Shark Week: 20th Anniversary begins July 29th! The first show should hook "Jaws" fans, it'll be about the U.S.S. Indianapolis tragedy & will be hosted by Hooper, himself, Richard Dreyfus!

I've been a huge shark enthusiast since I first saw "Jaws" when I was just 9 years old. It scared me so much I was curious to see if any of this movie could have actually happened. So I headed to the library & I checked out EVERY book on sharks. I'm stuffed full of shark related information ! I can tell you the species of a shark just by seeing its outline!

Anybody else out there as excited by this television event as I am?

Well, I won't be able to watch the show, but the topic of sharks is one close to many Australians.

We have many Great White's, especially around Sydney, among various other species, but actual attacks are pretty rare. The shark is deep in our nations consciousness though; for example:
When someone is swimming in the ocean, flips upside down, pulls down his pants and flashes his bum, we call it a White Pointer, ha ha.

Rodney Fox is a famous victim of sharkbite from South Australia. Check out his scar!!!

quote:

Originally posted by Ishmaels coffin:
Well, I won't be able to watch the show, but the topic of sharks is one close to many Australians.

Maybe I can record it for ya!

Funny that you bring up the Great White, that's my favorite shark, the biggest & most powerful meat-eating shark in the sea! I find it interesting that despite its size & ferocity, it dislikes the taste of human flesh. This is why you actually find their victims, the only reason they die is because a "taste test" from a Great White is pretty flippin' big! They also cannot be contained! An animal so magnificent that if it is ever caged, it will ram its head into the wall until it dies. If it can't be free, it doesn't want to live. Now that's the King of the jungle*!

quote:

Rodney Fox is a famous victim of sharkbite from South Australia. Check out his scar!!!

I know of him quite well, & yes, I've seen his wounds (WARNING: BLOODY PICTURE!). That was one of the coolest part of shark books. The chapter on attacks where they showed ya the aftermath was flippin' awesome!

My mother bought me a DVD, "Search for the Great Sharks", that has him going back into the water for the first time since his attack years ago & she was shocked that I knew who he was & the marine biologist he was with, Dr. Eugenie Clark. I've read most of her books & am familiar with her tests on Lemon Sharks to see if they can see in color (The conclusion? They apparently can! Although, when she changed the color of the target on 'em, one of the sharks went insane & killed itself!).

The video is very good, with Mr. Fox & Dr. Clark trying to come up with a non-lethal way to repel sharks. However, I don't think the ocean likes poor Rodney. He was nearly killed several times during his ventures underwater! Poor guy. There is one very strange thing about the video, they have the sexiest, british marine biologist I've EVER seen! I don't know where they found this woman, but she doesn't look like she belongs on the boat with the others. She wears very tight clothing & just looks too good to be on a crappy boat at sea, surrounded by "yucky fish".

* Just in case someone reads this & thinks I'm some kinda moron, this is in reference to what Homer says to a shark in 'Bart Carny', "You call yourself the King of the jungle?!"

quote:

Posted by MB
There is one very strange thing about the video, they have the sexiest, british marine biologist I've EVER seen! I don't know where they found this woman, but she doesn't look like she belongs on the boat with the others. She wears very tight clothing & just looks too good to be on a crappy boat at sea, surrounded by "yucky fish".

So all those sexy Hollywood biologists are actually based on reality??

bring on Natalie portman as a shark expert ha ha

quote:

Originally posted by Monkey_Boy:
There is one very strange thing about the video, they have the sexiest, british marine biologist I've EVER seen! I don't know where they found this woman, but she doesn't look like she belongs on the boat with the others. She wears very tight clothing & just looks too good to be on a crappy boat at sea, surrounded by "yucky fish".

pix plix.

Wish I could get some pix of her ! "Mmmmm, sexy nerd!**GURGLE**"

Don't forget, two more weeks & it's shark time! I'll be postin' nightly reviews of the shows & lettin' ya know what I learned from 'em. It's strange, after 20 years of reading & watching everything I can find involving them, I still learn somrthin' new from SHARK WEEK every year.

