Sharks Sometimes Have Belly Buttons and 5 More Facts to Celebrate Shark Awareness Day

Kelli Bender

July 14 is Shark Awareness Day, and Nat Geo's ongoing SharkFest has plenty of shows to honor the day

<p>Getty</p> A stock photo of a bull shark

Getty

A stock photo of a bull shark

July 14 is Shark Awareness Day — the perfect time to learn about these undersea creatures.

Those looking to be immersed in exciting knowledge about sharks are in luck. Nat Geo is in the midst of SharkFest, the four-week TV event featuring hours of compelling programming about sharks. SharkFest 2024 started on June 30 with waves of new shows.

Shark Beach with Anthony Mackie: Gulf Coast is among the new shows to hit SharkFest this year. The one-hour special follows Mackie, 45, through his hometown of New Orleans and its waterways, where the Marvel star grew up boating and fishing, a passion he's passed on to his four sons.

In Shark Beach, Mackie explores a fishing phenomenon called depredation, in which a shark consumes a fisherman's catch before it can be hauled in. This behavior is increasing, bringing humans and sharks in closer proximity. Shark Beach sets out to learn more about these cases from fishing communities and specialist scientists and what environmental issues are at play.

Like all of SharkFest's content, the show is brimming with interesting information about these often misunderstood predators. To celebrate Shark Awareness Day, here are six shark facts from the dozens in Shark Beach.

  • Baby bull sharks have belly buttons for the first few months of their lives.

  • Bull sharks can live in freshwater and saltwater, and they have even been found as far up the Mississippi as 900 miles in Missouri.

  • Sharks have superpower senses.

  • Sharks lose at least one tooth every week, but they can replace it in 24 hours.

  • Scientists can extract DNA from shark-bitten fish and fishing equipment.

  • Offshore oil rig platforms can form artificial reefs with greater biodiversity than natural reefs.

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To get even more out of Shark Awareness Day, watch Shark Beach and all of Nat Geo's SharkFest, now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.

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