July 22 to 29 marked the 30th anniversary of the legendary Shark Week. Discovery Channel was not playing this year. As if the shows on Shark Week aren’t dramatic AF already with watchbait names such as “Shark Trek,” “Jaws of the Deep,” “Great White Abyss,” “Shark After Dark” and the “Air Jaws” series (the list goes on), golden quotes such as, “When the sun sets, we’re out of business” and intense cutaways with rising orchestras backing up the video clips, Discovery has added more star-studded spectacles to keep us on the edges of our seats.
There are still the usual shows chronicling Guadalupe Island great white breeding, the behavioral patterns of sharks off the coast of LA and spooky-looking alien sharks. The Clog has gathered some of the highlights of what’s gone down during the week. Hint: The most exciting ones always involve people interacting with sharks!
“Shaq Does Shark Week”
Shaquille O’Neal alone is enough to draw our attention, but when he agreed to go cage diving in a sea of sharks while Rob Riggle shot chum in the surrounding water, we definitely weren’t able to look away. And it got better — a shark about a third the size of Shaq got in the cage with him. We hadn’t seen him move this fast since his NBA days.
“Ronda Rousey Uncaged”
Rousey did her own version of the celebrity cage dive, but instead of someone else feeding the sharks around her, she herself fed a bull shark from inside her cage. The show then had her face mako sharks outside of her cage. Sorry Shaq, guess it was as easy as making a free throw.
“Guy Fieri’s Feeding Frenzy”
Y’all can’t miss out on watching this. Guy Fieri and his son Hunter are aboard a ship called the USS-fucking-Flavortown and providing an “all-you-can-eat buffet” to the sharks down below. And if that isn’t wild enough, Guy and his son enter the water to watch the sharks feed, during which Guy gets separated from the rest of the divers just as a tiger shark approaches and he gets a leak in his oxygen tank, barely making it out. It’s a roller coaster of a show.
“Laws of Jaws”
Though it didn’t feature any celebrities, “Laws of Jaws” was quite a useful show to watch. It recreated various shark attack scenarios. Like actually recreated with real sharks. These recreations included night diving with tiger sharks (with no light!) and feeding bull sharks.
“Shark Tank Meets Shark Week”
This is the crown jewel of Shark Week. Watch sharks Barbara Corcoran, Daymond John, Mark Cuban and Kevin O’Leary pitch various shark-saving charity groups to each other and Robert Herjavec in order to win $50,000 for their respective groups. Each of the four sharks (except Barbara because she’s a queen) then dons a wetsuit and gets down and dirty diving with some real sharks. If you don’t want to see Kevin in a wetsuit that looks like a suit he had made custom so people could recognize him in the tank, you’re lying.
“Sharkwrecked”
Two men intentionally blow up their goddamn boat and spend two days in shark-infested waters with no food or sleep. Yikes. The waters are swirled with the classic Shark Week drama that makes Shark Week, well, Shark Week. You have to watch it to see for yourself.
“Naked and Afraid of Sharks”
It’s like “Naked and Afraid” — but with sharks! Five stars from the iconic show were left to their own devices in open water for 14 days, surrounded by more than 40 species of sharks. It was a two-hour special and boy, was it a wild ride. We won’t spoil any of it for you.
You bet we wrote this while watching Shark Week, and we hope you’ll be reading this while mourning the end of Shark Week like we all should be doing. And if you haven’t caught up yet, you won’t be played or disappointed with things such as the Michael Phelps’ fiasco from last year — we promise.