SHARK WEEK starts tomorrow on the Discovery Channel at 9/8 central!!!!! First up, the story of the U.S.S. Indianapolis. Finally, a real life account of the chilling story told by Quint in "Jaws"! Just yesterday I saw a commercial & they showed a very quick glimpse of a diver outside of a cage... WITH A GREAT WHITE SWIMMING UP TO HIM!!!!!! GOOOOOOOOOOOD GRRRAAAAAVYYYY ! I gotta see that episode!

I'll probably watch it over a friend's house who has HD cable channels. The only reason why I ain't got it is 'cuz my wife wants the cable box in the living room on my 10 year old Sony Trinitron, instead of on my our HD television in The Den . Dag-nab-it, why does the wife usually win these kinda arguements?

good gravy....ya still crack me up mb.

Your wife has won a very critical argument here, O monkey magic. This is definitely a tragedy.
A man should be able to watch Great Whites on HD. Dear god, this is a rule of the universe!!!

Enjoy that footage of gnashing teeth and bashed in shark cages !!

OH NO!!!! They've been showing shark footage since 9 in the morning!!!!! I've missed 4 flippin' shark-filled shows! AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH !


Right now on Shark Week: 'Perfect Shark: The Evolution of Sharks'

Perfect Shark: The Evolution of Sharks
Of course, they've talked a little about the Carcharodon Megalodon. The largest carnivorous shark ever to swim the prehistoric ocean. A full grown Great White Shark could swim through the jaws of this monster & have plenty of room. A full grown man could slide through a baby's jaws! Then the long-thought extinct Megamouth Shark who lives in the deepest parts of the ocean. Makes ya wonder what else is down there, huh? Well, the Cookie-Cutter Shark is down there too. For a long time people were confused by circular, golfball-sized bites outta whales, sharks, tuna, & other fish. Until one was finally discovered. A predator of opportunity, it quickly swims up to its prey, presses its suction cup-like lips against it, a quick twist of its body & it's gone! All that's left is a very painfull looking crater in the poor animal's flesh. We then move to another shark I, in my 20 years studying them, have never seen! The Helicoprion Shark is a prehistoric shark with only 3 teeth! One big one in the front of its mouth on the bottom jaw & two in the top jaw. When the mouth was closed, it looked like it had a strange beak when the teeth came together. The top fitting around the bottom tooth to make a can-opener type look. It fed on prehistoric crustaceans & needed that mouth to break open their tough shells. This guy clocked how fast Mako Sharks can swim (about 80 mph) & tested the electrical sensitivity of Bonnethead Sharks. Oh! And the question of why a Bull Shark can swim in both fresh & saltwater was also answered! They go there to breed! It's the safest place for their young because there are no other sharks to eat 'em. This is a truly facinating program, indeed!

My kids are loving it so far. The host is a bit like a science teacher, so he's very easy to understand.

Up next: Robo Shark: An animatronic shark is equipped with an on-board camera!

Smart Sharks: Swimming with Roboshark
In order to study the way sharks hunt & to see how intelligent they are, scientists created a robotic shark to swim with them. With a camera in its mouth, it hides in plain sight & can film its subjects without alerting them of its presence. It was a very cool look into their world, indeed. One of the more interesting parts was when a crocodile attacked it! Proving that even sharks have an enemy to watch out for other than each other. The last shark the roboshark studied was the Great White, & they weren't havin' it! One of them destroyed the machine with ease & left it battered & broken at the botton of the ocean.

Anatomy of a Shark Bite
This is the most interesting so far! They actually caught a shark attack on a human on camera & used it to recreate it in a lab with a mechanical set of jaws. The guy had to be one of the dumbest morons to step into shallow water. It was filled with BULL SHARKS! They are man-eaters! One decided to take a bite & ended up snatching his entire calf muscle. The way they were able to recreate this sequence in a lab/warehouse was, well, it was... AWESOME! They made sure to make adjustments for water pressure, bite pressure, flesh texture, & bone density, all to make sure this was going to be as close to real life as possible. The coolest part of this episode? The very end, when they showed unedited footage of the attack! They were pulling him outta the water & you got a glimpse of his leg. Just behind his shin bone, his flesh looked like tattered cloth! If this were a movie, I'd swear up & down it wouldn't look like that, but it isn't & it did. OUTRAGEOUS!!!!

