Let’s get one thing straight: we aren’t Shark Week haters. For one glorious week, sharks take over televisions, dinner tables and social feeds. Millions of people willingly invite them into their living rooms. That kind of attention is rare, and it gives all of us an incredible opportunity to turn fear into fascination.
But Shark Week, we need to talk.
After nearly two decades of protecting sharks, and hundreds of hours spent underwater with them, we’ve noticed a few recurring themes.
The music becomes ominous. A fin slices through the water. Someone says “monster,” “killer” or “feeding frenzy.” And before long, a complex animal with a social life, personality and critical role in the ocean has been reduced to a mouth with background music.
Shark Week doesn’t always tell us something completely false. More often, it shows us one tiny, highly dramatic part of a shark’s life so repeatedly that we begin to believe it is the whole story. It isn’t. Here are ten things Shark Week repeatedly leads us to believe about sharks, and the far more fascinating truth.them.
10. Shark Week leads us to believe sharks are solitary loners
The Shark Week version: One shark. Swimming alone. Preferably at night. Bonus points for fog, a distant buoy and music suggesting that something has gone terribly wrong.
The shark truth: Many sharks have active social lives.
They recognize other individuals, form stable associations and repeatedly choose certain companions over others. Scientists call these “preferred social partners.”
We call them besties.
Juvenile lemon sharks are particularly social. Studies show that they form preferential relationships, modify their behavior depending on which sharks are nearby and maintain social connections within their communities.
Shark friendships are not exactly like ours. They probably don’t exchange birthday gifts or complain about coworkers over brunch. But some sharks clearly prefer the company of particular sharks.
The ocean has social circles too. Theirs simply involve more teeth.
Take a bigger bite: Meet the sharks with best friends in our Lemon Shark Monthly Chomp.
9. Shark Week leads us to believe sharks are mindless eating machines
The Shark Week version: Shark smells something. Shark bites something. Shark continues searching for the next thing to bite.Roll credits.
The shark truth: A shark brain is not an empty waiting room with one sign flashing “BITE.”
Sharks can learn, remember, distinguish between stimuli and alter their behavior through experience. Some can learn by watching other sharks. They remember productive feeding areas, navigate complex migrations and recognize patterns in their surroundings.
Scalloped hammerheads have large, complex brains associated with sophisticated navigation, social behavior and prey capture. They also gather in enormous schools with social structures that are far more complex than the “lone killer” storyline suggests.
Intelligence is not about doing calculus underwater. It is about processing information, remembering what works and adapting to a changing environment.
Sharks have been learning about us for a very long time. We are only beginning to return the favor.
Take a bigger bite: Explore the surprising brainpower of the Scalloped Hammerhead Monthly Chomp.
8. Shark Week leads us to believe every shark of a species behaves the same way
The Shark Week version: Meet “the tiger shark.”
Not a tiger shark with an individual history, temperament or set of preferences. The tiger shark: a generic representative sent to perform the same dramatic behavior as every other member of its species.
The shark truth: Sharks have personalities.
Some are bold. Some are cautious. Some confidently sweep into the action. Others hang back and take their sweet time deciding whether a situation deserves their attention.
Scientists have documented consistent differences in shark boldness, sociability, curiosity and responses to unfamiliar situations. Even sharks of the same age and species can behave very differently.
Research on tiger sharks has also revealed changing social relationships. At feeding sites used for tourism, they interacted more frequently and formed different social connections. Away from those sites, they returned to their usual patterns.
That is not an automated eating machine. That is an adaptable individual responding to its environment.
Honestly, some sharks have more personality than entire reality-show casts.
Take a bigger bite: Get to know the ocean’s striped wild cards in our Tiger Shark Monthly Chomp.
7. Shark Week leads us to believe the “scariest” sharks are the biggest ones
The Shark Week version: Bigger shark equals scarier shark. Therefore, every mystery must involve a gigantic white shark, or, when ratings require it, a megalodon that somehow forgot it was extinct.
The shark truth: Some of the strangest sharks are small, elusive and living far beyond the reach of a camera.
Frilled sharks look like sea serpents. Goblin sharks launch their jaws forward. Megamouth sharks drift through the deep with enormous filter-feeding mouths. Ghost sharks look like they were designed for an underwater Halloween party—and aren’t actually sharks at all.
Then there is the cookiecutter shark: small enough to tuck under one arm, but equipped to remove perfectly round plugs of flesh from animals many times its size.
These species are not terrifying. They are spectacular examples of how evolution solves problems in strange and creative ways.
Shark diversity is far more interesting than simply asking, “How big is it, and will it bite the camera?”
Take a bigger bite: Meet six wonderfully weird creatures in our Scary Sharks Monthly Chomp.
6. Shark Week leads us to believe all sharks are built for high-speed chases
The Shark Week version: Sharks are torpedoes with teeth: always swimming, always pursuing and always moving dramatically toward the camera.
The shark truth: Some sharks prefer a nice walk.
Epaulette sharks use their muscular pectoral and pelvic fins to “walk” along reef flats. When the tide recedes, they can wriggle between isolated pools and briefly cross exposed surfaces.
They can also tolerate extremely low-oxygen conditions that would overwhelm many other animals. This allows them to remain active—and find food—in challenging tidal habitats.
They are small, beautifully patterned and wonderfully determined, like someone crossed a shark with a salamander and gave it somewhere important to be.
If a walking shark does not deserve a prime-time special, we are not sure what does.
Take a bigger bite: Meet the shark that takes low tide in stride in our Epaulette Shark Monthly Chomp.
