The Dorsal Fin

DiscoveryTV’s YouTube channel recently added this “Shark Crossing” promo clip from Bear Gryll’s series “Born Survivor” (UK). The clip features Grylls crossing from one island to the next through “shark infested waters.”

The scene is played up with plenty of ominous music and shots of fins breaking the surface, which makes for some good television drama, if nothing else.

“Born Survivor” airs in the UK at 9pm on the Discovery Chanel.

Discovery’s Shark Week 2011 media blitz has begun. The recently released promotional clip for Shark Week 2011 is set to the tune of Lady Gaga’s “Teeth,” and features footage from upcoming Shark Week episodes.

On the plus side, there are no staged fake shark attacks that look like they were taken from one of SyFy’s shark-themed horror movies in the new promotional clip.

Shark Week 2011, which will be hosted by Andy Samberg, begins July 29 at 9pm on the Discovery Channel.

WARNING: Video features footage of live sharks being finned.

While Discovery Channel has faced much criticism for some of its programming choices for Shark Week over the past few years (including this year), there have been a few features popping up on Discovery Networks YouTube channel over the past few days that are conservation based. The video above which features some of the first known footage of shark finning, according to the intro text in the clip (typos aside).

The Beqa Adventure Divers blog and this article from The Huffington Post have pretty much summed up the negative aspects of Shark Week. Rather than focus on the negatives this year (like I did last year), I’m going to try shift my focus toward the “positive” or at least “educational” aspects of Shark Week. Hopefully, they won’t be few and far between this time around.

Discovery Networks’ YouTube Channel has recently added another promotional video for Shark Week 2010, featuring a breaching great white shark. The overall positive tone of the clip, which ends with a “Happy Shark Week,” is definitely a step above last year’s string of fictional shark attack commercials. It’s also nice to see a clean blue Shark Week logo, as opposed to the bloody one used last year along with a bleeding Discovery logo.