Jumping the shark
By now, we all know about jumping the shark. Over the last few days, media of nearly every kind (at least those which can broadcast images) has worked itself into a feeding frenzy over "man in kayak approached by 30-foot shark." God, a shark! let's all panic and run away from the beaches, even in Montana. One might say I'm showing my bias by linking to Fox coverage of this terrifying episode, but there's a point to that. The least terrified parties to this episode were the guy in the kayak (who jumped in to the water to get a closer look) and the shark, a basking shark.
After the initial frenzy, if you get your news from one of the few media sources that still has ethics, you might have read that the kayaker's nonchalance was based on knowing that it was a basking shark and that it was not dangerous to anything bigger than krill. (It's such a bitch how facts can get in the way of a good story.)
Our worthy Fox source doesn't give up hysteria without a fight, saying "he [the kayaker] says he wasn't scared because that species of shark usually only eats krill and plankton." Emphasis on the editorial addition, which implies that the shark might vary its diet with people.
It can't. It has no teeth, and is what's called a filter feeder, ambling through the water with its mouth open, as it were grazing on plankton and krill:
At the back of that big, filter-lined mouth is a not-so-big throat. Most species of shark have more to fear from us than we from them, but this is especially true to the basking shark and its larger cousin, the whale shark. Around here, numbers of these harmless creatures, and several porpoises, were wantonly slaughtered back in the 1970s by Darrell Dumbshits acting out Jaws fantasies and attacking anything with a big dorsal fin. A couple of years back, a basking shark was foolish enough to cruise for its supper about 300 metres off our beach, which drove hundreds of panic-stricken bathers onto dry land and brought up more news helicopters than we'd seen since our last high-profile homicide. It ambled away before some jackass stuck a harpoon in it.
We can hope that cable news has jumped the shark.
After the initial frenzy, if you get your news from one of the few media sources that still has ethics, you might have read that the kayaker's nonchalance was based on knowing that it was a basking shark and that it was not dangerous to anything bigger than krill. (It's such a bitch how facts can get in the way of a good story.)
Our worthy Fox source doesn't give up hysteria without a fight, saying "he [the kayaker] says he wasn't scared because that species of shark usually only eats krill and plankton." Emphasis on the editorial addition, which implies that the shark might vary its diet with people.
It can't. It has no teeth, and is what's called a filter feeder, ambling through the water with its mouth open, as it were grazing on plankton and krill:
At the back of that big, filter-lined mouth is a not-so-big throat. Most species of shark have more to fear from us than we from them, but this is especially true to the basking shark and its larger cousin, the whale shark. Around here, numbers of these harmless creatures, and several porpoises, were wantonly slaughtered back in the 1970s by Darrell Dumbshits acting out Jaws fantasies and attacking anything with a big dorsal fin. A couple of years back, a basking shark was foolish enough to cruise for its supper about 300 metres off our beach, which drove hundreds of panic-stricken bathers onto dry land and brought up more news helicopters than we'd seen since our last high-profile homicide. It ambled away before some jackass stuck a harpoon in it.
We can hope that cable news has jumped the shark.
Labels: media criticism
posted by Uncle | 16:56
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