Wildlife biologist Forrest Galante didn’t expect to fall in love with a new species of shark as he dove deep into the waters of South Africa to find some of the most unique and odd sharks for Shark Week. Ahead of the kickoff of Shark Week’s 35th year on Discovery Sunday, July 23, Galante opened up to PopCulture.com about the unexpected encounters he had under the water onย Alien Sharks: Strange New Worlds as he went on a mission to “make people fall in love with the little guys” of the shark world.
Exploring the “unbelievable sub-aquatic environment” off the coast of South Africa, Galante sought out sharks that aren’t well-known, even by shark lovers. “When you think about Shark Week, you think about white sand beaches, clear blue water and big toothy sharks, and this really flips it all on its head,” he told PopCulture. “We got cold stormy, murky seas, big tall kelp forests, and most importantly the coolest sharks.”
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These sharks aren’t “the ones that get all the media and the spotlight and the attention,” Galante continued, “Not your [great white sharks], your tiger sharks and your bull sharks, but underrepresented unique organisms that truly occur nowhere else in the world and have just such unique morphological and behavioral adaptations that they stand above the rest.”
While Galante was able to track down numerous lesser-known sharks, coming out of his adventure, the biologist has an “emotional soft spot” for the pyjama shark, also known as the striped catshark. “The ones that came in were cuddling up and I was stimulating their ampullae on their nose and turning them over.” He joked, “I became like a shark masseuse down there, and I never knew I would fall in love so much with a small stripy species of shark.”
Galante was “smitten” by the pyjama sharks he encountered, especially when he and the camera crew were able to capture them mating on film for what they believe is the first time ever. “I just absolutely fell in love with those animals,” he gushed. It’s these kinds of emotions Galante wants to elicit in Shark Week viewers as well, in hopes that animal lovers will take up the cause of protecting their ecosystem.ย
“The big guys always get all the press, and so we know that we need to protect white sharks and tiger sharks and bull sharks and things like that,” he explained. “What people don’t understand is that the foundation of the ecosystem actually comes from those mesopredators, those in-between species, and it’s really important to fall in love with them so that we can protect and preserve them.”ย
With such a fragile ecosystem existing off the coast of South Africa, small changes can lead to the disappearance of all of the species that make it so special, which would lead to the collapse of everything, including all the high-profile sharks Shark Week fans are used to seeing. “I want people to understand how cool these animals are so that they understand the value in protecting them and preserving their ecosystem,” Galante told PopCulture.
Alien Sharks: Strange New Worlds premieres Monday, July 24 at 10 p.m. ET on Discovery. Then Thursday, July 27, Galante returns for Shark vs Snake: Battle of the Bites at 10 p.m. ET, exploring his theory that tiger sharks washing up dead on the beaches of Western Australia with no sign of attack could be meeting their end via deadly sea snakes.
