Wetsuits and Fake Sharks

When a video of a man dressed in a wetsuit with prosthetic fish attachments thrashing around in the water is encountered you can be forgiven for thinking the viewer accidentally popped onto some piscine porn channel while innocently searching for sealionsinbikinis.com.  When you learn that the video is on the Discovery Channel you realise that the person was actually searching for Nazi Gold Secret Super Weapon Megastructures of World War II Revealed or whatever the latest "let's milk hideous carnage, genocide and global war for a few more dollars" documentary is this week.

Normally the Discovery Channel focusses on making money by watching other people do stuff.  In Deadliest Catch they watch crab fishermen fish for crabs.  In Diesel Brothers they watch truck customisers customise trucks.  In Moonshiners they watch moonshiners shining moons (I presume, I haven't actually seen that one).  Every so often however they put aside what is essentially high quality workplace security footage and roll out "Shark Week" or "Shark Month" or possibly even "Shark Decade".  This is a period of time that the Discovery Channel dedicates to exploiting the crap out of sharks.

Anything shark related is fair game but preferably focussing on sharp teeth, high body counts and the sheer impossibility of the human being lasting for more than a second or two when brought into contact with this aquatic killing machine.  Pretty soon they'll just be shovelling puppies into a shark tank and filming the results.  Before they reach that pinnacle of televisual nirvana however there was the obligatory man vs shark competition. 

You know what these things are like.  You take an animal that is famous for doing something rather well and you pit it against a human being in a contest to see which is the better.  Running races with cheetahs for example or, in this case, a swimming competition with a shark.  It's fair to say that sharks are rather good at swimming.  Sharks who can't swim are a rare breed indeed.  We never sit a shark and a person down and see which of them is the first to count to a hundred. 

In this instance the human race was represented by Michael Phelps a former Olympian (apparently in swimming) and generally a poor man's Kieren Perkins.  To make this pathetic forgone conclusion slightly more interesting (or at least more amusing) they dressed Michael in a wetsuit and added a wacking big fin.  The big moment came and sadly Michael came up wanting as the shark powered past him for an easy win.

There was immediate outrage from the viewing public but the outrage wasn't directed at the result.  Apparently not even the Discovery Channel was prepared to risk the life of a former Olympian and as result the race took place between Michael Phelps and a CGI shark.  The response from the viewing public was furious; fake news hashtags were thrown about (since when is a guy in a wetsuit with a artificial fin racing an imaginary shark any sort of news at all?) and there was a general feeling that the Discovery Channel had led its viewers on by promising something it failed to deliver on.  That doesn't sound like the Discovery Channel does it?

The big takeaway from this is that a large number of people were hoping to see Michael Phelps dumped into a hostile environment with one of the supreme killers of the sea.  One suspects that the earnest hope of most was blood on the water.  Michael might want to change his address, he's obviously less popular than he thought.  As for the Discovery Channel it has learnt its lesson.  I understand they're trucking the puppies to the studio as we speak.