Up next: Jaws of the Pacific: A documentary on the huge Great White Sharks of Californian waters

Mako Sharks are cool.

That note about a Great White destroying the infidel rob-shark is hilarious!
No fooling our toothy friend ha ha.

Let me know what they say about Oz sharks mb, ok!

Jaws of the Pacific
In this one we follow a few Great Whites who were tagged off the coast of California. We find that they find their way to Hawaii to hunt Spinner Dolphins, Humpback Whales (calves, the sick & dying), & Monk Seals. They are believed to be the sharks talked about in Hawaiian legends. They speak of giant sharks that come from far away & that it was them that showed the original settlers the way to the islands. The sharks hadn't been seen in many, many years due to the decline in Humpback whales & seals, but thanks to protection laws these animals' numbers are on the rise & the Whites have returned to balance out the ecosystem.

TOP 10 DEADLIEST SHARKS
10. Lemon Sharks - 22 Attacks/0 Fatal
9. Blue Sharks - 32 Attacks/3 Fatal
8. Great Hammerhead Sharks - 33 Attacks/0 Fatal
7. Sand Tiger Sharks (aka Ragged-tooth Sharks or Grey Nurse Sharks to Ishmael ) - 64 Attacks/0 Fatal
6. Grey Reef Sharks (Hmmm. Another Austrailian shark on the list. I dunno if I wanna go swimmin' with ya anymore, Ish-man! ) - 8 Attacks (BUT there are believed to be ALOT MORE)/0 Fatal
5. Shortfin Mako Sharks - 42 Attacks/2 Fatal
4. Oceanic Whitetip Sharks - 5 Attacks (on record, but they are the shark that probably took out the U.S.S. Indianapolis crew!)/0 Fatal
3. Tiger Sharks - 116 Attacks/29 Fatal
2. Great White Sharks (a third from Austrailia! 3 strikes, I'm out, Mr. Coffin! ) - 348 Attacks/67 Fatal
1. Bull Sharks (ANOTHER Austrailian native! No wonder you guys are so friggin' tough! ) - 82 Attacks/6 Fatal
This was the episode where the dude swims with Great White sharks without a cage!!!!!!!! Crazy loon! But he was fine. It's been said that the ONLY reason they attack is because they mistake us for seals. If they can plainly see you aren't a seal, you should be relatively safe. However, they have been known to take a "test bite" just to see if something MIGHT be tasty. So that makes this guy nutty as a fruitcake!

I must say I'm surprised that the Great White is set at the number 2 spot. I had correctly guessed the top 3 deadliest sharks waaaaay before they even broke the number 10 spot, but I had the order wrong when it came to the Great White & the Bull. I will concede that White sharks don't actually enjoy the taste of human flesh, so the number 1 man-eater probably would go to another shark. Especially a shark that can catch folks off guard in a freshwater creek, like the Bull can.

The three big surprises for me were the Sand Tiger, the Gray Reef, & the Short-Fin Mako. The most surprising of the three was the Sand Tiger Shark. I've always read that they are a very docile shark & that its appearance was actually very deceiving. After watching for a bit more, though, I found out that the attacks were mostly after it was aggrivated by someone. Putting 2 & 2 together, you can figure that people might mess with it so much because it's so docile. The Gray Reef Shark was the least surprising of the three because they can get outta control in a feeding frenzy, & it doesn't take much to start one of those!

I actually learned something completely new about Bull Sharks in this episode, a story I always attributed to being about a Great White was really about a Bull Shark!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry about all the exclamation points, but I read this account (of a horrible series of attacks on the New Jersey Coastline) when I was very young. It was probably in one of the first books I had ever checked out on sharks. As I was watching, I started recognizing parts of the story, & when they mentioned the name Stanley Fisher, it suddenly hit me... I KNOW THIS STORY! I think the reason I replaced the Bull Shark with a Great White is because this story inspired Peter Benchley to write "Jaws". OR maybe they told the story THIS way. I'm more willing to go with it being a Bull Shark because they can swim into freshwater. Great Whites aren't equipped to survive in it.

Up next: Ocean of Fear: Worst Shark Attack Ever: The True Story of the U.S.S. Indianapolis!

