It has been suggested that I write a piece to follow up on my multiple tirades against “Shark Week.” It’s been quite some time since I’ve felt the desire or had the time to write anything about anything, to be honest. I’ve tried over and over again to come up with an interesting angle to look at it from and dig my teeth into. Honestly? I don’t really have one! My original essay was the most quintessential “me” post, combining sharks, history, and criticism of capitalism in one post. My follow up just kind of reaffirmed that Discovery did not, in fact, care to improve “Shark Week” all that much.

I certainly have additional “takes.” For example, I do think “30 Rock” really helped push the quality of “Shark Week” down the drain. Nothing started with “30 Rock,” of course. Viewership in 2006 before the airing of the “Jack the Writer” episode premiered (in which the character of Tracy Jordan pulls out the line, “Live every week like it’s Shark Week”) was pretty good at about 27.4 million. Within just a couple years of that episode and everyone I know quoting that to me often, it’d grow to just north of 30 million (before coming down a bit in 2011 and just before Discovery’s infamous decision to run fake documentaries and its aftermath). It’s certainly true “Shark Week” has always been popular for the network – Shark Week had historically always boosted ratings for Discovery that week compared to the rest of the year – but it wasn’t quite the cultural touchstone that it was considered in the 2010s.

Re-visiting my pieces from the last few years (ok, ok, almost decade…don’t talk to me about time right now unless you want to talk about the almost 400 year old Greenland shark), I do recognize that I am maybe waxing poetic about the history of “Shark Week.” It does feel a little disingenuous to put Discovery on blast in 2018 for being way too celebrity focused while acting like they didn’t have Mark McGrath and Brian McKnight do dives in 1997. And it’s always merited its fair share of (absolutely legitimate) criticism, from too many specials centered on shark attacks to ad campaigns that involved comparing sharks to killer clowns and the Grim Reaper in 2004, which they pulled after a substantial amount of pushback.

And it’s always been pretty bad when it comes to program titles that invoke negative attitudes towards shark (think “monster,” “killer,” “man-eater,” “attack,” “deadly,” et cet. In 2022, a review of “Shark Week” trends showed that of the 272 programs that had aired on Discovery for its celebrated bloc of shark programming up to that point, almost 43% featured such negative terms in their title. As bad as it has been for the past 15+ years especially, that number is also high in part because it featured such programs as far back as its first year in 1988 (which I incorrectly cited as 1987 in my original piece, confusing “Shark Week’s” birth year with my own).

That said, it’s also true that the number of programs about shark attacks and utilizing this language in their titles has steadily increased. The aforementioned study does note that the majority of programs are not about shark attacks, though. It’s never been majority shark attack content. But that same review showed that during “Shark Week’s” first six years, only two programs were titled using negative words. (I count no fewer than ten in 2024.)

The last year in which there was a “Shark Week” with virtually no programs using negative words in their titles was 2000. Since then, it has consistently hovered around 50% of all “Shark Week” programs using negative terms in their titles. So while this has always been a part of the week, it has also gotten discernibly worse. (The ten negative titles in 2024 represents just a smidge under 50%, or 10 out of 21 programs.)

That study, by the way, is kind of absolutely fascinating (and infuriating). In it, they noted that of the 201 programs that they could access, they found about 37% were research-based programs, 16% were natural history-based, 15% shark bite-based and another 15% were “diving with sharks”-based (described in the study as, and I quote, “episodes with no purpose beyond people diving with sharks”). It is a bit wild that only about a third of “Shark Week” is dedicated to programs examining recent or ongoing shark research, and indeed by that point in 2022, they found only about 25% of the episodes were centered on research in more recent years. So the emphasis on depicting shark research is declining.

Making it worse: this study found that almost 23% of “experts” in a “Shark Week” program have no peer-reviewed publications.

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I’m going to say that again…

“Shark Week” has featured almost a quarter of “experts” with NO PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS!

