Sharks and Giant Squids, Discovery Week In Review

This year The Discovery Channel pulled off a wonderful Shark Week, filled with fresh and exciting footage. The cable network has been carrying on the tradition known as Shark Week for 19 years, and next year, they will celebrate the weeklong shark-friendly programming fest's 20th anniversary. This time around they made a very wise choice in asking Mike Rowe of its series "Dirty Jobs" to host. The witty and daring Rowe accepted his mission with reservations but still dove in headfirst, as he does on "Dirty Jobs," a show salutes the people who do the jobs no one else wants or would do but are interesting in some key way or essential to life as we know it.

For Shark Week's main feature, Rowe's show did a theme of "Jobs That Bite," and Rowe and his team showed us just that, all the jobs shark-related that none of us would touch with a ten-foot shark-tagging pole. Rowe's personality lent itself extremely well to the material, keeping it comical and educational, showing what the average person's reaction would be to any of these tasks. They even wrapped the week with outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage of Rowe and his crew having fun while chasing their assignment, to go where the sharks are. It was a perfect combination, and the entire week carried new, pertinent, and fascinating coverage that made this year's Shark Week one of the best the network has ever accomplished.

The Saturday after Shark Week usually carries some relevant breakthrough special that Shark Week leads into very well. Two years ago, it was "In Search of Giants" that chased the elusive Giant Squid in trying to catch and raise babies in captivity. This year, Discovery had a new ace up its sleeve in the everlasting scientific journey towards cracking open the secrets of the mysterious Giant Squid. A special feature, "Big Science: Giant Squid, Captured on Camera," aired the first ever recorded footage of a live Giant Squid. The footage itself is just a first step and even attaining it is a giant leap forward, but there is still a long way to go. The fact is that this may have been the best Shark Week Discovery has organized in many years, and we can only imagine what's in store for its grand milestone in 2007.