Dirty Jobs: Jobs That Bite

To kick off Shark Week, fearless host Mike Rowe (of Discovery’s Dirty Jobs series) travels the globe to meet people whose jobs really "bite" — the dedicated men and women who work with sharks. For this two-hour world premiere special, Mike visits South Africa, Florida and the Bahamas to encounter a variety of sharks, from great whites to reef sharks. In South Africa, Mike joins Captain Brian McFarland aboard the boat he uses to take tourists to view great white sharks. After helping the crew prepare chum (a yummy mixture of fish parts and blood used to attract sharks), Mike descends inside a cage into the ocean to meet face-to-face with the majestic great white. Next, Mike rolls up his sleeves and gets dirty at a Florida company that makes replicas of sharks that have been caught by fisherman, and are later released. Back in South Africa, Mike boards a research vessel at the Marine Coastal Management Agency and helps the team tag great whites with satellite devices that are used to provide researchers with important information about the sharks’ migration patterns. He also tries his hand at "shark spotting" with men and women hired by the South African government. Their job is to stand on cliff sides and watch for sharks that might be swimming near public beaches. Here, Mike learns the tricks of the trade from a man who’s been protecting the beaches of South Africa for nearly ten years. Heading next to the Bahamas, Mike teams up with a company dedicated to making repellants that protect swimmers who come in contact with sharks. As Mike learns, a key ingredient of shark repellant is rotten sharks. After spending an afternoon chopping up rotten sharks covered in flies, Mike meets a chemist who shows him how the repellant is created. Then, in his dirtiest Shark Week job yet, Mike heads into the water to test it out … on himself.