What Happens On Shark Week If They Can't Find Any Sharks? Returning Host Forrest Galante Opens Up About The 'Pressure To Perform'
It's a big ocean out there.
Discovery's annual Shark Week is going strong in the 2024 TV schedule, and wildlife biologist Forrest Galante was back this year for the newest edition of Alien Sharks. This time, he was on the search for the extremely rare Japanese angel shark. It was a big task to try and accomplish in a very limited amount of time, with the very real risk that the team just wouldn't be able to find the specific species they were looking for in the massive ocean. Galante spoke with CinemaBlend about the stress of looking for sharks that are nearly impossible to find for a Shark Week special.
Fortunately for Forrest Galante and his team in Alien Sharks: Ghosts of Japan, they did ultimately find an angel shark to spread awareness about their critically endangered status. That's also not all they discovered, as the team found seventeen unique species as well as witnessed and even assisted with velvet dogfish sharks giving birth. When I spoke with Galante – who joked that he's now a "shark midwife" after the experience with the velvet dogfish – for Shark Week 2024, I asked him just how much of a needle in a haystack it is to search for one rare shark species. He shared:
As usual, Shark Week 2024 is packed with specials focused on great white sharks, including one that prompted one expert to share his concerns about fans of the film Jaws. Alien Sharks had a much narrower focus with the goal of finding a specific species, with no guarantee of even any kind of success. Considering the popularity of Shark Week on Discovery, is it any wonder that there's a sense of extra pressure? Galante continued:
Ghosts of Japan isn't the first Alien Sharks installment with Forrest Galante and his team making some thrilling discoveries while on the search for different sharks, although the dogfish giving birth is quite different from when they unexpectedly found the famous orcas known as Port and Starboard in last year's special. For Shark Week 2023, Galante had told us that he'd considered it a "terrible idea" to count on spotting the two whales because they were surely "never going to find literally two individual orcas in the entire ocean." And then they did, by complete happenstance!
It was a particularly meaningful find due to the ongoing effects of orcas killing great whites in ways that can get pretty gory. Of course, the search for alien sharks goes at a fast pace for those of us watching from home, but how much is the experience a waiting game while the footage is being captured in real time? I asked Forrest Galante that very question, and he shared:
Believe it or not, Alien Sharks: Ghosts of Japan was the end result of a project six years in the making. Fortunately, Galante and Co. found their Japanese angel shark to pay off on all the years, all the work, and all the waiting, and this special is worth a rewatch along with other Shark Week programming via a Max subscription. The action isn't over yet for the year either, as Shark Week continues through Saturday, July 13 on Discovery.
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Laura turned a lifelong love of television into a valid reason to write and think about TV on a daily basis. She's not a doctor, lawyer, or detective, but watches a lot of them in primetime. CinemaBlend's resident expert and interviewer for One Chicago, the galaxy far, far away, and a variety of other primetime television. Will not time travel and can cite multiple TV shows to explain why. She does, however, want to believe that she can sneak references to The X-Files into daily conversation (and author bios).