A Heavily Treated Ad Campaign of Discovery Channel’s ‘Shark Week’

The media often paints a false and inaccurate image of sharks, dubbing them as “mindless killing machines”. when in truth shark populations are heavily threatened by humans due to destructive overfishing. There is a dire need for us to dispel preconceived notions about them before these creatures can be saved.

The ocean covers about two thirds of the world’s surface and is home to over 80 perecent of life on Earth. The first sharks are known to have lived in the ocean for more than 400 million years, about 150 million years before the age of the dinosaurs. When all other life on Earth was wiped out, sharks have managed to survive five major mass extinctions. They are the apex predators in the marine environment, helping to maintain the proportional balance of various marine species in the ecosystem. They control the populations below them, essentially eliminating weaker species and thus, creating new ones.

Sharks are known to have terrorised the hearts of people, many of whom are victims of traditional misconceptions and eliefs portrayed by the media. Steven Spielberg’s fear-provoking classic movie, Jaws, released in 1975 is a prime example. “Jaws was a completely unrealistic and over-dramatised portrayal of the great white shark,” Rebecca Davis, founder of Save Our Sharks Australia, says of the film. “Unfortunately, the fear it instilled into people who saw the movie has continued to influence generation upon generation.” Even Peter Benchley, the late author of the novel Jaws, wrote an article in 1995 titled “Misunderstood Monsters”, admitted that his book has indeed carved an undesirable reputation for sharks. “I couldn’t write “Jaws” today”, he wrote. “The extensive new knowledge of sharks would make it impossible for me to create, in good conscience, a villain of the magnitude and malignity of the original.”

Scientists and experts have long tried to debunk the myth that sharks are “mindless killing machines”. Dr. Demian Chapman, a research scientist of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science and head of the Institute’s Shark Research Program, has been struggling to do the same. Growing up in New Zealand, Dr. Chapman spent most of his childhood on the beach. Like most children, he was fearful of sharks, but later became fascinated with them and was “hooked” by the time he realised they were not he “monsters” he perceived them to be.

From the Ocean Geographic – Shark Troubles