Shahhhks!
By Kaz - Tue, 07/01/2008 - 1:29am.
A home video captured a shark as it swam up the Charles River and then followed it as it chased a Duck Boat full of people! The Boston Globe has more pictures of the invasion! I don't believe anyone was injured but there has to be more to this.
- Add new comment |
- Send to a friend |
| 
| 
Shark attack!
Don't worry, I'm well aware it's a clever ad campaign for the New England Aquarium's new "Sharks & Rays" exhibit, but I thought it was so well done that I didn't want to ruin it in the story text. Admission to the exhibit is included with the aquarium entrance price and there's even a webcam of some of the sharks for you home viewers.
Hope you enjoyed it all too.
I'm not too worried about Sharks
but those Rays seem to be giving us a lot of trouble lately.
Blame
The Rays are the least of our problems when we've got Sleeping Beauty managing the team.
Lame
Lame.
Nah.
Now, that's lame.
Done by Mullen
Even more looks at the campaign available here:
http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2008/07/mullen-sinks-te.html
how pedestrian and predictable
Seriously, someone must have spent a whole 2 hours on that in Photoshop...nevermind it ignores basic science (most sharks can't go in the Charles, which is fresh water. None native anywhere to New England can.)
I worked at Mullen...you have them to thank for such brilliant campaigns as that crappy portable XM satellite "walkman". I remember watching some indie-looking writer type doing up the storyboards for an ad, and asking him if he knew how badly the thing sucked (it required wearing a puck antenna ON YOUR SHOULDER, and even then couldn't pick up signal half the time...and it could only record in very specific ways. The reviews everywhere were horrible.)
"Yeah, why do you think we're doing an ad campaign for it?"
Oh yeah, and the "chief creative officer" was a prick and a half, and their video producer "Jessica" was a total prima donna who knew her way around Final Cut, but otherwise couldn't use a computer to save her life. Spent most of her time either freaking out telling everyone how busy she was, or blaming her computer for why she was taking so long to do things.
Old Home Week
So you couldn't swim with the sharks and this is how you spend your free time now?
Bull
Ignoring basic science is you!
Just because most sharks can't tolerate fresh water for long doesn't mean a shark couldn't show up in the Charles. Bull sharks do just fine in fresh water, and their habitat goes up to MA.
When I lived in the Amazon, we'd hear about them following boats all the way up from the ocean. That could take weeks or months. One could surely make a day trip through the locks up to the lower Charles.
Little Miss Can't Be Wrong
Ignoring basic science is you! Bull sharks do just fine in fresh water, and their habitat goes up to MA. When I lived in the Amazon, we'd hear about them following boats all the way up from the ocean.
Their habitat does NOT go up to MA, asshat. "Abundance and distribution: Circumtropical and subtropical."
Also, the OP said "most sharks", not all. Learn to read.
Are we reading different versions of this page?
The one I have says things like
"In the western Atlantic bull sharks migrate north along the coast of the U.S. during summer, swimming as far north as Massachusetts"
and
"They have been reported ... over 3000 km (1800 mi) up the Mississippi River in Illinois"
Don't mind her
She's just dumb and don't read too gud.
Bull Sharks range from MA down to southern Brazil. They're rare in colder waters, but they range pretty far. Look it up anywhere.
Maybe it wasn't a bull shark
Maybe it was a land shark...that's just crafty enough to know how to go back into the water! It would explain how it avoided the locks. They're always good at getting past locks...
The point being
that there is no scientific reason a shark could not appear in the Charles. It's merely unlikely.
My point
was only to be funny.
It's those dam things that get in their way
Otherwise, we'd have them up the Mystic and Charles and any other estuary they so chose to infiltrate.
If you have done any snorkling or diving in New England - particularly Cape Cod and south - you might know that all sorts of subtropical and even tropical species find their way up here via the warm Gulfstream waters.
wow, nice job playing off fear of sharks...
...all in the name of PR, when the rest of the scientific community is trying to get people to stop freaking out about what is an insignificant threat.
But hey, let's pander to Joe Sixpack's fear of anything with a fin...
Where's a Great White when you need one?
Read the "clever ad campaign" link above. Bud Ris, the aquarium's CEO, says that they were looking to merge iconic shark imagery with iconic Boston imagery. Once you're at the exhibit, the whole point is to get you to understand that sharks are often misunderstood as a big threat. There's even a touching pool where you can handle some small species of shark and ray. The video is just viral marketing (worked on me) to get you talking about it so that you'll go buy a ticket and learn more when you get there. Geez.
And as for the ex-Mullen employee burning their bridges above, stuff it in your hat. Mullen did this work pro bono according to the newspaper, so if they can put out a few professional looking ads (I particularly like the bronzed shark fin chasing the ducklings...funny stuff) for cabs, street signs, and MBTA signs as well as a viral video all for free in a matter of hours, who cares that it didn't take them long? The ads don't look poor, the acting in the video was pretty decent and the movie editing wasn't bad either. Get over yourself.
Shark Touching!
We got to do that at the Birch Aquarium in San Diego last summer. I saw it on the schedule and I knew my younger son would be really into the idea.
The ones that live in the kelp forests off of southern California have skin that is kind of like fine grit sandpaper.
Where's Roy Scheider when you need him?
Just askin'.
I like the ad campaign! It's
I like the ad campaign! It's fun.
Fun
It's so fun it's got us all talking about it. That's a pretty successful ad campaign, disgruntled ex-employees notwithstanding.
Sharks on Emily Rooney
The campaign was featured on Greater Boston this evening.
Thanks!
That's a great link! I love the idea that they had to have a Yankees jersey tattered in a Kenmore Square ad as if the fan had just been taken down by a Boston shark. HA! Too bad the Yankees are such spoil-sports.
Same with CITGO. Turning the logo into a shark fin would have been humorous, but they got all nasty about messing with their logo evidently. I'm glad the other places and icons were so much more accomodating to the Aquarium. Honestly, I wonder how many of the good ideas they could have gotten away with as parody, but I guess they just don't need to pay huge sums to lawyers to defend themselves if they had enough people saying yes to the other ideas.
Can't wait to see some flickr shots from people finding the live-action lifeguard stands that they'll be setting up randomly around town.