The Dorsal Fin

Chuck Patterson’s great white shark video (seen above), which made the rounds in the media about two months ago, recently showed up on TeddyHilton.com, which appears to be a pet-related blog inspired by Perez Hilton. Unfortunately, the description of Patterson’s video on the site is a misrepresentation of Patterson own account of the scenario that he recorded using a pole-mounted GoPro camera.

The TeddyHilton.com post regarding Patterson’s video is titled “Surfer has NO idea great white is circling him.” The post, which includes the tags “scary” and “attack!” goes on to say that Patterson did not realize the sharks were around him until after getting back on shore and checking his video footage.

The actual story behind the video, straight from Chuck Patterson’s Blog is that he went out with the intention of filming the great white sharks on camera and knew full-well they were in the water.

MyFoxNY.com has reported that conflicting accounts of “small” or “baby” sharks seen around Rockaway Beach resulted in lifeguards clearing the water for about an hour on Saturday. Accounts of the shark sightings ranged from one to three sharks being spotted. One witness told NY1 that a shark was tugging on the leg strap of a female surfer and that two more sharks were “circling her.” The scare resulted in swimmers and surfers evacuating the water, but they were allowed to return after an hour. No other subsequent incidents were reported after beach goers were allowed to return to the water.

New York Aquarium‘s Jon Dohlin was quick to point out to the news anchor in the clip above that the sharks are always out there, and the ones that are being reportedly sighted do not pose a real threat to swimmers and surfers. Despite the fact that the sharks being reported are considered to be generally harmless, it hasn’t slowed other media outlets from over-hyping the animals. The New York Post referred to the sharks as “finned fiends” and “toothy terrors,” while the New York Daily News ran with a headline referring to the sharks as “deadly fish.”

Future Games of London recently released a shark-themed game for Apple’s iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. “Hungry Shark,” by the looks of it, does nothing to dispel the myth that sharks are mindless killing machines, but is this something for conservation-minded shark enthusiasts to get bent out of shape over? After all, it’s just a video game created for mindless fun. There are plenty of video games out there that depict humans/aliens/hedgehogs/etc. going around destroying everything in sight. Personally, I won’t be losing any sleep over a game in which a caricature of shark is going around eating everything in the water and the air, especially when the feeding frenzies are accompanied by comical animated text that looks like something out of the old Adam West Batman television series.

There’s a difference between video game companies (as well as advertising companies, movie studios, and other outlets of fictional entertainment) capitalizing on over-the-top shark sensationalism versus educational-based or news media outlets doing so. The difference being that the target audience typically knows they’re getting a heaping slice of fiction with the former. I doubt that playing Hungry Shark will result in somebody believing that a real shark is going to fly out the water, eat a pelican in mid-air, knock a person out of a boat in the process, and then eat the person. Then again, sometimes I give people too much credit.

Above is the currently featured promotional video for Shark Week from Discovery Channel’s official YouTube page. It starts off with a series of shark attack depictions that rival those found in the movie, Jaws. If Discovery Channel is truly committed to putting “all of their media weight” behind the effort “of educating viewers about the plight of sharks and encouraging them to take action,” as Discovery Channel president, John Ford claims, why do they continue to feature promotional videos that focused predominantly on shark attacks on humans. Did I miss the conservation angle in this video?