Starting the week with a great white - is it "Shark Week" yet?!

This video today of a great white shark half as long as the boat it was attacking near Cape May on the South Jersey coast was fascinating, and was surely reminiscent of a cinematic experience that seemingly touched us all - "Jaws". These fearsome creatures have a way of getting under our skin very easily, not least due to the certain death that this huge mouth represents! 

This video got me thinking of a TV event that is rapidly becoming as key a part of summer as the World Cup currently being played out on screens around the world - we are of course talking about "Shark Week" on the Discovery Channel! In 2013, we went right to the top of the marine food chain as they brought in none other than, wait for it, yes, Megalodon! It's one thing to be on holidays in early August, but another thing entirely when one realises that it coincides with "Shark Week"; a very happy coincidence!

It was a real thrill that they decided to kick it off with then newly surfaced evidence of Megalodon cutting a boat in half off Cape Town in South Africa, and physical details showing that it could not have been a whale slapping onto the top of the boat; rather, this boat was cut in half from the bottom of the boat, ripping it apart, and no doubt that the four bodies spilling out of it fell right into some extremely frightening dentition. 

Speaking of dentition, fossil remains of Megalodon teeth have documented that they were often as long as seven inches in diagonal length, which gives you a scary idea of the size of the animal. It is estimated that this giant of the seas grew as long as some 60-70 feet in length, making it unquestionably one of the most dominant and foreboding vertebrate predators that ever existed. Of course, it is believed that Megalodon became extinct 1-2 million years ago, and the great whites that remain today are simply smaller relatives of it - but who knows?

The boat that was torn apart in April, 2013 did not provide any answers other than that it was struck from beneath by something huge that could only have been going after it in a predatory fashion, and given the sheer size of Megalodon and its capacity to bite a whale's tail off, well, a large boat in dark water could appear to be the form of a whale to a hunting monster such as Megalodon. 

Look down the gullet of this monster and tell me you don't think it could bite a chunk off a small boat and cause some serious damage! Megalodon was a fierce predator and had it evolved onto land, well, I am not sure we would be here today. The experts say that even Tyrannosaurus rex would have been no match for Megaladon, well, apart from being a perfect match on its dinner plate beside a fistful of salad in the form of a few lush trees!

Sadly, the documentary that summer Sunday night provided no firm proof that Megalodon still lurks deep down in the unexplored virgin territories of the lowest ocean floors, but that's the way it should be. Something that is a combination of classified as extinct and an urban (marine) myth should be frustratingly hard to find! We haven't found the Loch Ness monster either, yet we all know it's down there, somewhere, right?! And the lads of "Finding Bigfoot" talk about ol' squatchy as if he was their next door neighbour, so he has to exist, right?!

Scientists discover new species all the time, and even have found living fossils of species believed to be already extinct, such as the feared giant monster Octopus species that mythically terrorised mariners through the ages, but actually existed! What if a very select few Megaladon still roam the ocean floors, surfacing to grab a great white for a snack now and then, or on the very rare occasions that their hunger becomes desperate due to lack of food, they surface and tear down whatever looks big and tasty enough?

Well, we won't know today, that's for sure. Only time will tell, and as scientists, of course we all need physical proof of the existence of Megalodon, but given some of the strange occurrences and sightings on radar, there appears to be something huge down there that we don't understand. We are prone to hate sharks, perhaps in part due to their ferocity and reputation as total killing/eating machines, but as humans I also think we are programmed to find their very faces to be the physical representation of pure evil. It's en evil, twisted, dangerous face with the coldest eyes in nature, and historically man has simply wanted to kill it. 

But we have come to understand them better and there is a very refreshing new tone to shark fishing contests in the US today - they catch the sharks, weigh and measure them, then return them back to their home. Now that's a huge shift in our ongoing evolution with these remarkable (and remarkably scary) creatures - who knows if it will come back to bite us some day, quite literally!

You can't beat some evolutionary entertainment, and "Shark Week" always provides that in abundance, so bring it on in 2014! It brings whole new meaning to the expression "sleeping with the fishes", which people on that boat above would be doing now if that beast had gotten its way! On that note I shall return to the solidity of my terrace planks, and sip a Californian Chiller Triple Espresso Dark Chocolate iced coffee, while staring out into the cityscape and seeing killer sharks everywhere. 

They are real, too, but sadly in the city they come in human form! ;)