Bite Me: Thoughts on Shark Week 2025

Note: Will update as I get through the shows, so will take me longer than a week!

Episodes:

• "Dancing With the Sharks": Um, no - wouldn't watch even if you promised Tom Bergeron would get eaten by a Megalodon at the end

• "Air Jaws: The Hunt for Colossus": The best Air Jaws episode yet! Normally hate these, especially when it just becomes a competition to see who can get a shark to breach the highest, and especially when they add a comedy element like the fake SportsCenter they had a few years back. But this had a purpose: Dr. Towner was looking for Colossus in South Africa, and she had Paul de Gelder (shark attack survivor and shark conservationist/all-around badass) and Andy "ABC" Casagrande (underwater photographer extraordinaire) - both introduced as "shark experts" (put a pin in that) - leading experiments in New Zealand in case he migrated there. Breaches had meaning, and included PdG entering great white-filled waters on a "seal sled", followed by the sled immediately sinking - really shocking moment (luckily he was able to right himself immediately and continue!). Really enjoyed this one - not only did they throw some science in there (like how two orcas were able to drive the great white population down by 90% in Mossel Bay), but it had the return of the PdG/ABC dynamic duo - they have awesome on-screen chemistry! Fun start to the week!

• "Great White Assassins": Then, a head-scratcher. Dr. Towner said at the end of "Air Jaws" that she wanted to visit New Zealand to check out their shark population. And, in "Great White Assassins"...she's in New Zealand checking out their shark population! So is this supposed to be a sequel? If so, it's kind of confusing, since when she needs a local shark expert she turns to...DICKIE CHIVELL! Now no disrespect to Dickie - he is a highlight of every Shark Week who I am convinced is high at all times - but wasn't it ABC who convinced you to come to New Zealand? Even more confusing, ABC actually shows up...as the underwater photographer! And when Dr. Towner needs more interactions with the sharks, Dickie introduces her to a fix for that...the seal sled WHICH WE JUST SAW LESS THAN AN HOUR AGO! Now, it has to be noted that just because this is a confusing episode doesn't mean it's a bad one - it includes an examination into new behaviors by orcas (the great white assassins) hunting great whites (who suddenly don't seem so badass now that we know Shamu could kick their butts), plus Dickie falling out of a shark cage and almost dying, plus Dickie lying down on the seal sled as a great white chomps at it and almost dying, plus Dickie walking around the sea floor in an orca costume and hoping that the circling great whites will be scared away. Also, for a show that is really about orcas, you know what would have been good to see? ORCAS! Why conduct all your experiments on sharks when the point is about what orcas are doing? Is it even possible to locate and cage-dive with orcas? Wish it was addressed on the show. So a fun time, but kind of confusing!

• "Great White Sex Battle": This one had two marine biologists who've definitely been on previous Shark Weeks even though I don't remember their names putting great whites through experiments in a competition to see if male or female sharks are more badass. Kind of contrived, and I don't think there was much "science" in these experiments, but fun to watch. Starting to get a little tired of great whites, though - let's move on to other sharks, please? Also, they were in New Zealand again. Huh.

• "Jaws vs Mega Croc": I had high hopes for this one - thought it would be like the one they did a few years back where Paul de Gelder explored the Australian island where sharks and crocodiles were in the waters together. Instead, this is one of those ones where they collect data points so they could have a CGI battle between a shark and Nile crocodile at the end. Never really a fan of those, but what the heck. So, just like the last episode (again!), they're going to put sharks and Nile crocodiles through competitions to see who comes out on top. The sharks, of course, are great whites (again), and they are collecting data from New Zealand (!). Did David Zaslav buy a timeshare on Stuart Island or something? I would kill for a glimpse of Guadalupe Island just for a change of scenery! The crocodile tests were being done in a crocodile preserve in the Florida Everglades. WAIT, WHAT?!?! Who thought that was a good idea? Haven't they ever seen a Jurassic Park movie? How long until we see on the news "Crocodiles Escape Sanctuary; Roaming Around Tampa"? Anyway, who won the battle? I don't know for sure - I fell asleep on this one!

