Make it Shark Conservation Week

“It never feels like summer until Jeff’s home, shouting about Shark Week” -Mom

Ah, moms - they always know you best. It’s true: Shark Week has always been my favorite time of the year, even more than the holidays. It was the thing I looked forward to most about every summer break.

So it was natural for me to review Discovery’s Shark Week 2008 last summer - sharks are in major trouble, and I was sure that Discovery was going to take a stand and tell us all about the state of sharks in the world. I had a ton of fun live-blogging the shows, and Discovery even sent me the awesome t-shirt to thank me for it!

But something bugged me: for all the hours of awesome shark action I watched, I felt like the current peril that sharks are in was only mentioned in passing. There were no specials about the fact that 96% of sharks are already gone, or the international shark finning trade. There were no documentaries about the struggle to offer fishermen alternative business models to keep them from taking the fast cash. They never even mentioned that there was a shark finning ban being voted on in Congress, and instead of applying massive public pressure, the Senate got too busy and never took the time to vote on the issue.

It got me thinking - is Shark Week bad for sharks?

Did the shows talk about the fascinating advances in our knowledge about sharks over the last year? Or did it just rehash tired stereotypes that have made people fear sharks and allowed the fishing industry to wipe out an entire sector of our ocean ecosystems?

It’s been eating away at me all year, and so I made a resolution: this year, I’m going to hold Shark Conservation Week 2009 - I’ll be posting an article about the current state of sharks in the world, and I invite you to read along, or post on your own blogs.

I love sharks, and I’m sure I’ll watch Shark Week again this year, but I can’t let another summer pass by without doing something to raise awareness about the sharks that are rapidly disappearing from our oceans.

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Thanks to DC SEO for the photo of the shirt

Tagged as: sharks