Eckerd students participation in Shark Week may rival the one on Discovery Channel

We noted interest an article by Jayne Gardiner in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune the other day that made the point that Sarasota's local Shark Week, which included Eckerd College students, was far more exciting, not to mention real, than the much ballyhooed Shark Week on the Discovery Channel that just concluded.

Olympic champion Michael Phelps' swim against a great white shark was, of course, a ratings record-breaker with more than five million viewers even though some viewers apparently felt somehow cheated when they discovered that Phelps wasn't actually in the water with the shark and that it was animated anyway. Careful viewers understood the details but some apparently missed the disclaimers.

In any case, Jayne Gardiner's article calls attention to a state-funded program in April based at Sarasota's New College in which some 40 marine science students from various colleges, included Eckerd, helped tag and release various varieties of sharks aboard the research vessel R/V Bellows in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Sarasota. The objective was to aid the study of sharks as a species. Bravo to all those adventurous students.