Fifty years after 'Jaws,' the water's not safe ... for sharks

Japan Times

24-06-2025

Fifty years on from the release of "Jaws," it's still not safe in the water ... if you're a shark.
Steven Spielberg's legendary movie about a man-eating great white shark is a masterpiece. The iconic score, the camera work, the dramatic tension that comes from withholding the villain and a great script all make it a Hollywood classic. But its success disturbed both Spielberg and Peter Benchley, the author of the book the film is based on.
The tale helped galvanize a fear of the ocean predators and potentially contributed to a huge backlash. An article published in the New York Times in October 1975 reports that the film spurred an interest in shark fishing tournaments. While some were terrified of swimming after watching the movie, there were plenty of fishermen keen to prove their bravery by catching a shark. In 2014, Christopher Pepin-Neff, an associate professor in public policy at the University of Sydney, coined the term "the 'Jaws' Effect,' arguing that because the public believed the fictional story of a vengeful shark so completely, it justified anti-shark policies while taking conservation off the table.
In 2022, Spielberg told BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs that he feared sharks were "mad' at him for "the feeding frenzy' of fishing that happened after 1975.' Benchley dedicated his post-"Jaws" career to advocating for shark conservation and, after his death, his widow Wendy Benchley co-founded the Peter Benchley Ocean Awards. Still, Spielberg and Benchley aren't the only culprits for what's happened in the oceans during the last half-century.
Sharks are in hot water, literally. A 2024 status report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) found that a third of sharks, rays and chimaeras are at risk of extinction. A 2021 study published in Nature found that the global abundance of sharks and rays in the ocean has declined by 71% since 1970.
The problem lies in our demand for seafood. There's a perception that China's taste for shark fin soup was the main threat to these fish, but Rachel Graham, founder of nonprofit marine conservation organization MarAlliance, told me that's wrong: "So long as you have large scale fisheries, you're going to catch sharks.'
These predatory fish, such as hammerheads and silky sharks, often end up as bycatch — tangled in nets or ensnared on long lines intended to catch other species. Couple that with humanity's growing taste for shark meat — now a multibillion dollar industry — and you've got a group of species that barely stands a chance against both accidental and targeted fishing. Plastic pollution and climate change are also emerging as existential threats.
Part of the reason sharks are so vulnerable to overfishing is their slow life cycles. A great white shark like the star of "Jaws," for instance, reaches sexual maturity at age 26 if he's male and 33 if she's female. The Greenland shark is only ready to mate at a whopping 150 years old. Pregnancies are also long, averaging between nine and 12 months, and result in far fewer offspring than bony fish who release millions of eggs. That means populations can take years, potentially decades, to bounce back.
However, there is a glimmer of hope in Belize, where Graham has worked for almost 30 years. The nation has set up 15 marine protected areas and completely banned the use of fishing nets while collaboration between the local fishing industry, marine scientists and management authorities have helped to transform attitudes towards sharks in the Caribbean nation. The results are stark: In the 11 years since Turneffe Atoll became a managed protected area, there's been a tenfold increase in sharks. It's a reassuring sign that, if you give nature a break, threatened species can bounce back.
The work has also helped undo entrenched fear and hatred of the species. Rather than seeing sharks as a threat, Belizians now see them as an important part of their heritage and an economic opportunity now that shark-focused tourism is on the rise. MarAlliance has also employed and trained fishers to collect data on the fish — providing an alternative income source that isn't dependent on natural resources and teaching them how to fish sustainably. Graham is now working on setting up a "shark superhighway' between Belize and Mexico — which will help protect species such as whale sharks, reef sharks and sea turtles.
You may wonder why, exactly, we want more jaws in the ocean. Well, picture a city with no trash collection and no police force. A similar sort of chaos would happen if we removed sharks from their ecosystems, Graham explained to me. They're responsible for keeping prey numbers in check, removing the weak and sick and maintaining balance to ensure species diversity. We can also thank sharks for maintaining seagrass and coral reefs.
That said, as shark populations rebound — something I hope can be replicated around the world — and climate change alters prey availability and distribution, we'll probably have to get used to being around sharks more often. The IUCN report notes that, although shark bites remain rare and unlikely events, their frequency has increased since the 1980s. Most result in minor injuries — only seven people were killed in attacks last year, three of which were provoked by the swimmers — but every headline brings back that image of Jaws dragging his victims down to a watery, bloody death.
Graham has some pointers to help us enjoy the ocean alongside our shark friends: Don't swim at dawn or dusk when these predators are likely to be hunting and may not be able to distinguish you from their food. Don't swim in murky water or where people are fishing. Stick with a buddy, don't wear anything shiny — and if you do spy a shark, give it space and exit the water calmly.
Graham describes a moment diving in the Red Sea in 1990, surrounded by more than 50 grey reef sharks: "I never felt any alarm, I just felt serenity.' Half a century after "Jaws" convinced us that they're evil villains, sharks are the only apex predators in the world that you can be two feet away from quite safely. They deserve a break.
Lara Williams is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change.