100th Post Sharkstravaganza

The more you hang around the internet and read blogs, the more you realize that blogs tend to follow r/K selection theory.  There are r-selected blogs, which spring up, pump out a couple posts, then vanish, and often have authors that just keep making entire new blogs whenever they get an idea, and then there are the K-selected blogs, which encompass a decent variety of subjects while still staying on-topic.  K-selected blogs are the ones that eventually develop followings, regular commenters, maybe even join up with other like-minded, long-lived blogs.  I’m proud to announce that with this, the 100th post on Ya Like Dags?, this particular corner of the internet has moved closer to true K-selection.

It’s been quite a ride so far, and very rewarding.  I can only hope that over the course of these past nine months and 100 posts, I’ve written something that has gotten someone interested in or excited about spiny dogfish, shark research, or marine biology in general, or at least made them laugh at my irredeemable nerdiness.  Here’s to 100 more posts of grad student snark and small shark action.

Enough with the waxing poetic.  Where do people go to celebrate something on the internet?  That’s right, YouTube.  Click below the jump for the official Ya Like Dags? list of the five greatest shark videos on YouTube.

5.) Children of the Unicorn – Night Shark

Why?  Because it’s ridiculous.  And by “ridiculous” I mean “ridiculously awesome.”  Two grown men dressed as sharks spend the duration of an already-epic song beating the crap out of each other on the street and wailing on guitars on a rooftop.  This video almost makes the fact that MTV will play anything other than a music video these days worth it, because it forces music videos to move online where they can truly advance the art form.  And by “advance the art form” I mean “give me something to watch over and over while I’m supposed to be writing my thesis.”

4.) Must Love Jaws

Most shark fans have a love/hate relationship with Jaws.  After all, this is the movie that single-handedly made trophy killing of large sharks cool, which lead to the sorry state of many species today.  However, the flipside is that Jaws is also an excellent movie, arguably Spielberg’s best.  The dirty little secret of Jaws is that it’s really a buddy movie, with a pretty strong bromance between Brody and Hooper that shines through the mayhem.  That’s why this re-cut trailer, which puts that bromance front and center while including the shark, is frickin’ brilliant.

3.) Anything with a Jumping Great White

Yes, it’s pretty much all that Shark Week shows as an alternative to attack documentaries, but I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a sucker for leaping great whites.  It’s a raised middle finger to dolphins everywhere: yeah, we’ll see your leaping backflip and raise you a leaping backflip while killing something.  As David from Southern Fried Science once said, classics never go out of style.

2.) Helping Hand for a Spinner Shark

This video warms my heart every time I see it.  Sharks do occasionally beach themselves (though not as often as those incompetent cetaceans), and it’s good for my cartilaginous soul to see that there are some beachgoers willing to pull a stranded shark back in the water (to music from Rocky, even).  Spinner sharks are also one of my favorites, so the fact that this video involves one of them is icing on the cake.

1.) Great Hammerhead vs. Tarpon vs. Fisherman

This video has it all, and is so well-shot you could almost accuse it of being staged.  The way the hammerhead sneaks in at the beginning, the fact that you don’t really know who to root for or who’s going to win during the chase, the final money shot with the triumphant shark chowing down on its well-earned meal; it’s all riveting stuff.  The most striking part of this video for me is that the fisherman isn’t even mad, just excited to have been a participant.  It makes me wish I had an opportunity to fish on the Gulf Coast, which is bittersweet now given both the Deepwater Horizon spill and drastically reduced numbers of great hammerheads.  Hopefully the events on this video won’t be consigned to the past.

Well that was fun.  I hope you’ve enjoyed the last 100 posts as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them, and that you’ll stick around for whatever I do to celebrate the 200th post.  Thanks for reading.

8 comments

  1. John Carroll · September 29, 2010

    Congrats!

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  3. WhySharksMatter · September 29, 2010

    Congrats! Also, nothing about “mega shark vs. giant octopus”? That trailer is epic.

    • Chuck · September 29, 2010

      I love trailers for bad SyFy movies as much as anyone, but the baseline for insanity on this list is the Night Shark video. If this were a Top 10 list both Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus and Sharktopus would be on there.

  4. Dan · September 29, 2010

    Congrats! You are truly inspirational

  5. Southern Fried Scientist · September 29, 2010

    Congratulations! Must Love Jaws is the original awesome-sauce shark youtube clip.

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