Sharks...

As it is once again Shark Week (honestly, doesn't it seem to get earlier every single year?), the Discovery Channel has all types of new programs debuting this week about sharks. As per usual, it's the great white shark that hogs the attention, and they should (best movie about great whites was Jaws, best movie about mako sharks was Deep Blue Sea - no comparison). Now, I'm not the type of person who sits around waiting for Shark Week to start, but I do enjoy a lot of these programs. Maybe it's because in the back of my mind I think it's still possible I could take up scuba diving and want to know all the safety precautions I can before going in the water. Or it could be that everything else is in repeats and I hate reality shows.

Anyway, last night there was a show on the scavenging skills of great whites, because even after 500,000 shark documentaries there's bound to be one thing we haven't learned about them yet (Do they like the music of Madonna? We'd better check. But, again, 6 trips to the moon was more than enough). During one segment, the film crew stumbled upon the sharks eating what was left of a whale that had died. There was still quite a lot of whale left to be had, so the sharks were going at this thing like hyenas. The leader of this little scientific expedition grabbed a camera and climbed on top of this whale carcass so he could film the great whites from a distance of about two feet. He was all excited because no one had ever filmed great whites eating so close.

Sir, there is a reason for that. Cameras now come with a sweet new feature called a 'zoom lense.' They give you the chance to film something closely, while not actually being all that close. That's why no one had filmed great whites from less than two feet - because technology has evolved to the point that no one has to. We've gotten to a place where you don't have to take stupid risks to get a nice picture. At one time the sharks were shaking the whale's remains so violently that the researcher almost fell in the water. In my opinion, it would have served him right to fall in during this feeding frenzy. It would have been poetic, like when the Grizzly Man was eaten by a grizzly bear. Also, we could have gotten the closest picture ever of what it looks like when a great white eats someone.