5. Shark Week leads us to believe sharks never stop moving
The Shark Week version: If a shark stops swimming, it dies. Conveniently, this means the shark must keep moving through the entire episode.
The shark truth: Not all sharks need to swim constantly.
Some species rely heavily on forward movement to push oxygenated water across their gills. Many others use buccal pumping, actively drawing in water and moving it across their gills while remaining still.
Sharks also sleep.
Scientists have documented sleep-like behavior and reduced metabolic rates in resting sharks. Depending on the species, a sleeping shark may close its eyes, or leave them open.
Nurse sharks are champions of the restful shark lifestyle. They often relax together on the seafloor, using powerful throat muscles to keep water flowing across their gills.
Shark Week may never show us an eight-hour special called Napping in the Sand, but we would watch it. Like golf – it’s great for a Saturday afternoon couch nap.
Take a bigger bite: Slow down with one of the ocean’s most misunderstood loungers in our Nurse Shark Monthly Chomp.
4. Shark Week leads us to believe every shark has the same razor-sharp teeth
The Shark Week version: Open mouth. Rows of identical steak knives. Freeze-frame. Zoom in. Add screaming.
The shark truth: Shark teeth are specialized tools, and different species have very different dental plans.
White sharks have serrated teeth suited to cutting. Sand tiger sharks have long, narrow teeth that grip slippery fish. Cookiecutter sharks use a highly specialized lower jaw to remove round plugs from much larger animals.
Horn sharks have small pointed teeth at the front of their mouths and broad, flattened teeth farther back. Those rear teeth crush crabs, sea urchins and other hard-shelled prey.
In other words, their mouths contain something closer to a fork-and-mortar set than a collection of steak knives.
A shark’s teeth tell us what it eats, how it hunts and where it fits within its ecosystem. They are not generic props supplied by the Shark Week special-effects department.
Take a bigger bite: Meet the small shark with serious crushing power in our Horn Shark Monthly Chomp. Spoiler alert… they’ve never been known to use that force on humans.
3. Shark Week leads us to believe shark hunting is chaotic
The Shark Week version: Thrashing water. Frantic fish. Multiple camera angles. Someone urgently says “feeding frenzy” while the soundtrack has a nervous breakdown.
The shark truth
Shark hunting can be remarkably precise and strategic.
Thresher sharks accelerate toward schooling fish, brake with their pectoral fins and swing their enormous tails overhead. The strike can stun multiple fish, allowing the shark to circle back and collect its meal.
That is not mindless thrashing. It is a specialized hunting technique involving timing, coordination and remarkable anatomy.
Bigeye threshers add another adaptation: enormous upward-facing eyes that help them locate prey in deep, dimly lit water. Their eyes can rotate within their sockets, giving them a better view of what is happening above.
Basically, the thresher shark brought night-vision goggles and a bullwhip to dinner.
Take a bigger bite: Discover the shark that hunts with its tail in our Bigeye Thresher Shark Monthly Chomp.
2. Shark Week leads us to believe the biggest sharks have the wildest superpowers
The Shark Week version: The larger the shark, the more impressive the adaptation. Tiny sharks are supporting cast members, assuming they make the episode at all.
The shark truth: Meet the cookiecutter shark: proof that size is a terrible way to measure weirdness.
Cookiecutters produce green light through organs called photophores, helping them disappear against light coming from above. A dark, non-glowing collar near the head may act as a lure, resembling a small fish and attracting larger animals.
Then the cookiecutter attaches to its visitor, rotates its body and removes a neat, cookie-shaped plug of tissue.
Its lower teeth are joined together like a tiny saw blade. When those teeth wear out, the shark replaces the entire set at once—and may swallow the old teeth to recycle the calcium.
It glows. It lures. It spins. It recycles its teeth.
Your move, giant white shark.
Take a bigger bite: Meet the tiny deep-sea shark with outrageous adaptations in our Cookiecutter Shark Monthly Chomp.
1. Shark Week leads us to believe the biggest shark story is what sharks might do to us
The Shark Week version: Dip a toe in the ocean and they’re out to get you. Monsters meant to fear.
The shark truth: The far scarier thing than sharks in our oceans is sharks NOT in our oceans.
Sharks help shape marine food webs and keep ocean ecosystems functioning. Yet many populations face intense pressure from targeted fishing, bycatch, habitat loss and the shark-fin trade.
Even species frequently portrayed as villains are essential members of their ecosystems.
Bull sharks, for example, can move between saltwater and freshwater thanks to extraordinary osmoregulation. They have been found hundreds of miles upriver, using habitats that are inaccessible to most other sharks. They are smart, adaptable and far more complex than their “brute” reputation suggests.
While millions of viewers watch sharks for one week, sharks spend all 52 weeks facing challenges created largely by humans.
That is the real Shark Week story.
Take a bigger bite: Meet one of the ocean’s most adaptable – and misunderstood – predators in our Bull Shark Monthly Chomp.
Let’s Not Waste Shark Week
Shark Week doesn’t have to be perfect to be powerful.
Every July, millions of people willingly invite sharks into their homes. Some come for the breaches. Some come for the mystery. Some come for the dramatic music and very concerned-looking hosts.
We don’t particularly care why they arrived. They are here. They are curious. The door is open.
That is our opportunity to show them the rest of the story: the friendships, personalities, naps, social structures, walking sharks, specialized teeth, glowing bellies and whip-smart hunting strategies.
So enjoy Shark Week. Cheer for the breaches. Debate the mystery fin. Fall completely in love with an animal you may once have feared. And take our Shark Week quiz!
Then keep going.
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Shark Week gives sharks the spotlight.
What we do with it is up to all of us.
And remember: