A Sharky Start to Business
Sharks are seriously on my brain this week, and I blame the Discovery Channel. For the 23rd consecutive year, they are dedicating an entire week of educational programming to sharks [SCREAM] and I’ve already had to submerge myself in the world of the Great White for the benefit of a rather interesting article that features elsewhere on the site.
While drawing parallels between the dark depths of the ocean and the murky world of business M&As certainly offered (fish) food for thought, it doesn’t exactly help the rather nervy disposition that sharks have already cast in my mind.
Let’s be honest, sharks are scary. It really doesn’t matter how many times you put me in front of television shows that tell me I’m more likely to be hit by a bus than I am to be attacked by a shark, or how many times you ask me to read literature that dispels the myth that sharks are man-eating monsters, sharks just terrify me. And I’m sorry Discovery Channel, but not even 23 years of programming will change that fact.
Whenever I see a shark, my head just says, “cue Jaws theme.” For instance, in 2000, the year with the most recorded shark attacks, there were 79 reported worldwide, 16 of them fatal. And, while a July 2003 New York Times report said there had been only one fatal attack in the previous year, the actual number of fatal shark attacks remains inconclusive. That’s because, for the majority of third world coastal nations, there exists no method of reporting suspected shark attacks and losses and fatalities either near-shore or at sea often remain unsolved or unpublicised.
I, for one, am placed firmly behind the sofa. But then I found this, a rather interesting article on ABC News from last year, which offers the conundrum, What Sound Does A Shark Make? (Answer: Ka-Ching!) According to the article, which was written last year, the shark, with its rows upon rows of teeth and watchful, piercing black eyes, is firmly in the business of making A LOT of money.
For one thing, says the article, the shark-fishing business is booming and writer Peter Dizikes notes that “Untold millions of sharks land in fishing nets every year, and to the outrage of conservationists, many have their fins hacked off and are tossed back in the ocean to die a (presumably) painful, crippled death.”
The reason for this is that shark fin soup is considered something of a delicacy in the Pacific Rim and, according to authority Sean Van Sommeran, executive director of the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, Calif., “…a set of fins for a basking shark can bring in as much as $1000 upwards.” And the money-making splurge doesn’t end there: in aquariums, for instance, the presence of live sharks act as a huge pull for visitors, in some cases pulling in as much as $800,000 per month in ticket prices. Or have you ever fancied having a shark as pet? A little extra fishing around (sorry, couldn’t help myself) says that while tiny, Bala Sharks are common additions to home aquariums, bigger, more predatory sharks (hammerheads and the like) are largely illegal to purchase, but not impossible.
They are, however, likely to set you back around $2000 – and that’s before you even contemplate the necessary logistics of being able to erect an aquarium larger than that at Sea World. And so that brings us back to the Discovery Channel’s own Shark Week, which according to Nielsen Media Research, gets an average rating of 1.1million, more than double the channel’s norm in June and July.
Showing there media savvy capabilities then, execs at Discovery Channel subsequently used Shark Week as a vehicle for an ad-overhaul in 2009, urging the audiences to buy cable modems and digital cable. In short, the shark business is booming – and while I’m still more likely to agree with that “just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water” mantra, even I have to admit those dollar signs are alluring. Where’s my one-piece?
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