Although it took 30 years, the hysteria created by Jaws (both the blockbuster film directed by Steven Spielberg and the successful book by Peter Benchley) may have finally subsided.
Although many of us remember the alleged summer of the shark (a hysterical bit of nonsense perpetrated on the public in 2001 to get ratings up at the 24-hour news networks) fewer of us were around for the first iteration in 1975.
When Jaws came out it lived up to its word and many people (irrationally) decided that they would never go into the water again. According to the Internet Movie Database there were numerous “shark” incidents across the country.
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“In one, a beach in Southern California was cleared by lifeguards due to sharks in the water, which turned out to be dolphins,” the website reports. In another “an immature pygmy sperm whale that beached itself was beaten to death by bystanders who mistook it for a shark.”
However, the reaction of the public and the media to the capture, tag and release of a great white shark in the Gulf of Mexico off Panama City Beach last weej has mostly been positive. Most of the commenters on Facebook were far more concerned about the wellbeing of the shark than they were about what kind of danger it and its brethren could pose to swimmers.
There are, of course, dangers associated with swimming in the ocean. Most of them are pests, like jellyfish rather than the life threatening kind. However, sharks, especially great white sharks, offer virtually no threat to local swimmers. We are far more likely to kill them than they are to kill us.
“You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than being attacked by a shark,” NOAA Fisheries Research Biologist John Carlson told The News Herald’s Ben Kleine.
Here’s how National Geographic puts it: “Of the 100-plus annual shark attacks worldwide, fully one-third to one-half are attributable to great whites. However, most of these are not fatal, and new research finds that great whites, who are naturally curious, are "sample biting" then releasing their victims rather than preying on humans. It's not a terribly comforting distinction, but it does indicate that humans are not actually on the great white's menu.”
As movie buffs probably already know there are several famous stories about Spielberg’s shark movie. The director named the shark, “Bruce,” after his lawyer. The mechanical shark worked great in a tank but malfunctioned multiple times in the salt water where filming took place.
That led Spielberg to change his plan which probably made for a better and more successful movie. The shark itself is hardly ever seen and gives the film a feeling most of us would associate with Alfred Hitchcock’s work.
Of course, the shark in Jaws really is not a shark at all but a fictional and nearly unkillable movie monster that has more in common with Freddy Krueger than he does to any real creature.
“Knowing what I know now, I could never write that book today,” Benchley said years later, according to his obituary. “Sharks don’t target human beings, and they certainly don't hold grudges.”
Hopefully, after all this time, we’ve stopped holding a grudge against the great white.