Yes, I understand that they do often feature young people who are just entering the field, too. But the majority of those people (and honestly I would bet most of the people on 2024’s opening night bloc) are, again to quote the study, “not working professionally in science.” NOT WORKING PROFESSIONALLY IN SCIENCE! Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not working professionally in science and I want you to listen to what I have to say! Key difference here is that I am not being broadcast into millions of homes under the pretense that you should take what I’m saying as scientific fact or consensus. Discovery is not sending me out to do random “tests” to capture video footage of sharks for their most popular week. (I mean, if they wanted to, I can’t say I’d complain. Honestly? I’d obviously hire scientists, but if they gave me a chunk of money to produce a show, I could make something profoundly more interesting than “Belly of the Beast: Bigger and Bloodier.”)

This wildly inappropriate use of non-scientists for a documentary programming is a major factor to why misinformation is as much a part of “Shark Week” as episodes about shark attacks. Almost all of the criticisms throughout its history of inaccurate, incomplete, or straight up incorrect pieces of information are directed at statements made by the non-scientists. (When we do hear from scientists, they tend to be up to date on actual consensus and accurate in their presentation of data and information.)

The last bit of this study I want to call out is kind of the funniest to me. They found that of the 201 episodes at the time they could access and watch themselves, over 76% had a stated goal at the beginning of the episode. Not even 37% wound up even addressing those goals by the end of the episode. Almost 74% of all the episodes involved some degree of fear-mongering, which just seems wild for a series that had originally sought to assuage fears about sharks. Can’t think of anything more definitively counterproductive, then.

In 2024’s “Sydney Harbor: Shark Invasion,” they start off the program by noting that there’s been a spike in shark attacks. To be clear here, this was the narrator of the program. This wasn’t just some clip of local news making the claim. Now, there’s a number of issues to take with this. It’s not the first time (or even twentieth) a Discovery program has said something like that. A number of shows over the years have included such lines. There’s something to be said, though, about the fact that whenever they do make such a statement, they never follow it up with the actual number. These are reported shark attacks they’re discussing. By definition, we know exactly how many there have been. They’re reported; on the record. They never include that information because the numbers are so incredibly small that it removes any sense of drama. Even at their biggest jumps, it’s still small.

For example, “Shark Week” would probably describe 2021 in the United States as having a sharp spike in shark attacks. They might even be willing to tell you that it saw a 45% increase in shark attacks from 2020 to 2021! What they won’t do is tell you that that 45% increase means 14. There were 33 attacks reported in the US in 2020 and 47 in 2021. (And yet, 2020 was a deadlier year with three fatalities compared to one in 2021.) What they also won’t mention is that 47 attacks doesn’t even put 2021 in the Top 5 worst years for shark attacks in the US since 2012. According to Florida Museum’s tracking from 2012 to 2021, 2021 would rank as the seventh highest total number of attacks in that ten year span.

As of July 8, there have been 19 reported attacks in the US. (Got to appreciate that at least two of those are reported as “provoked.” Who is out there provoking sharks? Can you not?) (Yes, I know it was probably divers, fishermen, or perhaps even a scientist, but let me have this joke.) I think lately about the attacks off Texas, where a local FOX station casually said that unprovoked attacks increased in 2023. Granted the rest of the article does note that attacks are still rare; it is interesting to say that when 2023 saw 36 attacks to 2022’s 41. The only way you can argue shark attacks had “risen” is to look at it locally, which is fair! But even then, literally any bite would mean a “spike” in attacks off the coast of Texas. There was one attack reported in Texas in 2022 and zero in 2023.

(I am pretty fond of this map that shows all confirmed attacks in the US going back to 1837.)

All this is to say, when that “Shark Week” program starts by claiming there is a “spike” in shark attacks, they mean 15. There were 15 reported attacks in Australia in 2023. The five-year average of shark attacks in Australia is….also 15. While there will always be variances each year, one has to look at the bigger picture and prolonged trends. 15 attacks in a location that sees an average of 15 attacks is hardly worth sounding the alarms over. Similarly in the United States, one can generally anticipate 35 to 55 attacks. Alternatively, it’s worth keeping in mind what the hard numbers are. You might be alarmed to find out that in 2024, there is a 400% increase in shark attacks in Texas! You might not be as alarmed to find out that means there have been four attacks.

