212 Sharks: The Animal Answer Guide
“You’re gonna need a bigger boat” (Jaws). The Jaws theme may be the
best-known two-note musical phrase in the world.
Hollywood also puts sharks in the title of movies even when nothing
resembling an elasmobranch ever appears. Hence, we have Swimming with
Sharks, Sharky’s Machine, Park Sharks, Steel Sharks, Shark, Eagle vs. Shark
(although any shark nut would love to have the Halloween costume the ac-
tress wore), The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, Shark City, and more.
Documentaries. Sharkwater (2006) is an independently produced film
about sharks, their behavior, and the problems they face. More an advocacy
piece than a documentary (think “Michael Moore meets sharks”), Shark-
water presents an impassioned argument against the practice of finning (see
“What is finning?” in chapter 10). The film has won numerous awards and
raised awareness about shark conservation issues. Rent the DVD and draw
your own conclusions about its accuracy now that you’ve read this book.
Animated Movies. Animated films have also featured sharks, again
usually in heart-pounding chase scenes that wind up with sharks as frus-
trated predators. The Little Mermaid contains one such scene. Finding
Nemo, unquestionably the best animated film about fishes ever made, has
another. Shark Tale gave us kinder, gentler sharks, although some of the
Shark Tale sharks suffered personality disorders and were in obvious need
of therapy to deal with their aggressive tendencies. Targeting a younger
audience is the Kenny the Shark video series (“You’ll Wish You Had a Pet
Shark Too”).
Television. TV documentaries about sharks abound, too many to list.
These usually accurate although too often hyped depictions of nature in-
clude specials from the BBC (the Planet Earth and Blue Planet series in par-
ticular), PBS programs like NOVA and Nature, and a variety of programs
on National Geographic, IMAX, Disney, Animal Planet, and the Discov-
ery Channel, to name just a few. Shark Week, broadcast on the Discovery
Channel each summer (just as we’re all thinking it’s safe to go back in the
water) gets mixed reactions from shark biologists, since its immensely pop-
ular broadcasts seem designed to frighten as much as enlighten. Regardless,
Shark Week celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2012 and draws over 30 million
unique viewers in the more than 70 countries to which it is broadcast.
MonsterQuest, shown on the History Channel from 2008 to 2010 with
occasional reruns, didn’t really bother to enlighten viewers in its uncom-
fortably misinformative “Mega Jaws” (2009), purportedly about a 60-foot
Megatooth Shark that was alive and well off Baja California, Mexico, de-
spite having gone extinct 1.6 million years ago. “Monster Sharks” (2010)
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