|
Hi
there! It’s Rosanna Xia, coastal
reporter and director of the Los
Angeles Times environmental
documentary “Out of Plain
Sight,” filling in for
Sammy Roth. For this week’s edition of
Boiling Point, let’s revisit a film
that changed the course of ocean
history.
|
|
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.
|
|
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.)
|
|
|
Richard “Dick” Edwards, an underwater
explosives expert from WHOI, was called
onto the set of “Jaws” in 1974 to help
blow up the mechanical shark for the
film’s final scene. (Cliff Winget /
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
|
|
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 get 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.”
|
|
|
An advertisement for “Jaws” printed in
the Los Angeles Times on June 21, 1975,
during the film’s opening weekend. (Los
Angeles Times)
|
|
But
seeing all the renewed excitement for
“Jaws” this year made me appreciate the
feelings of commonality (and dare I say,
hope?) that this cultural phenomenon has
brought about. In a year where our
politics have become more polarized than
ever, this shared fascination with
sharks has been a refreshing,
less-controversial way to care about the
ocean.
|
|
“I’ve
been somehow made aware of ‘Jaws’ every
single day this year — and not in a
negative way. It’s very uniting,” said
Jaida Elcock, a shark biologist with
WHOI’s Marine Predators Group who runs @soFISHtication_,
a popular animal-facts page on Instagram
and TikTok.
“Everyone knows this movie, and even if
there’s sometimes differing opinions,
you can strike up a conversation with a
stranger just because it’s the 50th
anniversary of ‘Jaws.’”
|
|
At
a time when even landmark bipartisan
environmental laws such as the Marine Mammal
Protection Act are under political
attack, having a pop culture moment to
rally around isn’t all that bad. The
more we can talk about all the ways we
rely on the ocean, the better,
especially given the massive budget
slashes from the Trump administration
that have threatened crucial weather-forecast
operations, lifesaving ocean-monitoring
research, and painstaking efforts
to save the sea’s many endangered
species. (Remember the baby
abalone? Their whole future is also at
stake.)
|
|
When
I called up Chris Lowe for his take, the
celebrated director of the Shark Lab at
Cal State Long Beach told me “Jaws”
played no small part in inspiring his
generation of marine scientists.
|
|
Lowe,
who grew up on Martha’s Vineyard, still
remembers the summer “Jaws” was filmed
in 1974. He was 10 years old, and it
felt like the entire island was involved
in the movie. His uncle is one of the
townspeople who flinch when Quint (the
cynical shark hunter played by Robert
Shaw) drags his fingernails across the
blackboard; his school cafeteria cook
made an appearance; and two of his
classmates were tapped to play the sons
of protagonist Chief Martin Brody (Roy
Scheider).
|
|
The
first in his family to go to college,
Lowe was fascinated in particular by the
scientist character, Hooper. Not quite
believing that studying fish could
actually be a job, Lowe would take the
ferry to Woods Hole and just wander the
halls. While others that year developed
a fear of swimming, Lowe discovered just
how little anyone actually knew about
sharks.
|
|
“That
lack of information allowed the public
to scare themselves about sharks,” said
Lowe, who wondered if the film would
even work if it was made today, given
what we’ve since learned about sharks.
“Steven Spielberg told that story in
such a compelling way that you made the
monster in your own mind.”
|
|
|
Researchers with the Shark Lab at Cal
State Long Beach have spent years
documenting how white sharks routinely
swim close to surfers and swimmers
without any harm. (Carlos Gauna / Cal
State Long Beach)
|
|
More
than 400 million years old, sharks are
actually extraordinary. They have
outlived five mass extinctions and could
teach us a thing or two about surviving
in a changing climate. It’s also worth
noting that great whites are just one of
more than 500 shark species — none of
which are human-eating terrors. The
largest shark in the world, the whale
shark, is actually a filter feeder and
couldn’t swallow you even if it tried.
|
|
And
although white sharks, tiger sharks and
bull sharks do require a humbling dose
of caution, the chance of being bitten —
as long you
don’t provoke them — is incredibly
low. Last year, there were only 47 unprovoked
shark bites across the entire
world.
|
|
Keep
up with
California
|
Your support helps us deliver the news
that matters
most.
Subscribe to
the Los
Angeles Times.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
“There’s
no study, no data I could ever show
people, that would be more convincing
than to have them be in the water when a
baby white shark swims by — and to have
that shark not pay any attention to them
at all,” said Lowe, who has spent years
helping people
see that there’s very little to be
afraid of. “It just won’t match that
picture of what they remember from
‘Jaws’ or what they saw on ‘Shark
Week.’”
|
|
|
|
Shark
lab researchers say they
have a mountain of
tracking data that shows
juvenile great whites,
some as long as nine
feet, routinely cruise
among Southern
California swimmers and
surfers with no apparent
interest.
|
|
|
|
|
This
fear of sharks also appears to be
generational, which speaks to the power
of pop culture in shaping where we place
our empathy.
|
|
“We’re
the ones entering their homes, not the
other way around,” said A-bel Gong, a
researcher with Minorities in
Shark Sciences, a nonprofit
co-founded by Elcock. “The real villain
in ‘Jaws’ was the local government that
was completely negligent... and then
blaming everything on the shark.”
|
|
Gong,
who will be speaking later this month at the Academy
Museum of Motion Pictures as part
of a new exhibit
on the film, grew up in the early
2000s watching “Shark Tale” (an animated
movie featuring a vegetarian shark) and
“Finding Nemo” (in which a great white
by the name of Bruce runs a
Fish-Friendly Sharks support group.)
Many from Gong’s generation had never
even seen “Jaws” until the buzz this
year, and most children today are
introduced to sharks through “Baby
Shark,” whose whimsical “doo doo, doo
doo doo doo doo” melody is a far cry
from the foreboding “dun dun... dun dun”
score of “Jaws.”
|
|
When
I see how “Jaws” has turned into a
nostalgic, no-longer-scary movie for
people to obsess over today, I think
about how whales were once also
demonized. We went from hunting whales a
la “Moby Dick,” to finding them majestic
and relatable — and this, too, can be
done with sharks. With “pro-shark” sites
like The Daily Jaws
and retrospectives like the new “Jaws @ 50”
documentary fueling the fandom, there’s
surely enough momentum to turn the tide.
|
|
Back
at Woods Hole, Camrin Braun, who heads
the Marine Predators Group, is also part
of an exciting new future for sharks.
|
|
Braun
is not necessarily a shark scientist,
but rather, a scientist who relies on
sharks to study a rapidly changing
ocean. Using sensors and advanced
tracking technology that Hooper’s
character could only dream of, Braun can
now gather data on not only the
thousands of miles that a shark might
cover — but also sea surface
temperature, currents and other critical
information. All this data can then be
fed into models that help forecast the
weather and even predict future shifts
in the ocean.
|
|
Braun,
who’s been getting calls all year to
talk about sharks, said the excitement
has been invigorating. As “Jaws” becomes
more unifying than terrifying, we can
start to let go of the film’s early
consequences and take this moment to
inspire the next generation of ocean
protectors and explorers.
|
|
“Forget
about the early impacts of ‘Jaws,’”
Braun said. “It’s been really cool to
see that, fast forward 50 years, it’s
given us such a great reason to
celebrate sharks.”
|
|
This
is the latest edition of Boiling
Point, a newsletter about climate
change and the environment in the
American West. Sign up here
to get it in your inbox.
And listen to our Boiling Point
podcast here.
|
|
For
more coastal and ocean stories, follow
@rosanna.xia
and @outofplainsightfilm
on Instagram.
|
More
L.A. Times environmental stories
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
