Steven Spielberg would like to profusely apologize to sharks for Jaws
After directing Jaws, Steven Spielberg says he fears sharks around the world are "somehow mad at me for the feeding frenzy of crazy sports fishermen."
On Sunday, just a day before his seventy-sixth birthday, there was one thing nagging at Steven Spielberg, which he spoke to during an appearance on BBC’s Desert Island Discs podcast: the decimation of the shark population in the wake of his movie Jaws.
“I truly and to this day regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film,” Spielberg shares (via Entertainment Weekly). “I really, truly regret that.”
Based on Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel, Jaws chronicles one great white shark’s relentless attacks on a fictional coastal New England town, Amity Island. Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, and Roy Scheider lead the cast as an ichthyologist, ship captain, and police chief, respectively, all of whom come together to vanquish the marine beast.
Since the 1975 release of the film, research has since shown that Jaws’ bloodthirsty portrayal of the mammal (and major commercial success) had a hand in the population decline of sharks around the U.S. The decline mostly resulted from overfishing.
“You didn’t have to have a fancy boat or gear,” George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research, tells EW of the landscape for shark-hunters post-Jaws. “An average Joe could catch big fish, and there was no remorse, since there was this mindset that they were man-killers.”
When asked if he himself would be afraid of being surrounded by sharks on Amity Island, Spielberg revealed that he mostly fears any animosity from the remaining shark population.
“That’s one of the things I still fear,” Spielberg laments. “Not to get eaten by a shark, but that sharks are somehow mad at me for the feeding frenzy of crazy sports fishermen that happened after 1975.”
Benchley also expressed remorse for his portrayal of the animal, and became a stalwart advocate for sharks and their ocean habitats before his death in 2006. “Knowing what I know now, I could never write that book today,” he once told the London Daily Express. “Sharks don’t target human beings, and they certainly don’t hold grudges.” If Spielberg ever finds himself back on Amity Island with no life vest, he’ll certainly have to hope so.