Shark Watch

For years after the release of the 1975 Steven Spielberg classic Jaws, people across the globe shared an intense fear of large sharks. This fear went and far as to lower the number of large sharks along the eastern seaboard by 50%. George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research in Gainesville Said “A collective testosterone rush certainly swept through the east coast of the US, Thousands of fishers set out to catch trophy sharks after seeing Jaws.” After reading countless stories about peoples new found fear of the deep blue post jaws and the terror that was associated with great whites, I got an idea on how to adapt the fear the movie created into a podcast. I want to use the podcast platform to create a sort of news team that talks about a string of shark attacks happening around southern Maine. I want to recreate the fear the movie struck into peoples hearts but in real time. I want one of my friends to accompany me in talking about the shark attacks in old orchard beach, Scarborough, and Kennebunk, while having guests on to talk about the attacks. I want to produce 3 episodes talking about 3 different attacks and the citizens  terror of sharks, with one more episode taking place years later talking about the lasting fear of sharks in the area. With my project, I want to comment on the unrealistic views of sharks and other aspects of nature, and how fear can create a hysteria in the public that is not to easy to come back from. 

 

Annotated bibliography 

“Shark phobia: The memory of Jaws continues to scare swimmers away from the ocean”

This article focuses of what’s called the jaws effect, a theory that says a fear of a giant man eating shark lurking in the deep blue is pretty rational. The theory states that the brain is scared of an unrealistic event occurring because the event has some realism to it. You are so afraid of swimming and giant man eating sharks after watching jaws because you know that sharks are a real animal that live in the ocean. Joanne Cantor, a professor of communications sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said “Fear, as an emotion, was intended to keep us alive. Fear tells us we are in danger and you better protect yourself or you’re going to be eaten by the predator. So fear has to act quickly — and when our brains see Jaws for the first time our fear response kicks in and it kicks in before our conscious brain can start telling us that, ‘It is only a movie, it is only a movie, it is only a movie.’”

 

“How Jawa Misrepresented The Great White”

This article talks about the scientific side of jaws and the statistics on great white sharks after the movie came out, specifically how the number of great white sharks lowered greatly and the number of game hunters got much higher. The article also talks about the unlikeliness of shark attacks and the science behind them, but yet the masses will still snot enter the deep blue in fear of a shark attack.

 

“Why are we afraid of sharks? There’s a scientific explanation”

This article also focuses on the scientific side of shark attacks and why we are so scared of them, and how the fear of sharks amplified after the movie jaws came out. The article also talks about the history of the phobia of sharks and what it dates back to. Shark attacks are very rare and the article makes that clear. The article states “You're more likely to be crushed to death under a falling vending machine in your office, or a cow that collapses on you in a field than you are to die in the jaws of a shark. But fears don't necessarily match facts, and the fear of being attacked by a shark is a emotional response than the reality.” The likeliness of being eaten by a shark is slim to none, yet still people are afraid to even set foot in the ocean because of out natural fear of predators.

 

“Sharks”

This peer reviewed article about great white sharks goes into the science behind shark attacks and sharks in general. The article also focuses on how the number of sharks killed for sport at the time of release of jaws and how the shark population has not recovered since. Most of the sharks killed at the time of release were of reproducing age, and since the growth rate of the great whites is so slow, many of the great whites today are very very young and not at reproducing age. The article talks about how we can makes steps to preserve the great white by stopping shark products and shark meat from being sold.

 

Shark Attacks: Myths, Misunderstandings and Human Fear

 

This article talks about the lack of research on sharks and shark attacks and how there had been a giant misunderstanding in cutler about sharks. The article states “While much research has been conducted into shark biology and behavior since Jaws, particularly in the past 10 to 15 years, it is probably fair to suggest that popular literature has not kept pace with new and exciting developments. It is this reviewer's opinion that, apart from within the scientific literature, there have not been many publications in recent times that have adequately addressed the issue of shark attacks, or canvassed the complex issues making up these unfortunate events”

 

Ask the Professor: Did “Jaws” demonize sharks?

This article talks about how not only the number of sharks went down after jaws, but the number of people attending beaches and shark hunters and shark deaths. The movie also spawned lots of shark killing contests and other horrific things. Shark killings have gone up to about 100 million sharks killed by humans every year, that number is going down but it was at an all time high during the years following the release of jaws. The article also talked about how the public didn’t really know anything about sharks before the movie was released, and the knowledge they were fed was false rumors about shark attacks the deadliness of the animal. The article reads “Yet, as a result of this movie, we get the sense that all sharks are like the one in Jaws. He will not stop. He will not sleep. He will pursue you — unless you kill him.”