Often, there’s is this sense that it is worth it to toss a passing, “it’s still rare,” and think that’ll calm people. Discovery claimed that 2023 saw a “spike” in attacks, but failed to note specifically how many attacks have occurred. Even if it had technically increased locally off the coast of Sydney, it’s not even a dozen attacks in the year there. It’s confounding why news outlets report attacks in this manner, but we sort of expect them to be sensationalist and alarmist. It’s absolutely dumbfounding that Discovery does this routinely during “Shark Week.” It is incomplete information that ends up making people more afraid of swimming and water activities, and more afraid of sharks. In turn, there is concern this could actually make things worse for sharks!

We don’t even have to look outside Australia for this. Take this Washington Post article from 2014 about a rare fatal attack the prior year. The attack, noted in the second paragraph, was “part of an increase in shark attacks.” The governor of Western Australia called for the culling of sharks, proposing the killing of any shark that found remaining near popular beaches. For some reason, the Post does start by claiming an increase in attacks, but Australia saw a decrease in attacks in 2013, down to 10 from 14 the previous year. At least the Post does give us the actual numbers. Australia lacks the sheer number of attacks that the US sees, but often leads in fatalities. That sounds very scary, but at least the Post notes that the number of fatal attacks in Western Australia is 20 over the last 50 years. They’re in a panic over three fatal attacks over the course of a few years. (Globally, fatal attacks hovers near 20, but it is estimated that about 20 million sharks are killed each year by the fishing industry)

This is what I mean when I say that I genuinely think this type of reporting is actually going to hurt sharks. The way this all gets discussed and the reactions when an attack occurs (fatal or not), you’d think sharks pose the greatest threat to beach-goers. And yet, even encountering a shark is one of the rarest things that could even happen at the beach! Like take this article from Business Insider, where the headline describes the chances of being attacked by a shark as “surprisingly low.” Surprising to whom? The article points out that statistically, the odds of being attacked are 1 in 3.75 million. You are substantially more likely to get injured or killed in transit to the beach! In fact, bees, wasps, and snakes having higher yearly death tolls than sharks. The chances of being killed a shark are even greater than that, and the chances of even just encountering one is about the same or a tad lower.

So why does everyone act like they’re going to be attacked by a shark? Well, could it be that article after article, year after year, and Shark Week after Shark Week, we are bombarded with news and images of attacks and the victims, and this rhetoric about attacks being “on the rise”? (I’m not joking, it’s really hard to find an article about shark attacks without it saying that attacks are “on the rise,” even though they have been pretty stable for over a decade now.)

To be sure, it is always worth taking safety measures. I discussed the history of beach-going as a broadly popular leisure activity in my first piece, but basically the TL;DR version of that story is that the general public enjoying the beach and swimming in the ocean is comparatively new. More people were playing baseball before they could get a swimsuit and hop down to the beach. But as swimwear became more accessible and affordable, and access to bodies of water were less a thing for just the wealthy, more people started going. More people in the ocean, plus hopefully more sharks via decades of conservation policies, means there’s more a chance of these two species of beings meeting.

And yet it still barely happens! But it also does make sense that comparatively, the last couple decades have seen more of an increase than most of the previous century. For starters, water sports have boomed in popularity across the world, which doesn’t just bring more people to the ocean; it makes more people look like potential prey to certain sharks. And climate change will draw a lot of the more aggressive species in.

If it seems strange that Australia usually has more fatal attacks than the United States despite having only about half the total attacks annually, well there’s a few theories for that. For starters, Australia has large stretches of coastline that is not very densely populated. This means that there’s more space for lone swimmers or surfers, or just a few going out. Despite what Jaws might have conveyed, most sharks aren’t going to be too aggressive if there’s a lot of people around. Often they are attracted to people splashing, but out of curiosity. They mistake the splashing for wounded fish or seals, but will be more curious than aggressive if there’s a lot of it. So there is an element of safety in numbers. And while there are stretches of the US coastline where small groups or individuals can go out swimming or surfing without being too near to other people, it’s not quite as much as Australia has. (The separation from more people is one of the reasons why surfers tend to be the targets. Even if they’re at a crowded beach, they’re usually farther out and more easily isolated.) Australia’s population is sort of spreading out along the coast, but that process does mean that there are likely more small groups (and a higher rate of surfers in those groups) along undeveloped or just developing coasts.

