“I still worry … that the sharks are somehow mad at me for the crazy swordfisher feeding frenzy that happened after 1975,” Spielberg, 76, said.
“I really, really regret it,” he added.
According to a study published by Nature, the global population of sharks and rays declined by more than 71% between 1970 and 2018. A 2013 study estimated that 100 million sharks are killed every year. Last year, the International Union for Conservation of Nature declared that 37% of sharks and rays were threatened with extinction.
Some say “Jaws” influenced this downward trend. Chris Lowe, director of the shark lab at California State University in Long Beach, said the film caused people to view sharks as malicious towards humans.
“‘Jaws’ was kind of a turning point,” Lowe said. “It made people think very negatively about sharks, which made overfishing them so much easier.”
Over the years, researchers have documented some of the negative portrayals of sharks in movies like “Jaws.” A 2021 study concluded that 96% of shark movies depicted the animals as threatening. Last year, the Florida Museum of Natural History reported that sharks killed 11 people worldwide.
Gavin Naylor, who directs the Florida Program for Shark Research, said Spielberg may have been too critical of himself. While Naylor notes that “Jaws” sparked interest in sharks, he thinks people would have caught and sold them regardless.
“I don’t think it should feel bad to have everyone start fishing them commercially,” Naylor said. “There was a reaction to the movie from a few people who just wanted to catch a few sharks. But that was long before ‘Jaws.’
Spielberg had done other projects before “Jaws,” but the film was his first blockbuster. At 27, Spielberg adapted Peter Benchley’s bestselling novel. The film follows the residents of a New England seaside town hunting a great white shark that kills swimmers. ‘Jaws’ grossed $100 million in 59 days and then overtook ‘The Godfather’ as the world’s highest-grossing film – a record it maintained until ‘Star Wars’ was released two years later. late.
Spielberg has since produced dozens of acclaimed films, including “ET the Extra-Terrestrial”, “Jurassic Park” and “Schindler’s List”. Still, he said the “Jaws” legacy bothered him.
“I really regret and to this day the decimation of the shark population,” Spielberg told the BBC, “because of the book and the movie.” (Benchley, who wrote the novel “Jaws,” said in 2000 that he also felt somewhat responsible for the suffering of great white sharks.)
Lowe said he believed “Jaws” caused the prevalence of shark fishing tournaments. When other species became endangered in the 1980s, Lowe said, people overexploited sharks with little pushback from the public.
It was easier for people to say, “You know what? These things are a threat,” Lowe said. “The word ‘shark’ had that connotation, and people were less obligated to protect them.”
Naylor agrees that ‘Jaws’ increased the popularity of sharks, including demand for shark fin soup in the 1990s. But he said ‘Jaws’ became the scapegoat for a problem. that people have created.
“People have been fishing for sharks for a long time,” Naylor said. And they were scared of sharks for a long time.
But Lowe said stereotypes surrounding sharks are diminishing. Over the past decade, he said, the majority of his students have pursued research on sharks to protect them.
“I don’t think it has the same impact it did on my generation,” Lowe said of “Jaws.” “They’re starting to see it as, ‘Okay, well, that was more about entertainment, and less about really educating us about what sharks really are.'”
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