Josh Gates embarks on a 'Shark Trek' with William Shatner
A self-admitted lifelong Trekkie, Josh Gates was not surprisingly thrilled at the prospect of diving with sharks alongside William Shatner for "Expedition Unknown: Shark Trek" during Discovery Channel's Shark Week, which runs July 11-18. It was just the fear factor he had to come to grips with.
Airing Monday, July 12, as part of the cablenet's (along with discovery+) annual programming extravaganza, the hourlong special takes the adventurer and the 90-year-old "Star Trek" icon to the Bahamas, where they came face-to-face with tiger sharks, considered to be the world's second-most dangerous shark. The objective: To come to understand the nature of these creatures - and why they strike fear in humans.
Gates came away with a few conclusions, one being that we just don't understand them.
"One of the things that humans tend to be afraid of in general is the unknown, the other, the alien; you know, things that we don't understand ...," explains Gates, who also hosts Shark Week-related episodes of "Josh Gates Tonight" this week. "And I think that people have a fear of sharks based on that image of them. They are not exactly a warm and fuzzy animal. So part of tackling fear is really understanding what the actual nature of these animals is, so you have to kind of get past that fear of the alien and that fear of the unknown. That's a big part of what we tackled on the show.
"And I think another big part of it," he continues, "is just overcoming our preconceptions about sharks. You know, we think of sharks because of 'Jaws' and because of popular culture as these mindless eating machines. And so to conquer that fear, you have to spend time in their environment and really understand what they're all about. And in fact when you do that, you understand that they're much more complex animals and that they're not just killers."
For the dives, Gates and Shatner spent time this past spring at the Atlantis Resort in Nassau, diving at its predator lagoon and also in the open ocean. And the ocean dives were cageless, so there was nothing protecting from attack. But both persevered despite the extreme stress, and Gates lauds his childhood hero's willingness to put himself in harm's way and face his lifelong fear of sharks.
"One of the things that is so fascinating about Bill," Gates says, "is that he is genuinely so curious about everything. You know, he really is that guy, and so he is really curious about fear. He's curious about the nature of fear and why we fear things and what it takes to conquer those fears. So he was just such an amazing partner for Shark Week because he had this fear, but he really was genuinely interested in tackling it and understanding it and pushing through it."