Shark Week: Cake and Disappointment

Every year in the month of August, the Discovery Chanel has a whole week filled with shark related shows, called Shark Week! This year is their 26th year. And being at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center we made sure to catch the first night of Shark Week. We even celebrated with an ocean related cake. It's a green fish in the ocean. And the cake was dyed red on the inside, too! Making it even more exciting!

Shark Week began with a two hour documentary about Megalodon, an investigation into whether or not a giant shark thought to be extinct still inhabits our waters. Even a few minutes in, the show was questionable. Beginning with a video of a boat being too perfectly attacked by a 67-foot shark, no survivors, yet the camera with all the dramatic footage survived. Quite questionable to me! Surrounded by future scientists, we began to express our criticisms at their poor science. The documentary continued with weak evidence and scientists who were not reputable. Then at the end of the show, two long hours later, a quick block of text appeared on the screen revealing that the whole documentary was dramatized. This fake documentary was simply an attention grabber for the network, which is very disappointing. That information put a damper on the rest of Shark Week. I, along with many others, am disenchanted with the poor choices of the Discovery Chanel. The Discovery Chanel used to pride itself as a network for science and education, it has now shown its true colors and is not a network I trust any more for reliable information. Although this mock-umentary was successful in attracting viewers, the network's plans backfired when many people boycotted the rest of Shark Week, myself included. The Discovery Chanel is trying to rebrand itself as another drama and character driven network, a move that will and has pushed away many viewers who watched the network for reliable information about the fascinating aspects of our world. I sincerely hope the Discovery Chanel realizes and amends (sooner rather than later) the grave mistake it has made.