Spoilers ahead for Shark Week's "Belly of the Beast" TV special.
Shark Week has officially kicked off in the 2023 TV schedule, and the seven days of aquatic action couldn't have gotten off to a more exciting start than with "Belly of the Beast: Feeding Frenzy." The special sent Dr. Austin Gallagher down into a whale decoy while his team used (and gathered) data about the behavior of great white sharks off South Africa. The finale sequence was so harrowing that it felt right out of a blockbuster movie. Dr. Gallagher spoke with CinemaBlend about the special and the finale sequence!
After previously breaking down the threat of orca "serial killers" to the great white population in the waters off South Africa, Dr. Austin Gallagher shared his firsthand experience in the whale decoy as well as the finished product. When I noted that the finale felt like a film and asked if he was aware of what was happening at the time, he explained:
That's a cool question, Laura. So, the answer is yes, but you have your own little lane, your own little track. Because you're exactly right. That whole act plays out just like a movie. It's all real. It's all real action. You have me in the decoy. You have two boats with film crews, with chum, with scientists. You have the underwater experts, the safety divers, all these individuals have their own perspective on what's happening. Then you have the underwater filmmaker, you have the drone in the sky, you have all these pieces that come together, and it really is this movie set kind of experience.
Even though the massive great white shark attacking the whale decoy and all of the unexpected complications felt straight out of a movie, they certainly weren't scripted! The encounter with the shark fortunately came to a very happy ending with the scientists able to tag the creature, and that's not how a shark movie often ends. Dr. Gallagher continued:
And then the shark becomes the actor on set, so there's very few instances where the shark – the shark always should be the star of the show, by the way – but where it takes the reins as being like one of the actors that's driving the entire scene forward from a creative standpoint. And that's exactly what happened with this large shark that we named Ray.
Films like Jaws (which resulted in a decimation of the shark population that Steven Spielberg has said he regrets) and Jason Statham's The Meg may center on sharks, but the heroes are the humans who survive. While the great white of "Belly of the Beast: Feeding Frenzy" certainly posed a huge threat if something had gone wrong on a catastrophic scale, the encounter was a scientific success.
Of course, the shark quite literally took the reins at one point and began to drag the vessels through the water. Dr. Gallagher shared his thoughts on what was happening while he was in the belly of the decoy whale:
I actually didn't know that was happening because I was inside Earl and I was on the surface, but I didn't know that the shark was pulling it. It's just insane. I mean, it was literally like a movie.
Trying Earl the whale decoy in the waters off South Africa was clearly a successful experiment, even if the final tagging of Ray the shark went in some "insane" directions that the scientists couldn't have seen coming! All in all, I can see why "Belly of the Beast: Feeding Frenzy" was chosen as the special that would start out Shark Week this year.
This is also a special year for Shark Week, and not just because Aquaman star Jason Momoa is host. Shark Week celebrates its 35th year on television in 2023, and the film-quality finale of "Belly of the Beast" proves just how far the event has come since 1988! This special also showed how orcas continue to be a huge threat to great whites, which Shark Week first explored in-depth – no pun intended – in 2022, with some gory footage of killer whales and great white sharks and challenges to the fan-favorite Air Jaws special.
Shark Week 2023 has only just begun, and Night 2 of the shark-filled extravaganza on July 24 will deliver "Great White Fight Club" at 8 p.m. ET, "Monster of the Bermuda Triangle" at 9 p.m., and "Alien Sharks: Strange New Worlds" at 10 p.m. on Discovery. The specials will also be available streaming with a Max subscription.
