HRI celebrates Shark Week with Driscoll Children's Hospital

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Summertime means shark time for many. Discovery Channel's Shark Week is a regular staple of television in late summer, and has featured research from both the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, showcasing the charismatic apex predators in all their toothy glory.

Each year the Harte Research Institute celebrates Shark Week by heading out into the community to host Shark Week LIVE!, an event where we watch Shark Week specials together with Coastal Bend residents. We love getting a chance to connect our scientists with interested families and future marine biologists, showing off the tools and equipment we use to learn about shark migration and behavior in the wild. HRI’s Center for Sportfish Science and Conservation, home to the largest shark-tagging program in the western Gulf of Mexico, has been featured on five different Shark Week specials

To keep our researchers, staff, and friends in the Coastal Bend safe during this COVID-19 pandemic, we couldn't hold our annual event this year, but we didn't want to miss the chance to share our work with local kids during Shark Week. So the Harte Research Institute partnered with Driscoll Children's Hospital to donate some of the gear and educational materials we usually give away at our Shark Week LIVE! event so their young patients can celebrate Shark Week with us.

Our new senior executive director Dr. David Yoskowitz and HRI shark researcher Dr. Kesley Gibson, a featured Shark Week Expert, masked up and visited Driscoll Children's Hospital Tuesday, August 11 to drop off some shark-themed goodies and coldbrewed local coffee donated by Driftwood Coffee Co. and Coffee Waves for the hard-working medical staff. We hope the patients and crew at Driscoll enjoy Shark Week as much as we do!

For more Shark Week content, visit our Center for Sportfish Science and Conservation Facebook page!