I may have a shark obsession.
For the fifth anniversary of my twenty fifth birthday my husband and friends threw me a surprise Sharknado party. It. Was. Glorious.
Look at that blonde hair. #BrunetteTodayBlondeTomorrow
This may sound awful, but my love of sharks started when I was a child and watched a gentleman being pulled from the ocean after a shark attack. I felt bad for the guy for sure, but I also felt bad for the shark too. That shark was swimming in his home and going about his shark business and then this guy comes along and disturbs that. I’d be cranky too.
A few of the reasons behind Shark Week is to educate the masses, raise awareness and money for conservation, and to fool people with fake documentaries. There are four hundred and forty known species of sharks. That’s a LOT of sharks! Those are just the ones that we know about too! When you live on a planet that is seventy percent water chances are you’re going to miss a few species here and there.
Like most celebrities, Jaws is much smaller in person.
Sharks are apex predators that are so important to the health of our oceans. Everyday thousands of sharks are killed or culled. In 2013 it was shown that humans killed eleven thousand four hundred and seventeen sharks an hour. AN. HOUR.
(Warning your computer isn’t broken– this is just a realllyyyy longgggg next image)
There is so much we don’t know about sharks and that’s why celebrating Shark Week is so important. It’s much more than watching sharks attacking poor little baby seals. It’s more than shark attack victims recounting one of the worse moments of their lives. It’s more than gimmicky shows meant to dumb us down. It’s a chance to introduce children and adults alike into the amazing world of our oceans. It shows us how beautiful and diverse our oceans and the creatures who live in them are.
I’m taking my shark-nerdom to a whole new level this year by taking a free online course from Cornell University all about the conservation, biodiversity, and biology of sharks. Today is the first day of class and I can’t wait to report back to you all with my new found shark knowledge at the end of my four week course!