• "In the Eye of the Storm: Shark Storm": This was...different? But not in a good way. This was a non-narrated movie-style documentary about a series of shocking bull shark attacks along the Gulf of Mexico, including three in one day on South Padre Island on the 4th of July last year. While there were talking heads (mostly the victims and their families), most of the show was footage from the body cams of first responders. Now, I'm not saying this story shouldn't have been told - it was terrifying, and I really felt for the victims (luckily everyone lived), but is Shark Week really the right place for this? I mean, other than a throw-away line about the Gulf's heating up being a possible cause for increased shark activity, there was no investigation into why this happened - it was just showing how horrifying sharks can be. There's a way that Shark Week can tell that story - send a team of scientists/"shark experts" to the Gulf, talk to the victims, and then see if they can figure out why this happened, if there are still bull sharks in the area, and what can be done to live in peace. Instead, we got the kind of sharksploitation that Nat Geo would run when it was owned by Fox. Despite how fascinating the story was I was really tempted to shut this one off.

• "Great White Northern Invasion": Now this is more like it! Andy Casagrande - not introduced as a photographer, or even a "shark expert", but as a "Shark Week LEGEND" (well deserved in my book!) leads a team to Nova Scotia to tag as many great whites as possible. Funny thing - as a Shark Week warmup, I had just watched a documentary on Disney+ about great whites in Nova Scotia, so I was pretty jazzed to see Shark Week's take. I think it really came through in the show just how much great whites are popping up north - there were a few times it was apparent that the number and frequency of great whites caught the team off guard. Not a ton of science in this one besides the mention of climate change making areas that used to be off-limits to sharks now their home ground. But lots of tagging from small rubber boats, and a guy with only three teefuses in his head invented the "disco bait". Random note: I remember one time when my parents lived in Maine, my mom and I took a two-person kayak for a spin around a harbor - I'm now terrified to think of what could have been lurking beneath the surface there! Highlight of the show happened midway through when ABC and a marine biologist cage-dived 70 feet into murky water, then swam 200 feet to an undersea wreck to set up scientific equipment. The visibility was so bad that someone topside had to run sonar for them to search for sharks in the area - and on their way back found that a great white was circling their cage! They had to abandon the cage and swim the 70 feet up to the surface on their own! You could tell after the dive that the marine biologist was quite shaken by the experience. And because it was clear there were so many great whites in the area the science was pretty much outweighed by the potential for disaster. But as ABC said, "It's Shark Week, baby - that's what they expect!"

• "How to Survive a Shark Attack": Wow. This was the craziest Shark Week show I have ever seen - and just a few days ago I saw Dickie Chivell stomp around the ocean floor in an orca costume! In this show, Paul de Gelder takes us through the four of the most common situations where shark attacks happen. And demonstrates them. In the ocean. Surrounded by said sharks. And loses limbs in the process (!). Yes, PdG, who already lost an arm and a leg to a bull shark attack more than a decade ago, had prosthetic limbs made for this show so he could tempt sharks to bite into him. For reasons only he could tell us, these fake limbs were also filled with realistic blood, which increased the danger of a feeding frenzy. The best part of this show happened every time the producer or the safety divers yelled to Paul "I don't feel comfortable about this anymore, Paul, maybe start swimming back to the boat". The second best part was after giving up his prosthetic leg to a tiger shark in a sea kayaking demonstration (note: I love sea kayaking, now I may never do it again), Paul is trying to wrap up the segment, only to get unexpectedly nipped by a reef shark - luckily for everyone, the shark bit into the metal hand on Paul's prosthetic arm! This was quite an episode that only Paul de Gelder could have done (for both physical and character reasons) - hope to never see anything like it again!

• "Black Mako of the Abyss": Return to a science episode, AND it's not about great whites! Jason Hightower, who tags sharks, had noticed mako sharks that were larger than normal and with much bluer coloration, and wanted to find out why that was. So he got a pretty good crew together - Dr. Tristan Guttridge (making up for trying to sell CGI bullcrap in "Jaws vs Mega Croc", Dr. Kendyl Berna, and THE (apparently) IMMORTAL Paul de Gelder - to find out what's happening. They throw out a few ideas - it could be a mutated shark, it could be a hybrid between makos and great whites, it could be a mako species that we've just never seen before now - and then do some shark diving. As happens from time to time in these sciency episodes, they actually fail in their mission - while they see black makos from time to time, they're never able to get the genetic sample they need - once Dr. Guttridge just plain misses the shark with the modified speargun, and another time a night-time dive goes awry and they have to call it off. It's good to be reminded every now and then that not everything can be wrapped up all neat and tidy in an hour.

