Sensationalism in nature television gets talked about quite a bit these days. Whether it’s an anaconda eating a person, or a bunch of backwoods hillbillies grabbing catfish with their hands and chasing around distressed animals, it’s becoming a problem. MTV, (which used to be about music) even jumped on the bandwagon for a while, with their show Wildboyz, which was dedicated to harassing animals all over the world. Animal Planet was called on the carpet recently, due to a variety of animal abuses on the set of their show, Call of the Wildman. You don’t have to look far to find disturbing content in nature programming these days, and it all goes without mentioning the misinformation filled, over-hyped cotton candy television that is Shark Week. I’ve spent quite a bit of time underwater with sharks, and the past several seasons of Shark Week have been so bad, I can’t even watch. The Animal Planet series Tanked is now in its eighth season, and follows the exploits of Acrylic Tank Manufacturing (ATM) of Las Vegas, Nevada. Since its inception, the show has gotten mixed reviews from aquarists. Some have panned the series, saying it offers no real information about marine fish keeping, and creates a less than realistic picture of aquarium husbandry. Others seem to chalk it up to fun and games, admitting they find it semi-entertaining. 
For me, Tanked is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Damage is piling up, bits and pieces of train are flying off and striking vehicles, the vehicles are blowing up, chaos is breaking loose in all directions. Not only is the show outrageously corny and full of stereotypical innuendos, it’s dangerous. It creates an image of reef aquariums as nothing but toys for the rich and famous, great big plastic boxes full of fish, which you plop in on a whim, oohing and awing as they stress out, suddenly placed in an unfamiliar captive environment. The aquarium systems created on Tanks are impressive, but bare little to no resemblance to natural reef ecosystems. Some include televisions under the water, while others recreate man made spectacles that undermine the incredible natural beauty of a coral reef. If this is what many conservationists see when they think of a marine aquarium, no wonder they are pushing to shut the hobby down in. My assumption is that somewhere at ATM, actual thought, testing and research is placed into these large aquatic displays, though it makes me nervous that a company that installs pool panels, is also creating and stocking a marine aquarium.… More:
The post Opiate for the masses : Animal Planet’s Tanked appeared first on reefs.com.