Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Will Smith and Galeophobia

Last night on Discovery Channel's Shark Week event, famous actor Will Smith made an appearance as he discussed his fear of sharks and of the ocean in general.

Fear of sharks is known as Galeophobia.

Galeo comes from the Greek word for shark and phobia is the word for fear.

Many people's fear of sharks stems from the movie Jaws, which saw a Great White Shark terrorize a small town's beaches during the summer holiday.

Smith eventually faced his fears and got into the open ocean in the shark infested waters.
I am fascinated by sharks, but also have a fear of them.  I have seen a shark once in the open and it freaked me out so much that I went running to the shore. 

I was certainly not Fearless (like this 2014 Prizm insert rainbow)
Have you seen any sharks in the wild?

3 comments:

  1. those are some colorful parallels! i've seen sharks in the wild a few times, and have swam with black and white tip sharks in french polynesia. when a lemon shark showed up (looks kind of like a great white but is not a great white), it was straight back to the boat for me.

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  2. I have not! Was down the]e shore recently and saw about 100 dolphins over the few days, but never a shark!

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  3. Never encountered a shark in the wild... unless you count San Jose Sharks. I ran into Evgeni Nabokov at Pinkberry once.

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