Discover the Mysterious Stories Behind 6 Bizarre Shark Statues Worldwide
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In 2006, the Discovery Channel decided to celebrate Shark Week in a very special way: by decorating their headquarters in Maryland with a massive inflatable shark. Named Chompie, the five pieces of the colossal sea creature are arranged to make it look like it’s swimming through the building; its head is at the front, there are pectoral fins on each side, a dorsal fin on the roof, and a tail at the back. From nose to tail, the shark measures a staggering 446 feet.
Chompie has been hung on the building a few times over the years, but it’s quite the process to get the huge fish in place. While the pieces are being installed, they have to be constantly inflated—which takes 10 air blowers to achieve. Chompie hasn’t made an appearance since 2012—for the 25th anniversary of Shark Week—but hope springs eternal every summer when the iconic week-long TV event rolls around.
The Headington Shark // England
The Headington Shark made quite a splash when it was installed in a quiet suburb of Oxford in 1986. The 25-foot-long shark—made of fiberglass and steel—looks like its diving headfirst through the roof of an ordinary house, inevitably leading to it becoming known as the Shark House.
The roof-top sculpture was conceived by Bill Heine and created by sculptor John Buckley. Heine’s son and the current homeowner, Magnus Hanson-Heine, explains that the shark was designed as a piece of protest art. It was installed on August 9—the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki—in opposition to America’s recent bombing of Libya.
The shark was also purposefully installed without planning permission from the local council. “They had done that in part so as to make this case that really the council shouldn’t be deciding what kind of art people were and weren’t allowed to see,” explains Hanson-Heine.
As expected, the council immediately attempted to get the sculpture removed, but Heine was a lawyer and after six years he won the court case and got to keep his shark.
The battle over the Headington Shark didn’t end there though. By 2022, the council had come around on the merits of the marine predator and decided to add it to the Oxford Heritage Asset Register—which Hanson-Heine wasn’t happy about, stating that it “goes against the fundamental point” of the anti-authoritarian art piece.
Sharks! // England
Antepavilion is an arts and architecture charity based in London that has been caught up in numerous legal battles with Hackney London Borough Council over the lack of planning permission for its artworks. In 2020, Antepavilion held a competition for an artwork that commented on the legal trouble and the winner was a sculpture titled Sharks! (yes, the exclamation point is part of the name).
Designed by architect Jaimie Shorten and inspired by the Headington Shark, Sharks! is a collection of five life-sized fiberglass sharks that look like they’re jumping headfirst out of the water. When the sharks were being installed on Regent’s Canal outside Antepavilion’s Hoxton warehouse, Hackney Council got an injunction to stop the charity and so only four sharks ever made it onto the water.
A legal battle then ensued over Sharks!—which was partly the point of the piece—and it still hasn’t been resolved. The sharks were removed for a period and then put back out on the water—this time outside Islington Boat Club—before being removed again. As of February 2026, a singular shark floats outside Antepavilion’s dockside and only time will tell whether the other four will get to join it.
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