And there’s the climate change situation. In my original piece, I mentioned that the warming waters off Cape Cod – along with the growing seal population – means that they are more welcoming to great whites. That is why the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy was able to document about 800 new great whites in the Cape’s waters from 2015 to 2018. It’s also why great whites are so reliably there that even Discovery has filmed “Shark Week” programs there. (Granted, none of them good, but still.) In my first article, I noted that the number of great white sitings off the Cape went from four to 21 in about a decade, in another decade, that has increased to 29 in 2023. Now it’s not swarming with great whites, but there are enough there consistently enough that not only can the AWSC study them in the region; eco-tourist companies have popped up where for a fee, they’ll ferry you to see one of these beautiful creatures up close (but sadly, still can’t do cage dives for great whites; could happen out farther where you can go in the cage, but you’re lucky if you see anything other than blue sharks).

But here’s the thing: the warming waters are more preferable for great whites, but they don’t stay that warm beyond the season. So great whites tend to come in anywhere from May to October (generally), and then they migrate south to warmer waters. (Basically they’re like some older “great whites” in New England, if you know what I mean.) In Australia, especially off the coast of Sydney, the waters have not only warmed to the point of attracting most of the deadlier species of sharks like whites, tigers, and bulls (oh my!); the waters are staying warmer for longer. One of the reasons why Australia might be seeing a comparative, prolonged increase in attacks is that some of these sharks no longer leave. Bull sharks are sticking around the area rather than staying for a season. That increases the chances of more people having run-ins with them.

It should be noted that in this interesting little piece from the Sydney Morning Herald, sharks are less deadly in Australia than horses, cows, and dogs. (Which, I know everything in Australia is trying to kill you, but how did cows kill 82 people from 2001 to 2017? I suppose this is the country that perpetrated The Great Emu War, so I suppose nothing should surprise us.)

The warming waters are drawing sharks to waters that were previously uncommon for them, so it is surprising for the locals. And to be clear, it makes a ton of sense to have policies, procedures, and practices in place to keep everyone safe at the beach. It is not good for humans to get attacked, obviously, and it doesn’t really do the sharks much good. We’re not their prey and they never want to be eating us (so they are expending energy on what winds up not being a meal), and it tends to draw people into the kind of fear and destructive tendencies we saw from the governor of Western Australia. Bull sharks are now more common year round in the waters of southern Australia, but overall bull shark populations are rapidly declining. (A product of being over-fished.)

So where am I going with all this? I don’t really know! Ultimately my point is this: from 1991 to 2021, US beaches saw attendances of over 9 billion people! (Obviously includes repeat customers, as it were.) And the total number of shark attacks in the US going back to 1837 (the farthest back they can find documented attacks) is 1,362. If we even pretended that the total number of attacks in the last 187 years all happened in that 30 year period, that’s a percentage that I actually don’t know how to read on the calculator because it doesn’t fit so does that whole “e-” thing that I can’t remember what any of that means! Now just imagine how much more bonkers that chance gets if you just look at yearly beach attendance and yearly attacks!

There are over 120 species of sharks classified as endangered, 90 as critically so, and 180 listed as vulnerable according to the Save Our Seas Foundation. Despite the increase in possible overlap in these waters, it encounters (never mind attacks) remain one of the rarest things in life. There are plenty of things we can do – and indeed we currently do! – to minimize that rare risk even further.

But the way that everyone reports on shark attacks, you’d think you’re more likely to be attacked by a shark than anything! A survey from Psychology Today indicates that over 51% of Americans have a fear of sharks, with almost 40% saying it’s such a strong fear, they simply will never enter the ocean. This has already increased, up from a little less than 30% just 7 years earlier.

