Shark Week runs nationally this week from July 24 - 30. But the St. Louis Aquarium said that for them, every week is shark week.
"We have more than 25 sharks here, about eight or nine different species," Tammy Brown, executive director at the aquarium, said. "So yeah, it's always Shark Week here."
Brown said they have lots of opportunities for visitors to interact with sharks -- though the sharks get to do it on their own terms.
"All of our animals have free choice whether they want to interact," she said. "But if the sharks are in the mood to interact with you, they will be on the edge, and you're welcome to use our two-finger touch rule and touch them on their backs as they swim by."
Shark Canyon is the aquarium's largest habitat, holding 250,000 gallons of salt water.
Lately, reports of shark sightings seem to be more common. Brown said those occurrences, along with lots of popular media depictions of sharks, have given people the wrong impression about the animal.
"I think everybody does have that kind of fear that probably started with Jaws," she said. "But the truth is that you are more likely to be killed by a vending machine falling on you than by a shark."
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