Despite becoming a cultural phenomenon, two of the men behind Jaws worried about the impact of their fictional predator on real-life sharks.
While I respect their feelings of regret. Shark fin soup has done orders of magnitude more damage than Jaws is responsible for.
The novel and the first movie are based on actual events that happened down the Jersey shore with a great white shark. Why would you regret telling something that’s one step off reality? You regret telling people to actually pay attention to shark warnings and be aware of them? Or bringing attention to the very real issue of coastal predators? I just don’t see the cause for regret.
People have an understandably strong emotional reaction to shark attacks as they are a horrible way to die. But the fear is massively overblown.
For years, I lived 2 minutes walk from the beach and swam/surfed every day.
Statically, the 2-minute walk crossing two streets on the way was about 1,000 times more dangerous than the sharks in the water.
That doesn’t mean I am blind to the risks of either. But Jaws caused a spate of people going out and actively killing sharks, mostly species that never attack humans at all.
