Part II: Tonight's Shark Week Stars CSULB Professor

Editor's Note: This is Part 2 in a two-part story about Long Beach's work on shark research that involves international team studies.

California State University Long Beach Prof. Christopher Lowe will be featured tonight on the Discovery Channel’s 25^th annual Shark Week, for which Saturday Night Live’s Andy Samberg will play host.

Lowe will appear with his Shark Lab and researchers from South Africa and Australia in the series premiere, set to air 9 p.m. Sunday.

The show, titled “Great White Invasion,” follows Lowe and his team as they attempt to add to the existing body of knowledge about one of the ocean’s greatest predators, the great white shark.

The professor and his Shark Lab team work closely with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which alerts its rapid response team whenever a shark is caught off the coast. The Monterey Bay Aquarium funds a lot of research for which the Aquarium of the Pacific doesn’t have the same resources, though the Pacific remains a valuable local resource, Lowe explained in a recent interview with Patch. 

Lowe expressed mixed emotions in regard to having his work featured on Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. According to Lowe, although programs of its nature have been effective in making sharks into household names, they often sensationalize certain attributes to captivate viewers. 

“It’s a language barrier," Lowe told Patch.

"In the background while you’re educating people, you still hear the Jaws theme music,” Lowe says of the disconnect that often occurs between the scientific community and the public.

"All I have is my professional reputation as a scientist, so I want whatever I’m involved in to be as accurate and truthful as possible, and not overplay the dramatic nature of great white sharks that occasionally bite people.”

Lowe is writing a book about the myths and misconceptions that the media perpetuates, and the struggles scientists endure when trying to do research while faced with a public that believes itself to be well informed.

“We can’t get funding to do research because people think they already have all the answers. Some of the topics I’ll cover are tongue- in-cheek, but it questions how these myths go out, and how we can get the public to understand that we don’t have all the answers.”