By Mary O’KEEFE

June saw the 50th anniversary of “Jaws.” It was 1975 when audiences were first told “You will never go in the water again.”

If you haven’t seen “Jaws” you really should. For my generation it was the movie to see, the movie that scared us all and the movie that made Steven Spielberg and John Williams household names. 

“Jaws” was the first film to gross over $100 million domestically. 

According to Gallup, the film was released on June 20, 1975 and by the end of the summer Gallup found that 21% of Americans reported they had seen the movie and another 15% planned to see it in the future. 

This movie was great in a lot of ways though not so great for sharks. Even director Spielberg regretted the effect the film had on shark killings. He was asked in a past interview with BBC Radio and reported in the Smithsonian Magazine how he would feel if he were on a desert island surrounded by shark-infested waters. 

“That’s one of the things I still fear – not to get eaten by a shark but that sharks are somehow mad at me for the feeding frenzy of crazy sport fishermen that happened after 1975,” Spielberg said. “I truly, and to this day, regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film.”

“In California, the film led to vendetta killings, great white shark tournaments, a commercial fishery that along with bycatch in a gill-net (walls of netting submerged in water) fishery, almost completely wiped out the population of white sharks along the west coast of North America,” according to sharkstewards.com.

The shark really is, as Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) said in the movie, “A miracle of evolution.” 

Great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) are much older than dinosaurs with an ancestry that dates back more than 400 million years. 

“These animals are uniquely adapted to their ocean environment with six highly refined senses of smell, hearing, touch, taste, sight and even electromagnetism. As the top predators in the ocean, great white sharks face only one real threat to their survival: us,” according to ocean.si.edu (Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History/Ocean).

Sharks are threatened by accidental killing – like getting caught in long lines and trawlers – illegal poaching where shark fins are sold for soup and illegal hunting as in sport fishing for shark jaws as trophies. Sharks get caught in nets that are placed along some coastlines to keep sharks away from beaches and they are threatened by pollution with toxins and heavy metals that build up in their bodies, according to ocean.si.edu.

There are more than 500 species of sharks that range in size from the length of a human hand to more than 39 feet long. Half of all species are less than three feet long. They come in a variety of colors, including bubble gum pink, and feed on tiny plankton while others prefer larger fish and squids, according to ocean.si.edu.

The thing that brings fear to the movie screen is what makes sharks so needed in global ecology: They are often at the top of the food chain. 

Sharks were the first vertebrate predators. They have perfected their hunting skills over millions of years. This prowess keeps the ecosystem in balance; however, that balance is in danger as the attack on sharks by humans continue.

Sharks do attack humans – there is no debate – so just like when you go hiking in our Angeles National Forest, if you go into the ocean you need to be prepared for nature. But these predators are also being threatened by human predators. 

“Rising demand for shark fins to make shark fin soup has resulted in increased shark fishing worldwide; an estimate 100 million sharks are killed by fisheries every year. Sharks are accidentally caught in nets or on long line fishing gear. And because of needless fear spurred on by films such as ‘Jaws,’ the instinct for some is to hurt or kill sharks that come near – such as the 2013 controversial shark culling [deliberate killing of sharks] in Australia. This is despite the fact that you are more likely to be killed by lightning than bitten by a shark and more likely to be killed by a dog attack than a shark attack. Combined, these actions have decreased many shark populations by 90% since large-scale fishing began,” according to ocean.si.edu

Shark finning, taking the fish fin for shark fin soup, has continued to devastate the shark population. Shark finning is when sharks are caught, their dorsal fin is cut off and their bodies are thrown back into the ocean. There has been legislation passed in some parts of the world that focuses on curtailing this practice of mutilation, but it has not curtailed the killing.  

“Over the past two decades, sharks have been increasingly recognized among the world’s most threatened wildlife and hence have received heightened scientific and regulatory scrutiny. Yet the effect of protective regulations on shark fishing mortality has not been evaluated at a global scale. The recent study led by ecologist Boris Worm estimated that total fishing mortality increased from at least 76 to 80 million sharks between 2012 and 2019 – 25 million of which were threatened species. Mortality increased by 4% in coastal waters but decreased by 7% in pelagic [open seas] fisheries, especially across the Atlantic and Western Pacific. By linking fishing mortality data to the global regulatory landscape, we show that widespread legislation designed to prevent shark finning did not reduce mortality but that regional shark fishing or retention bans had some success. These analyses, combined with expert interviews, highlight evidence-based solutions to reverse the continued overexploitation of sharks,” according to the study in Science Journal “Global shark fishing mortality still rising despite widespread regulatory change.” 

So the take aways are: 1) find another soup that doesn’t threaten a creature that has been on the planet for over 400 million years and 2) not all sharks are “Jaws.” 

June gloom extends into the first part of July. We should see some late night/early morning marine layer clouds through next week. Our temperatures are expected to be seasonal with highs in the mid-to-upper 80s, according to NOAA.