I can’t help but think that this is in no small part because “Shark Week” had a huge moment in the pop culture zeitgeist during the ’10s, and in their attempts to get more viewership and make more money (and keep costs low by not producing quality content – it’s funny reading interviews with early producers being like, “We didn’t want to just send out cowboys on boats, but scientists and professionals,” and today it’s like, “Oy! I was a surfer and now I got a massive boat and I’m gonna make a big fake whale carcass and put myself in it with a camera to film a big shark!” – Discovery threw sharks under the bus.

Ecotourism is a possible aid, though. Supposedly, shark tourism specifically is one of the fastest growing sectors of wildlife tourism in the world. Over a million people participate in some form of this. (I have done two cage dives and done one boat tour myself.) I’m not going to lie, being within feet of a blue shark, a great white, and yards away from a mako was a profound life experience. I honestly felt like I learned more just actually watching them in person than I have by watching “Shark Week” for years. It is a great way to get people to really be able to have a safe experience with sharks, enjoy the beauty of these fish and just be floored, in awe with their sheer size (I saw a “small” great white, and that thing was discernibly bigger than me!)

It can also be a good way to create economic incentive to protect wildlife. As the fishing industry has changed over the decades and quotas have remained in place for a while, a lot of fishing companies have started doing such tours to supplement the fishing income, since there’s simply not as much money one can make. I know that a number of fishermen are kind of bummed that their industry has changed so much – fishing does seem to have deep cultural roots for them (usually they’re fishermen because their fathers were fishermen, and their grandfathers were, et cet) – but they also are willing to adapt to the times. (I have had a few conversations with some of the boat captains and they definitely lament that they can’t just live off the traditional fishing trade, but they also do seem to like the sharks and appreciate that business on that is good. However, they are definitely less happy about the booming seal population; not because it brings the great whites, but because those seals are eating a lot more of the fish and impacting their ability to reach the quotas in the first place! But that’s another topic for another time.)

Of course, there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. All eco-tourism comes with a whole set and subset of ethical questions and dilemmas. The shark tours I went on off the Cape had pretty strict rules. First, you can’t chum the water until your dozens of miles off the coast, so you’re not bringing sharks closer than they would normally be to shore. (Minimizing the chance that ecotourism puts beach-goers at added risk.) They also do throw the remaining bait over for the sharks to eat when finished (something that I appreciate because we would otherwise be tricking these sharks into expending energy to investigate potential prey and so they should get some food for their effort).

Additionally, the crews typically do a good job using bait to lure sharks to the boat and the side the cage is on, without leading them into the cages. This is something commonly seen over the years during “Shark Week” that drives me nuts sometimes, and it’s not a practice every shark tourist company engages in sadly. Some will try to lure the sharks to hit the cage, which puts the shark at risk for injury. There’s no point to eco-tourism at all if you’re going to do it in a way that endangers the wildlife. It can also put humans in danger as well. I can’t think of anything more irresponsible than that infamous video of a great white getting caught in the cage with a diver in it from about seven years ago.

If done ethically and intelligently, eco-tourism can do what “Shark Week” has been unwilling to do. The lack of explicitly and exclusively scientific programs, the misinformation, the fear-mongering presentation and language, the over-emphasis on the dangers all make “Shark Week” arguably a bit detrimental at this point. There used to be a much better balance, and much better communicators. It’s not that there is a shortage of good ichthyologists and people trying to teach audiences about sharks, to try and help us understand and appreciate them rather than fear them and the ocean; it’s just that Discovery still prefers to be a pop cultural moment than anything. They prefer “live every week like it’s Shark Week” over “the sea should be enjoyed; the animals in it.”

And as Eugenie Clark said, “I want to be remembered as a nice person who didn’t hurt people – except my ex-husbands, maybe.”

Er, I mean, she had the “sea should be enjoyed” quote, which she finished with, “When you see a shark underwater, you should say, ‘How lucky am I to see this beautiful animal in his environment.'” That sense of awe, wonder, curiosity, and respect feels long gone from Discovery’s most iconic programming bloc. We’ll keep encountering these sharks….until we don’t, because we kill enough of them through fishing, in “protecting” the beaches, or just our innate inclination to decimate the natural world around us.

But just two days into 2024’s “Shark Week,” I find little reason to be hopeful that there is anything worth trying to salvage with this.