VW adds a new twist to 'convertible' as Shark Week falters

But elsewhere the channel has run into stormy water .

Shark expert David Shiffman ,writing in Wired magazine said the absolute worst of Shark Week, he said , "didn’t just sensationalize reality: it mockumentary-ized it using fake experts and videos in “Megalodon: The Monster Lives“.

"Folks — including the Daily Show, Wil Wheaton, and me, among others — reacted strongly because there isn’t a shred of evidence that megalodons are still around. Yet the show aired in the context of an educational TV channel with only brief, vague disclaimers."

The film “Voodoo Sharks,” on the other hand, he said had a lot of potential.

"If the show had focused on the actual bull shark research that made a brief appearance, it could have been pretty good. Instead, the producers chose to focus on a mythical giant shark and the team of local fishermen trying to catch it.

"The scientists were doing actual research on local shark species so they didn’t find the shark — not to mention they couldn’t have because it does not exist.

"To make matters worse, the show asked viewers to tweet their support for #TeamScientist or #TeamCajun. Ugh."

He said of course there were plenty of specials focusing on sharks biting people. "While I have to give “Top 10 Sharkdown” credit for incorporating shark species other than great whites and bulls, it says a lot about how ridiculous these types of documentaries are that half of the billed “10 deadliest species of sharks” have never been associated with a single human fatality."

Om Huffpo Chris Sosa ran the headline 'Shark Week is a Disgrace". " I didn't like writing that headline an ounce more than you liked reading it. But viewers need to get angry, because Discovery's Shark Week is a travesty.

Of the completely fake "documentary" called Megalodon: The Monster Shark That Lives. the film opens with supposedly real footage of a shark attack that none of the passengers survive.

"Savvy viewers will notice something is off from the first five minutes of the film. But Discovery, supposedly dedicated to educating viewers about the world, had no qualms passing this off as legitimate programming up to the minute of its airing. In fact, they still haven't fully acknowledged it was a fraud, opting instead for an evasive blink-and-miss-it disclaimer at the end of the show."

Perhaps this could be forgiven as the worst marketing stunt in Discovery history. But the very next night, Shark Week presented Return of Jaws. Within the first minute, great white sharks are stereotyped as man-eating monsters who pose an existential threat to the people on Cape Cod, with one subject inadvertently echoing a line from Jaws: "We need a bigger boat." By minute two, the narrator warns: "They're coming right into the swimming beaches. The risk of an attack is rising."

Rather than using valuable time to teach people about the importance of protecting these dying creatures, Discovery is cynically playing off cultural fears to make a buck, says Sosa.

"What Discovery could tell viewers is that a person dies of a shark attack in the U.S. at an average of once every two years. Sharks simply aren't a threat to humans at all, in any way. This is because humans are not a natural food source. Sharks do not hunt humans. The incredibly rare instances of sharks harming humans are accidental from misidentification. Humans, on the other hand, kill 11,000 sharks per hour. This means it would take 22,000 years for sharks to kill as many people in the U.S. as the number of sharks killed by humans in a single hour."

The Motley Fool said Shark Week used to include real documentaries about the fascinating sea predators. "Now, it's succumbed to crazy mockumentaries based more on cryptozoology than the truth about actual sharks.