You don’t have to go far to see great white sharks in action off Cape Cod this week.
Discovery’s annual Shark Week programming is in full swing, with celebrities like Snoop Dogg, Shaquille O’Neal, and Adam Devine (“Pitch Perfect”) joining the mix this year. Also on the cable channel’s schedule: a one-hour special airing Saturday called “Wicked Sharks,” which follows marine biologist Greg Skomal and the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy as they attempt to track sharks using state-of-the-art technology.
In the episode, Skomal and his team tag a pair of great white sharks with temporary cameras in the hopes of seeing how they hunt seals off of Cape beaches.
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“We want to know how these sharks are killing seals, where they’re killing seals, and hopefully it will lead to information that will save human lives,” Skomal said in the episode.
Filmed in 2019, “Wicked Sharks” finds the team tracking a shark nicknamed Scarface as it searches for seals, moving within a few hundred yards of a swimming area at Nauset Beach in Orleans. Skomal is able to radio the shore, at which point authorities close the beach for an hour.
“Wicked Sharks” also shows how acoustic buoys installed by Skomal’s team track previously tagged sharks. When a tagged shark swims by a buoy, lifeguards receive e-mail alerts letting them know a shark is near.
“My greatest worry is that it gets to the point where we can’t allow people in the water,” Orleans harbormaster Nate Sears said. “[That] it gets so dangerous that it’s beyond what we can manage.”
“Wicked Sharks” will premiere at 9 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 15, on Discovery. The show will re-air four hours later at 1 a.m. Sunday.