• "Expedition Unknown: Shark Files": I don't know a whole lot about Josh Gates except he's obviously a huge Indiana Jones fan and he got to cage-dive with Shatner a few Shark Weeks ago, but he seems fine. Never watched this show before, but judging by the episode I guess it's history-related, as this episode looks at three times sharks and people crossed paths (and only two of them were shark attacks). The first one was the 1916 shark attacks in New Jersey that inspired Jaws. The second was the sinking of the HMS Birkenhead and resulting mammoth loss of life from great white attacks (note: try not to sink your boat near seal islands). And the third was the time a tiger shark in an aquarium threw up a human arm, and upon further examination the Sydney police realized this wasn't from a shark attack but from a murder. All three stories are set in motion with good-enough actors recreating events in front of green screens, followed by experts weighing in on what actually happened/why things happened that way - with one expert supporting the theory that the four 1916 shark attacks were done by more than one shark (as a bull shark was captured in Raritan Bay just about the same time as the great white with human remains in its stomach), and another expert noting that the human arm survived for two weeks in that tiger shark's stomach without being digested because the tiger shark that swallowed the arm was then eaten by the tiger shark that was captured for the aquarium (!). So, not bad, but nothing lifechanging here.

• "Expedition X: Malpelo Monster Shark": I don't watch a lot of Discovery Channel outside of Shark Week, but I'm guessing this is an other vehicle for Josh Gates? But instead of actually going on the expedition himself, he sends a team and then Zoom calls in now and again? #Smart But anyway, this one was actually pretty interesting. It took place around Malpelo Island, which is the top of a volcano that juts out the ocean a few hundred miles from the coast of Columbia, and where five Pacific currents converge very roughly. They were in search of a shark that was only documented once and really did look like a "monster shark" (it looked like a beat-up zombie version of a giant great white). In order to tag it they did dives in search of it around the island, and I will tell you these were some of the most beautiful shark dives I've seen - including shots of hundreds of hammerheads floating by in a giant school. They do eventually find the shark and tag it, and from the video from the tag find out that (1) it's a very large sand tiger shark (which had never been documented in that part of the ocean before); and (2) there are a few of them in the area. So it was a fun sciencey episode with beautiful scenery.

• "Alien Sharks: Death Down Under": People can have strong opinions on Forrest Galante. I've always loved his enthusiasm for animals as well has his deep knowledge, but acknowledge that he can take way more credit for animal "discoveries" than he probably deserves, and is pretty bro-ish overall. If his bro-ishness turns you off...this show won't change your opinion. In this one, he and his team are in Australia in search of the Port Jackson shark and the ghost shark, two rarely seen species of sharks. Okay, I can get behind that. He's looking for them specifically because they are among the very rare sharks that have venomous spines, and as he says, researching venoms can increase medical and pharmacological knowledge. Okay, sounds good. And he also wants to inject the venoms into himself. WAIT, WHAT?!?! Look, Paul de Gelder definitely put himself into danger in "How to Survive a Shark Attack", but the expectation was he was going to be okay. Injecting yourself with venom is just...stupid. It only shows how much pain you can take, which is one of the most bro-ish things you could possibly do. So I wasn't sold on the premise of this one, but did enjoy watching Forrest diving through the Australian coastline and giving more information on all kinds of creatures - his enthusiasm for them is infectious. Highlight was when he found two woebegone sharks - and then the female ate the male whole! So I enjoyed watching it, but didn't need to see Forrest getting ghost shark venom injected into his arm.

• "Surviving Jaws": Loved this one! Starred two often-overlooked Shark Week regulars - "predator ecologist" (where do you learn that trade?) Michelle Jewell and "the heavy metal marine biologist" (!) Tom "Blowfish" Hird (with an assist from ABC as well!). They set out to test some of the assumptions from Jaws (like what colors sharks are attracted to and if they are powerful enough to destroy a wooden boat) on real great whites. That often included dressing up as Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw for segments, or wearing a wetsuit that looked like a man wearing a pink thong. So this was a sciencey yet lighthearted episode - except for when the force of a shark knocking into a cage legit knocked Blowfish out during a dive (never seen that before!). Definitely recommend this one!

• "Caught! Sharks Strike Back": Didn't watch. I know user-generated content brings in the kids, but it's not for me.

