Customer Reviews

Surviving Sharks featuring Les Stroud - Discovery Channel

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I bought this DVD because I love documentaries about the oceans and especially apex predators. This, however, is not a scientific documentary, but an overly priced extremely short DVD (42 minutes) of Les Stroud trying to impress up with how scary sharks are because they bite and kill things and how awesome he is for documenting them. He does.. barely get across the point that sharks are opportunistic and cautious feeders and there is much we can do to prevent damaging incidents involving them. However, all the so called 'experiments' appear clearly staged to gain the most sensational reaction from the sharks. For instance the test dummies were 'scented' with fish chum so the sharks show interest. I don't normally take a bath in fish guts before jumping in the ocean because that would be stupid. Why? Because Sharks eat fish and are attracted to blood, they don't really care if its wrapped in a wet suit! That's a ridiculous experiment, of course the sharks are going to bite them. On an environmental note, I know Tiger sharks are considered the garbage disposals of the sea, but I really don't think we should be feeding them chum laden wet suits, just because it looks cool on camera.
The synopsis on the back is also very misleading. There are no experiments done with oceanic white tips, no simulated plane crash or ship wreck either. I thought the box was missing a disc or something, but its just a bunch of chummy dummies or a giant "chumsicle" in the water with different types of sharks. Finally, it seemed like Neptunic Shark Suits financed a lot of the project because the only "renowned' expert was the inventor of the chain mail(I forget his name). He makes cool suits, but he's a photographer not a Marine Biologist. By the way, he also fails to mention that, although his new shark suit may withstand punctures from the teeth of a Great White, the bones in you're body will probably resemble a sack of gravel after you get yourself bitten.

So overall, super disappointing, not really educational and definitely over dramatized. I will say, there are some nice shots of the sharks (though not all the species claimed on the back)though some of the footage obviously came from BBC's Planet Earth series. In conclusion: Stick to Shark Week for sensationalistic low education Shark videos, it at least runs an hour long.

If anyone does an internet search to find out about this production, they will find that the "experiments" were fixed to ensure they could film shark interaction. The sharks NEVER went near the dummies for hours. So they stuffed the wetsuit with dead fresh fish to entice the sharks to bite.
Then they edit it to make it look instantaneous. Irresponsible programming trying to portray Les Shroud as something he is not.
Stay far away from this DVD or anything by this production company.