Ocean of Fear: Worst Shark Attack Ever
"Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin' by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' & hollarin' and sometimes, that shark, he go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn't even seem to be livin'... 'til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah, then you hear the terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin' & hollarin' those sharks come in and... they rip you to pieces... You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin' Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson's mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down, in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist. At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hors later a big ol' fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was the most frightened. Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. Three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb."-Quint, "Jaws" (1977)

This story isn't far off from what actually happened out there. Told by actual survivors, this is one compelling tale. Have they ever made a movie about this? There were several groups because men jumped off of the ship at different stages of its sinking & they ended up miles apart from each other. Some had rafts, some had a single life-ring for the entire group, & some had nothing but each other to stay afloat. The one thing Quint didn't mention, was how they turned on each other. If someone became injured, they were tossed outta the group for fear of the sharks coming after the smell of blood! Another non-shark related danger was when some of the men drank the seawater. They became delusional & actually killed a few sailors before they were killed! Others started to hallucinate & actually swam away from the group to their deaths. A few actually claimed they could see a water fountain & ice cream at the bottom of the ocean & quite a few swam down, never to be seen again. Some even tried to swim to an island that wasn't really there. Some of the stories sounded exactly like Quint's. Take this quote, "Everthing was quiet. Then you would suddenly hear a scream." Or the story of a sailor seeing a buddy of his, apparently struggling to stay afloat, but after closer inspection, a shark was chewing on his dead body! They talked of fighting the sharks, sometimes they went away & sometimes they didn't go away. Amazingly, it turns out the sharks killed very few. They mostly ate the dead, dying, & injured.

This is extremely educational & very sad, but I'm very glad I'm recording this & I'm also ordering the DVD from sharkweekdvd.com! I'll never listen to Quint's story the same way again!

So, last time I checked, Australia had 9 of the 10 deadliest snakes in the world.

Now I find we have the 3 deadliest Sharks as well.

We've got scorpions, stonefish, jellyfish, crocodiles...wow, how did I ever make it to 40!!!

Ah, sharks.....so misunderstood...

Deadly Stripes: Tiger Sharks
This one has a dude that can hold his breath for up to six minutes due to a heart condition, so he dives with dangerous Tiger Sharks without an air tank . This is insane! He's playing with death! Watching him reminds me of a video I saw where an idiot was playing with moray eels... until he loses a thumb! It is exactly what this guy is doing, he's hand feeding Tiger Sharks! He actually grabbed onto one of their dorsal fins! With all the bait in the water, he actually attracts 3 species of sharks! Bull Sharks, Tiger Sharks, & Blacktip Reef Sharks, over 20 of these suckers suddenly surround him, & there is blood in the water, but not enough meat! Does he swim away? No. He gets more air & dives back down! I ain't into playing with death... I don't wanna end up missing out on any good movies ! He turned out alright, but still... WHY? WHY?! They also tag a pair of the Tigers & track them for a little while. One of the sharks ended up diving twice what scientists thought they could. The other? She stupidly swam into Great White territory. As the researchers search for her signal, they realize it's coming from within the stomach of a passing Great White ! But like a Hollywood story, she comes swimming from outta nowhere, missing her tag. Their best guess is that it came off during feeding & the White shark, somehow, ended up swallowing it.

Top Five Eaten Alive
This one was shark attack survivor stories. Very good, but not much to talk about. This was something you had to hear & see!

Great White Attack: A True Story
Well, now I'm confused. This is the 1916 New Jersey Coast story that they claimed was a Bull Shark a few nights ago, but now they're back to saying it's a Great White again! It was cool to see the recreation of the story I know so well, anyway though. However, by the end, they did say that it probably wasn't the Great White that was caught. Seems the human bones that were in its stomach might've been placed there by the guy who caught the shark so he could claim the reward. In fact, they think it might've been more than one shark!

Man, SHARK WEEK is flippin' awesome!

In Australia, we have the White Pointer shark.

Also, a white pointer is when someone swimming pulls down their pants, and points their shiny white bum up towards the sky!!

When you see some hairy bum crack pop out of the water right next to ya, you may feel getting eaten is a preferable experience!

You know, I did manage to forget my favorite part of the Roboshark episode, and a