• "Frankenshark": Tristan Guttridge and two other shark experts whose names I'm too lazy to look up debate which attributes of which sharks they would combine to create the ultimate shark that could give orcas a run for their money in a computer simulation. This was clearly just an attempt to fill an hour of Shark Week and was a completely skippable idea. Which is unfortunate, because on a completely pointless tiger shark dive (to get a picture of a tiger shark's teeth I MEAN COME ON) one of the divers was seriously bitten. Other than that, nothing much to see here.

• "Great White Reign of Terror": This was very mid. Frankly, I don't remember much about who was in it or what the point was, so take that for what it's worth.

• "Florida's Death Beach": After a couple of clunkers, Shark Week redeems itself! Also redeeming himself is Forrest Galante, who is in New Smyrna Beach, Florida - the shark bite capital of the world - to figure out why coastal shark activity is so high. He teams up with Tristan Guttridge (who is really putting in some all-nighters this Shark Week) - which is notable since Forrest always seemed to exist in his own Shark Week pocket universe - to figure this out. One of the things I loved about this episode, which really drove home the sciency aspect of it, is they showed experiments actually failing - twice they had less-than-expected results, but they were able to learn from those results and move their hypotheses in another direction, which is refreshing to see. And again, Forrest's enthusiasm for sharks was on full display - not many other people would hear "Great white!" and then IMMEDIATELY dive into the water. There were many different types of sharks on display here, and their conclusion for why the bites are happening is pretty fascinating - high marks all around!

• "Bull Shark Showdown": I love the sciency stuff on Shark Week, but I also love when they don't take things too seriously. And this one was definitely the latter. The point of this one was to set up a competition to determine who had the "best" bull sharks, the US or Australia. Team USA was headed up by Dr. Craig O'Connell, one of the ultimate understated funny guys, in his first appearance this Shark Week. And Team Australia (or "Straya", as one expert's shirt said) was headed up by "shark chew toy" Paul de Gelder, who could have very easily been forgiven for never diving with bull sharks again after losing an arm and a leg to one, but never lets that get in the way of a good dive. The competition was also told through clips of Florida Men and Bogans (Australian trailer trash) to show we're all alike after all - aggressive and dumb. This was a really fun one, and Craig and PdG play off each other well - loved it!

• "Attack of the Devil Shark": This one took place in the Caribbean in order to find out why sudden shark attacks happened in St Martin and St Kitts, and if it could be connected to a local legend of a mad rogue "devil shark". The primaries here were Kinga Philipps and Austin Gallagher (in surprisingly the only appearance this Shark Week). They had some beautiful - and somewhat precarious - dives and found that it might be underwater volcanic activity that is setting off the local tiger sharks. Dr. Gallagher then built a machine that simulates a volcanic eruption in terms of heat, sound, and electrical activity (Note: Whenever I hear someone on Shark Week say "I just built a..." I always wonder, did you really? Or were production guys/graduate students working on it for the last several months?) and proved that the tiger sharks go nuts from this. Pretty interesting overall.

• "Battle For Shark Mountain": This one was a really interesting setting - off the coast of Mozambique, where I don't think Shark Week has been before. The investigation was looking into why the bull sharks that patrol the east coast of southern Africa are coming closer in to the coast. What they found was that the bull sharks were following a school of fish called GTs that can reach five feet in length and can actually fight back and incapacitate bull sharks when needed. The bull sharks follow the GTs to where they are going to spawn - in an underground mountain range off the coast of Mozambique - and the assumption is that when the GTs are fully congregated for spawning the bull sharks will attack in a frenzy. I say "the assumption" because the actual frenzy can't be proved, although there is circumstantial evidence that it took place. Craig O'Connell and Pamela le Noury lead this one. Not a bad show, although Nat Geo had something a few years ago that was very similar to this that DID show a feeding frenzy. Highlight was a touching moment when the crew was tagging a shark and someone suggested that they name her Charlotte after Dr. O'Connell's daughter - he was really touched by that gesture!

So, that's it then, another Shark Week in the books. This was a pretty watchable one overall, although the episode scheduling could have improved and I hate how it just kind of petered out on Saturday night - they could have built up to "How To Survive a Shark Attack" or "Bull Shark Showdown". But now, we'll just have to look forward to Shark Week 2026 - chomp on!