Tell Discovery to Protect Sharks,

David Shiffman's interview with Discovery's Shark Week executive Paul Gasek
has taken place, and is posted on David's blog.


http://southernfriedscience.com/2009/07/07/interview-with-discovery-channel-executive-paul-gasek/

Gasek failed to address the point of our Manifesto--that his company is
making a great deal of money victimizing sharks by cultivating hatred and
fear of them, when they are on the verge of extinction.

He failed to address the fact that Discovery is considered by reputation to
be an educational channel, so that people believe, when shown sharks as
monstrous killing machines, that they really are. The truth is that they
are not. People all over the world swim with sharks for pleasure, an
activity which is possible because sharks are social, calm, intelligent, and
do not target people for food.

As expected, Gasek repeated similar platitudes to those he gave The Shark
Group representatives when they met with him. When asked about his
background, he said he had experience making natural history programming,
but he failed to mention that he spent 10 years as a commercial fisherman.

He also failed to mention the level of his scientific education, which is
relevant given that he is the scientific advisor for Shark Week. A
scientific advisor with no scientific education is questionable in
itself. When our representatives met with him, he thought that throwing
turkeys to tiger sharks was science.

At this meeting, he said that the horror factor of Shark Week was an
institution, but that they were using it less. This year's subject matter
consists of five out of six new shows focused on shark attacks, so no effort
is being made to improve the content of Shark Week in terms of presenting
sharks as they really are. Absolutely magnificent films about sharks as they
really appear underwater, have been turned down by them. The mention made
of the need for shark conservation is meaningless when they are causing
people to think that sharks SHOULD be hunted to extinction.

Its natural that Gasek would use this opportunity to tell everyone how good
Shark Week is but at our private meeting he laughingly referred to what they
do as SHARK PORN, emphasizing how proud he is of it. It was clear, and clear
to me from seeing what Discovery did to the sequence about shark social
lives and intelligence that I offered them, that Gasek cares about sharks
uniquely in terms of how much money they can make from them.

He glosses over our pointed issues with the slipperiness of an eel.

From a recent article against trying to save sharks from extinction by
Justin Clarke:

“Sharks scare the hell out of me. I’ve watched enough Discovery Channel to
know that sharks are pure killing machines…”

The theme of the Manifesto is to denounce Discovery Channel, owned by
Discovery Communications for profiting from the demonization of ordinary and
important animals on the verge of extinction. It calls for a boycott
against Shark Week programming until they begin to show sharks as they truly
are. Since they began, in 1987, their crimes against sharks have earned them
billions of dollars, and created a wave of hatred of sharks that stands in
the way of their protection from extinction.

If you have not yet signed the Manifesto, here's the link again:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Boycott-Shark-Week