Get Sharked!

Yee-Haw! It's Shark Week on the Discovery Channel! Which means another opportunity to further convince my oldest brother why he will never ever step foot in the ocean. I'm certain he's not alone in those sentiments.

But I choose not to focus on the scary side of sharks. Sharks are utterly beautiful. Sharks are what got me interested in the ocean as a child. I so wanted to be Eugenie Clark and dive with and study sharks as an adult (I got to study coral reefs instead, but I see that as a twofer). I still have the shark scrapbooks that I kept of every sharky photo I could find in magazines and newspapers. I have book shelves of shark-tacular titles such as Death in the Sea, Sharks and Other Ocean Killers, Blue Water, White Death, and of course Jaws. If it had a pointy dorsal fin, Ampullae of Lorenzini, and teeth then I did my best to know about it.

While I think Shark Week gets a bad rap for pandering to the sensational, I like to think that it's also an annual opportunity for the public to celebrate a magnificent, and unfortunately endangered, keystone marine species.

So, commence au festival! Oh, and head over to the Discovery Channel Shark Week website to upload your photo and get yourself sharked. I did (above), and I really think it's an improvement.