Post-‘Jaws’ makeover could do sharks an ocean of good

I was just on Cape Cod for the Woods Hole Film Festival, and the moment I crossed the Sagamore Bridge, it was impossible not to think about sharks.

- ROSANNA XIA

ALLEN J. SCHABEN Los Angeles Times.

SARA STAMOS of Cal State Long Beach's Shark Lab holds a mako shark eye during a presentation in 2023.

This summer marks the 50th anniversary of “Jaws,” and with every fan T-shirt, hat and poster seen around town, I was reminded that this blockbuster thriller about a bloodthirsty shark had been filmed right here on Martha’s Vineyard. Steven Spielberg even called in experts from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where the character Matt Hooper, played by Richard Dreyfuss, earned his stripes. (If you need a bigger boat, WHOI’s got a few.)

There’s been a lot of talk over the years about the “Jaws effect” and how the film sparked a devastating fear of sharks. Shark-killing tournaments exploded in popularity after the film, and there has been little public empathy for the millions of sharks that are killed each year from industrial fishing. The global number of sharks and rays, in fact, has plummeted by more than 70% since 1970, and the great white shark today is a threatened species.

Peter Benchley, who penned the bestselling novel that inspired the movie, later expressed remorse and spent the rest of his life making the case with his wife, Wendy, that sharks are actually crucial to a healthy and stable ocean.

“The shark in an updated ‘Jaws’ could not be the villain; it would have to be written as the victim, for, worldwide, sharks are much more the oppressed than the oppressors,” Benchley wrote in an essay in 1995. “It has been estimated that for every human life taken by a shark, 4.5 million sharks are killed by humans.”