Entertainment

August bites

Shark-nado” has nothing on “Shark Week.”

Tonight at 8 p.m., Discovery Channel will launch its 26th year of “Shark Week,” the one week each year when viewers can get their fill of sharks swimming, leaping, chomping and generally scaring the crap out of everyone.

There’s a reason that Discovery keeps bringing back the holy terrors: ratings. In 2012, “Shark Week” attracted a total of 21.4 million viewers. Last year, viewers sent out 1.6 million Tweets about “Shark Week,” doubling 2011’s tally, and the week accounted for 35 percent of all of cable TV’s social activity, according to social-media tracking firm Trendrr.

This year “Shark Week” offers the most original content ever — 11 new specials plus “Shark After Dark,” an hour-long late-night talk show that will be hosted by comedian and “Chelsea Lately” veteran Josh Wolf. The event’s already gotten plenty of promotion, after Discovery created a promo starring poor Snuffy the Seal that was featured on NBC’s “Today” after going viral. (http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week to check it out.)

“There’s definitely a scare factor to ‘Shark Week’ and that’s part of the joy of it,” says Mike Sorensen, Discovery’s senior director of development. “But there’s also a big conservation message under a lot of our shows.”

While many of the week’s programs focus on the terrifying aspects of sharks — their swimming speed, their feeding frenzies, their giant teeth! — the annual event has actually done a lot to educate people about why sharks need to be saved. Over the past 10 years, according to scientists, shark populations appear to be on the rise. That’s largely due to legislated changes in fishing techniques, such as drag-netting, which prevents sharks, and particularly shark pups, from being killed in large numbers.

“There are definitely more sharks now off of the California coast,” says Jeff Kurr, who has been producing shark documentaries for Discovery and “Shark Week” for more than 20 years and this year produced the harrowingly named “Great White Serial Killer.”

“In other places, sharks are still in trouble, but in places such as California, they have been managed. People have stood up for sharks,” says Kurr. (Warning: Don’t swim at the beach in Santa Monica. Great whites are frequently seen under the Santa Monica pier, according to Kurr.)

More sharks mean more attacks, however, and that’s something Kurr delves into in this year’s documentary. “Great White Serial Killer” explores the notion that great whites (the same species you saw in “Jaws”) and human serial killers share a lot of the same traits.

“It’s not one of those titles I put on the show without a lot of forethought,” Kurr says, “but there are cases where all predators are alike. They do things the same way.”

For example, great whites and human serial killers both stalk their prey, picking out the weakest and most vulnerable.

“The big difference is motivation,” Kurr says. “Human serial killers kill for psychological thrills. Sharks don’t have malice, they are just trying to survive.”

As part of “Great White Serial Killer,” Kurr and his team investigated two shark attacks that took place in Surf Beach, Calif., almost exactly two years apart on Oct. 22, 2010, and Oct. 23, 2012. “White shark migrations are timed in two-year intervals,” says Kurr, which partly explains why the attacks happened when they did.

Kurr also dug up other interesting information that could be affecting the behavior of sharks and will be revealed in “Great White Serial Killer,” airing Wednesday at 10 p.m.

Speaking of being terrified of going swimming, people might want to dust that fear off. “Voodoo Sharks,” which airs Monday at 10 p.m., explores the notion that bull sharks, which are actually even more deadly than great whites, are able to adapt to fresh water. Scientists have been tracking bull sharks and found that they are taking up residence in the Louisiana bayous, Lake Pontchartrain and even making their way up the Mississippi River.

While the notion of bull sharks in the bayou is interesting on its own, Sorensen says Discovery also hopes to benefit from the current popularity of swamp shows, such as History’s “Swamp People” and A&E’s “Duck Dynasty.”

Those who like to get up close and personal with sharks will enjoy “Return of Jaws,” on Monday at 9 p.m. In that show, producers used a “Shark Cam” — actually an autonomous underwater vehicle with a high-definition camera attached to it — to track a 17-foot Great White shark off of the coast of Cape Cod.

Marine scientist Greg Skomal worked with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to attach a transponder to a Great White via a harpoon. This sounds challenging but Skomal says it’s something that Woods Hole has been doing for four years, and that tagging the shark was the simplest part of the project.

“The biggest challenge we had with the technology was closing the gap between the robot and the shark,” Skomal says. “Sharks constantly swim at swimming speeds of more than five miles an hour, and that’s hard to keep up with. We learned more about that as well as their hunting behavior close to shore.”

Finally, “Shark Week” will top it all off every night with “Shark After Dark” at 11 p.m., a one-week experiment to see how Discovery would fare with an original late-night talk show. Comedian Josh Wolf says the goal is to “make it funny.”

“It’s a traditional late-night talk show with a monologue, sketches and guests that will be geared toward the regular guy who watches Discovery,” says Wolf.

VIEWER’S GUIDE

Tonight

AIR JAWS: BEYOND THE BREACH

8 p.m., Discovery

A documentary crew tracks how Air Jaws has changed what we know about these lives of sharks.

MEGALODON: THE MONSTER SHARK LIVES

9 p.m., Discovery

A massive killer great white shark off the coast of South Africa stars in this eerie special. Could it be Megalodon, a 60-foot relative of the great white and one of the most powerful predators in history?

Monday

RETURN OF JAWS

9 p.m., Discovery

Shark Cam, a robot submarine, follows great whites living and hunting off the shores of Cape Cod.

VOODOO SHARKS

10 p.m., Discovery

Nicknamed “voodoo sharks” by shrimp fishermen in the bayous of Louisiana, bull sharks can live in both salt and fresh water environments.

Tuesday

I ESCAPED JAWS

9 p.m., Discovery

Nicole Moore, a nurse, lost her arm in an attack while vacationing in Mexico and saved her own life by instructing those on the beach on how to treat her wounds. Australian navy diver Paul de Gelder relied on his experience as a diver to survive after a shark bit off both his arm and leg. In “I Escaped Jaws,” the survivors of shark attacks share their chilling stories.

SPAWN OF JAWS

10 p.m., Discovery

A team of scientists search for the breeding grounds of the elusive great white, in hopes of protecting the area and repopulating their numbers.

Wednesday

TOP 10 SHARKDOWN

9 p.m., Discovery

This special takes a close look at the sharks you don’t want to meet this summer — and the ones you’re most likely to encounter. They include the cookie cutter shark, which bites cookie-shaped circles out of its prey, and the sand tiger, whose cannibalistic young devour each other in the womb, among others.

GREAT WHITE SERIAL KILLER

10 p.m., Discovery

Natural history producer Jeff Kurr examines two fatal shark attacks in California and determines if one shark was responsible for both attacks.

Thursday

SHARKPOCALYPSE

9 p.m., Discovery

This special examines the alarming trend of sharks moving in closer to shorelines.

ALIEN SHARKS OF THE DEEP

10 p.m., Discovery

American and Japanese scientists descend into the deepest and darkest unexplored oceans on Earth in search of some of the more incredible and bizarre sharks on the planet.

Friday

THE GREAT WHITE GAUNTLET

8 p.m., Discovery

The coast of south Australia is known as the Great White Gauntlet, home to a rare sea snail called the abalone which is worth thousands on the international market.