Shark After Dark, Thursday, 9:00pm - 10:00pm (with Bonus Materials!)

Shark After Dark

First off, if Shark After Dark were a nightclub, I would be a fucking regular. I would continuously open tabs at said nightclub, close out, and re-open to buy more shots. I would be certain that I would leave my credit card at said nightclub. It would be dimly lit and have many aquariums placed throughout the nightclub with little sharks in them. Behind the main bar would be a larger aquarium with larger sharks. It would contain beautiful women who absolute love sharks. I am very excited at this idea. This absolutely must happen.

Shark After Dark was the "last" original program of Shark Week 2009, so it was bittersweet. Shark After Dark sought to take everything we love about shark week and add night vision and infared cameras, which is almost as awesome as the "Shark After Dark Nightclub". We know a lot of shit about sharks during the day, but ask yourself, how much do we really know about sharks after dark?

Shark After Dark was helmed by Jeff Kurr, floppy haired shark camera man and self proclaimed shark enthusiast who's also done important camera work for MTV's "Parental Control" and Cat Gennaro, camerawoman, who's only other IMDB credit is on Wildboyz, so she's probably seen Steve-O's dong. I spent a good portion of the show trying to determine whether Cat was attractive or not.

They first went to Seal Island in South Africa to try and see if the Great White's totally badass water breaching to hunt seals also occurred at night. To compare, they also researched the Great White's during the day to see if their behavior changed at all after dark. While the Great White's tended to be more aggressive during the day, they also displayed their breaching behavior at night, which is still pretty bad ass. They got some great shots of Great White's polaris breaching at night. Pictures of Great White's, completely breaching the surface against the pitch black of night, is fucking sweet.

Our next destination? Somewhere that is frankly incredibly uncommon for Shark Week. Puget Sound, Seattle, Washington. Color me intrigued. Jeff and Kat meet up with Andy Dehert, shark expert for the National Aquarium to conduct some research on... Six Gill sharks. I've been watching Shark Week for years, and seldom is the mention of the reclusive Six Gill shark, a shark that is certainly foreign to shark novices. This is a shark that normally lives in depths of up to 6000 feet. Until recently, we had no fucking clue they came up to depths of 60-100 feet to feed only at night. A select group of divers in the Puget Sound have witnessed these recluses of which we know next to nothing about. For a deep water shark closely related to the Greenland Shark (which is not very sweet), you'd think these blunt nosed beauties would be slow and lethargic. However, the Six Gill sharks are actually pretty quick and agile. With modern technology, we finally get to see them. Shark After Dark Win!.

The next portion of Shark After Dark takes place in an aquarium in North Carolina with a Sand Tiger shark exhibit. It is important to not confuse the docile and smaller Sand Tiger with the crazy and large Tiger, as this may result in being eaten. Sand Tiger sharks do have kinda awesome teeth and are generally excellent in captivity. The big momma in this exhibit is called "Eileen" and she's a bit skittish and will only accept food at night. Using what they learned in the exhibit, the team then heads to the best place to find Sand Tigers at any time, a recent Coast Guard wreck off the coast of North Carolina. There are Sand Tiger's everywhere. They are skittish during the day, but at night, their aggression level increases. One nearly bites one of the divers.

The final destination is a Shark Week favorite: the Bahamas where the team wants to see whether Lemon Sharks are more aggressive at day or night. If you guesses night, then you are 100% correct and award yourself one cookie. At the end of the night, I've learned the following: filming sharks at night is pretty awesome, night vision technology is awesome, and I'm leaning towards Cat being attractive based entirely on the fact that I'm pretty sure sharks turn her on. If she was in Shark After Dark Nightclub, I think I would hit on her.

Anticipated Rating = Bull Shark
Actual Rating = Bull Shark (was leaning Tiger, but bumped it up based on originality)

BONUS!

Man vs. Fish with Matt Watson

This program was not officially listed as new Shark Week programming but it does appear to be a new series that is linked closely with sharks so it warrants some quick mentioning.

Matt Watson is a fucking lunatic. He's an insane person. There's no other way to define him. I guess it comes as no surprise that he's from New Zealand. See, my completely baseless, but nonetheless accurate assumption is that there are only two types of New Zealander's (Kiwi's if you will): completely insane Kiwi's (see, Watson, Matt) and incredibly deadpan yet utterly hilarious Kiwi's (see, Bret and Jermaine from Flight of the Conchords).

In this show, which is loosely based on the Mako shark, Mr. Watson attempts to, and succeeds at catching a Blue Shark (a small one be it) with his own bare fucking hands out of the side of a boat. He also swims up to an enraged Mako Shark that's caught on a line in the middle of the ocean to cut the line with a knife in the middle of the fucking ocean. Finally, Mr. Watson uses a translucent pool raft to float in the middle of ocean with a Mako Shark hooked on the end of a hand line. Yeah, he's clearly not all there. However, any man who's motto is "I love to fish, just with anything but poles" is alright in my book and I have high hopes for Mr. Watson.