I have been an enormous fan of Shark Week on Discovery Channel since elementary school. It's the week I look forward to all summer because, quite simply, I love sharks. But I don't just love the sharks. I love the oceans they live in, and as the apex predators of the oceans, sharks are essential to the health and survival of the oceans we know and love. Without sharks to kill the old, sick, and dying in fish populations, what were once small scale illnesses, become epidemics, and on top of losing the sharks, we lose significant amounts of fish populations, which leads to the loss of even more wildlife down the food chain. With 73 million sharks killed a year for shark fin soup (a delicacy in China) alone, it's clear to see that our sharks and our oceans' ecosystems are in trouble, and Shark Week wants to help.

While on the surface Shark Week is all about the gnarliest bites and Great Whites breaching the water to get a seal, it's also about showing people that sharks are something to be admired and protected. The goal of the program is to show viewers how majestic and awesome these creatures are, and in that, hopefully inspire people to help save the world.

Unfortunately, the media loves any story about shark attacks, especially with all of the recent events during June in North Carolina. These things are tragic. However, we are entering their environment, where they have the extreme advantage of sight and sound, and when it comes to sound, humans swimming in the water sound exactly like an appetizing, struggling fish or seal to sharks. In fact, most sharks, when biting a human, bite and let go because we taste gross, and they figure out that we aren't fish. So instead of being afraid of sharks, we need to be afraid for them because their habitats are being destroyed more and more every day.

Shark Week on Discovery has launched the Change the Tide campaign to show people like you and me how we can help, even though we might not have a direct link to the ocean on an everyday basis. It aims to inform people of what they can do, what they should not do, and why they should care. We need to be attentive to the conditions of our oceans because they cover a great majority of our amazing planet. Without healthy and functioning seas, our beach trips, our scuba diving, and our surfing will, frankly, be spent in barren and trash filled messes.

To find out more about this super cool campaign that wants to stop this from happening, check this out and join the movement.