Shark Week marks 30th anniversary
The 30th anniversary of Discovery Channel's Shark Week kicks off this week with lots of new programming, a bevy of celebrities and sharks of the land and sea variety in tow.
Beginning Sunday, July 22, and continuing for eight days, television's longest running summer event offers up 19 hours of programming that takes viewers to all corners of the globe to explore the world of these mysterious creatures. Joining its team of researchers, experts and marine biologists are athletes Ronda Rousey, Aaron Rodgers, Rob Gronkowski, Lindsey Vonn and Bear Grylls plus Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran, Daymond John and Kevin O'Leary from ABC's "Shark Tank."
Those "Sharks" bring their business savvy to bear in the Wednesday, July 25, "Shark Tank Meets Shark Week," in which each investor pairs with an oceanic organization to uncover the issues they're facing and attempt to secure a $50,000 donation for them.
O'Leary, who teamed up with the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, actually went diving with whale sharks there and came away in awe of these behemoth creatures that can reach over 40 feet in length.
"I've never experienced anything like it. It was very peaceful; I was quite surprised," he says. "And they seem to have an intuitive feeling of what's around them even though their eyes are so tiny. So clearly there's something advanced there because I never got hit by a tail or a fin or anything even though I was inches away from them.
"My concern was as I was above them with their tail, that it would hit me because it's the size of a 747 aircraft. It's huge. And they seem to be able to bend it like cartilage just to miss me by three or four inches every time. It's amazing. ... How would they know I was there and avoid me? That was the most intriguing aspect of the whole thing. They must have some kind of electrical field around them or something, that they have a sense almost like a cat."
Conversely, chaos was the order of the day for diver Paul de Gelder in Thursday's "Sharkwrecked," in which he spent 48 hours in shark-infested waters in an experiment simulating a fishing boat sinking. For this, chum was dumped in the water (as if a holding tank and a bait cooler had broken open) and de Gelder and marine survival expert James Glancy, clad only in wetsuits, were forced to fend for themselves as sharks switched into feeding frenzy mode.
For most people, this would be a terrifying prospect but the two men knew exactly how to handle the situation.
"You try and show them through your body language you're not afraid," de Gelder says, "you're not food and you are actually dominant to them, then you get respect out of that animal. So that's what I was trying to do."
"You've got to stand your ground," he continues. "You don't want to start swimming away and panicking and switch that animal into a predatory mode or a hunting mode because then you're lowering yourself on the scale."
The 30th anniversary of Shark Week kicks off Sunday on Discovery Channel.