would be watching if it didn’t directly follow the Phelps race?