MOULTRIE, Ga. —There’s a story about some marine biologists who were working on a shark-proof suit. So they paid a fellow to test it. They said, “Now we want you to put this on and jump in there with that shark. When he bites you, tell us if it hurts.”

Perhaps they didn’t notice that the shark was big enough to swallow the fellow with the bite being a moot point.

Now that little story is just to prepare you for what’s next. In a few days, we are going to get our annual dose of “Shark Week” on television. There will be documentaries, movies and  even some commercials that feature sharks.

Shark Week is somewhat phenomenal. We don’t have Tiger Week or Rattlesnake Week. People are much more fascinated with sharks. My guess is the movie “Jaws” had a lot to do with that.

Now we’ll probably be offered a selection of “Jaws” movies. After the first two, the sequels went drastically downhill. It was hard enough to imagine that a shark would eat a boat and a helicopter. But I don’t think they carry grudges and would follow one particular family from New England  to South Florida.

In the documentaries we’ll get to see the shark toss the sea lion into the air and catch in its jaws like a piece of popcorn. And we’ll see that footage where the shark gets its body into the diver’s cage. And of course, we’ll see the researchers catch and tag sharks. Don’t forget the scenes of the Asian fishermen who will catch sharks, cut off their fins for soup, and then throw them back into the ocean to die.

Now I’m sure I’ll watch a  sampling of this stuff just to see if they’ve added anything new. At the moment, however, I think I know all I really need to know about sharks. They are bigger than me. They can eat me. And I don’t go where they are. You can put all of that on a post-it note.

The movie “Jaws” really made people obsess about what goes on out in the deep. I would bet that movie conjured up more nightmares than “Creature From the Black Lagoon.”  Prior to “Jaws”, these same people didn’t worry about sharks so much. But afteward, it’s as if they could picture this creature mutating, crawling out of the ocean and making its way to Kansas where it would eat an entire 4-H Club in a wheat-field outing.

Way back then my friend and I were fishing on the Ochlocknee River, and our jon boat caught on a snag. We tried to shake it off, but the snag would just bend, and we would go around in circles.

So I told my friend we would have to get into the water and lift the boat off.

You would have thought he was Abraham and God had just told him to be circumcised with a flint knife. No way was he going to get out of that boat.

“Didn’t you see that movie Jaws!” he exclaimed.

I said, “Hey man, we’re 100 miles from the Gulf of Mexico in fresh water. There’s a dam and a big lake half way between here and there. You don’t have to worry about a shark!”

Actually bull sharks have been known to go hundreds of miles inland in fresh water, but if I had told him that, he would have spent the night up a tall cypress. So I had to do the honors while he stayed high and dry.

That’s about all I’ve got to say about sharks, but let me offer this observation that I read somewhere years ago. You can go down on the beach and yell “shark!” and people will stampede out of the water. You can go into a smokey bar and yell “carcinogen!” and people will just look at you funny. Guess which one claims the most lives.

(Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)