Jaw-some events to celebrate Shark Week around Hampton Roads

Hampton Roads isn’t the star of the Discovery Channel’s 34th year of Shark Week programming, but the much-hyped annual TV event is driving interest in the sharks inhabiting local waters.

Though rip currents and jellyfish stings pose a far more likely threat to humans than the ocean’s apex predators, sharks do frequent the region’s waters, according to Skylar Snowden, senior curator of fishes, invertebrates, herpetology, and dive ops at the Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach.

The species most common off the Hampton Roads’ coast include sand tiger and sandbar sharks, also called brown sharks, Snowden said. Other types of sharks, including great whites, occasionally ping well off the shoreline while migrating up and down the coastline.

OCEARCH, which tags and tracks sharks, maintains a live map of shark whereabouts around the globe. In May, a 7-foot juvenile great white, named Martha, pinged on the map while cruising parallel to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel on her way to New England. Off the Outer Banks, others have reported close encounters with sharks while spearfishing.

But your chances of interacting with a shark are incredibly rare in Hampton Roads. The International Shark Attack File compiled by the Florida Museum of Natural History shows there have been only five reported shark attacks in Virginia since 1837. The state’s only fatal attack happened in Virginia Beach’s Sandbridge area in Sept. 2001. A 10-year-old boy was standing in 4 feet of water when a shark bit his leg, killing him.

If the rarity of attacks is not enough to quell beachgoing fears, Snowden assured that humans are never a shark’s preferred meal.

“If we were on the menu truly, we would never go in the water, ever,” Snowden said. “Because sharks are everywhere.”

Looking to learn more about sharks? A handful of events this week in Hampton Roads and beyond are on theme.

• Norfolk’s Nauticus hosts a daily Shark Lab in which visitors can learn more about sharks local to the region.

• The Virginia Beach Aquarium is enhancing its educational shark offerings to celebrate Shark Week. Aquarium educators will conduct themed presentations Sunday through Thursday at the Norfolk Canyon exhibit, home to sandbar, sand tiger and nurse shark species. The presentations are scheduled daily between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., with varying topic areas. Visitors looking for more can do a behind the scenes tour of the Norfolk Canyon exhibit for an extra $30 for non-members and $25 for aquarium members.

• A Shark Week-branded blimp roaming the coastline will return Thursday to beaches in Virginia. The 128-feet long, 44-feet high blimp already passed through Hampton Roads on July 4.

• The Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond is dedicating the week to shark programming. A lineup of events, including film screenings and a spiny dogfish dissection, can be found on the museum’s website.

• The North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island brings visitors to the backstage of the 285,800-gallon “Graveyard of the Atlantic” exhibit on a daily basis. Visitors can peer at the sharks from above the exhibit for $16 on top of the regular admission charge.

Ali Sullivan, 757-677-1974, ali.sullivan@virginiamedia.com