Shark Week — 2012

Aug 201242m

Picking up where 2011's Emmy®-nominated "Ultimate Air Jaws" left off, photographer, author and shark expert Chris Fallows and legendary natural history producer Jeff Kurr embark on a quest to learn more about the great white sharks of Seal Island, South Africa — and one shark in particular. Colossus is a massive 14-foot great white that dominates all other sharks in the area. Kurr and his team push the envelope even further with a new camera specially designed for the shoot, new angles and new hair-raising encounters... even if it means risking their lives for the ultimate close-up with Colossus. And what they discover in this yearlong filming expedition is a true scientific breakthrough: dozens of great whites clustered in shallow water, feeding on smaller sharks and rays — with Colossus dominating the grounds and nearly eating the camera.

Aug 201242m

A team of wildlife cameramen, led by Shark Week veteran Andy Casagrande, heads to Gansbaai, South Africa to try to secure a shot of a great white shark that no one has been able to get... yet. Their mission is to capture a previously unseen, and some say impossible, angle of a great white shark's Polaris breach. Their task quickly turns into a race against time as weather and luck work against them and their window of opportunity to film this extremely difficult shot closes fast. Using state-of-the-art camera technology and their own ingenuity, the crew attempts to film a bird's-eye-view of the breach at super high speed, which would put them in the company of some of the greatest cameramen ever to work on Shark Week, who have pushed the limits of camera technology and their own will to get "impossible" shots. Will this team join the ranks of the greats?

Aug 201242m

To celebrate the monumental 25th anniversary of Shark Week, Discovery is resurrecting the largest shark to ever swim in our oceans, a predator so fierce he could have bitten a T. rex in two: the mighty Megalodon. The size of a city bus, these prehistoric sharks were as large as 60 feet long and weighed at least 100,000 pounds. This shark was the ultimate Jaws: Megalodons had 250 serrated teeth, each six inches long, set in jaws six feet wide and eight feet tall. In response to questions raised by a Miocene era crime scene, a team of engineers and paleontologists work together to design and build this monster, to see just what he was capable of. Enlisting the help of MythBusters Kari Byron, Grant Imahara and Tori Belleci, the team puts these chilling chompers to the test.

Aug 201242m

This year marks the 25th anniversary of what has become a truly epic week in television — and no celebration would be complete without the MythBusters. Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman have put themselves in some pretty hair-raising scenarios to bust the biggest shark myths over the years, and now they count down their top 25 of all time. The duo also takes on new myths, shows never-seen-before footage and reveals the #1 shark myth that will quite literally blow people away. Get ready to go back in the water as the MythBusters' best shark moments are unleashed!

Aug 201242m

There are very few movies we can honestly say truly changed the world — but Jaws is one of them. Audiences stood in lines that wrapped entire city blocks to watch the world’s first summer blockbuster. Careers were made, fortunes created, and ways of directing and scoring movies and shooting special effects were all changed forever when it was released. But the impact the film had on the oceans and their inhabitants was as big as the audience it found — and just as surprising. In the aftermath of the film's release, great white sharks were vilified and killed, leading to their near-disappearance from the eastern seaboard. At the same time, public fascination with sharks led to a golden age of shark science that completely changed our view of the ocean and how it works. And as the science began showing us how real sharks behave, it spurred a worldwide conservation effort whose earliest champion was Jaws author Peter Benchley.

Aug 201242m

During a routine search and rescue mission over the Pacific in WWII, an American plane crashed into shark-infested waters. This is the inspiring true story of two war heroes — one an Olympian, one a pastor's son — who managed to survive a record-breaking 47 days at sea in a life raft. They subsisted on only the food they were able to catch from the ocean and the water they were able to collect from the rain, all while fighting off a gang of sharks that were their constant companions. But when they finally did reach land, it was only the beginning of their troubles. What happened to these men is one of the greatest tests of faith, will and endurance of our time.

Aug 201242m

They've been through the ultimate nightmare: hand-to-jaw combat against the ocean's apex predators, losing limbs and barely escaping with their lives. Yet even after the attacks, they're still fighting, but what for will surprise you. Amazingly, dozens of shark attack victims around the world have devoted their lives to saving their attackers. They have turned what could have been tragedy into their life's mission, becoming some of the most powerful shark advocates on the planet. Meet the Shark Survivors and hear their stories of resilience and triumph as they fight what they consider the ultimate battle: saving sharks and our oceans.

Aug 201242m

Ten of the most terrifying animal attacks filmed by eyewitnesses. Some of the world's biggest predators - a 15 foot shark, raging elephants, and a half ton bull turn their attention towards people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Aug 201242m

Right outside the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is home to some of the biggest great white sharks in the world... but only for part of the year. Teams of scientists from Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey Bay have spent years tagging and tracking these sharks to find out why they come here, why they leave and where they go when they do — out into the Pacific on the Great White Highway. But the sharks have kept much about their lives completely secret, leaving researchers with little information about what they spend their summers doing and almost no idea about where they mate or bear their young. Now, armed with new technologies, the team is hoping to wire the ocean and find out how these sharks live their lives — and why California is one of the biggest stops on the Great White Highway.

Aug 2012