Posted on 07/10/2021 5:13:02 PM PDT by Capt. Tom
Every summer on the Discovery Channel, “Shark Week” inundates its eager audiences with spectacular documentary footage of sharks hunting, feeding and leaping.
Debuting in 1988, the television event was an instant hit. Its financial success wildly exceeded the expectations of its creators, who had been inspired by the profitability of the 1975 blockbuster film “Jaws,” the first movie to earn US$100 million at the box office.
Thirty-three years later, the enduring popularity of the longest-running programming event in cable TV history is a testament to a nation terrified and fascinated by sharks.
Journalists and scholars often credit “Jaws” as the source of America’s obsession with sharks.
We bring the expertise of academics to the public. Yet as a historian analyzing human and shark entanglements across the centuries, I argue that the temporal depths of “sharkmania” run much deeper.
World War II played a pivotal role in fomenting the nation’s obsession with sharks. The monumental wartime mobilization of millions of people placed more Americans into contact with sharks than at any prior time in history, spreading seeds of intrigue and fear toward the marine predators.
America on the move Before World War II, travel across state and county lines was uncommon. But during the war, the nation was on the move.
Out of a population of 132.2 million people, per the 1940 U.S. Census, 16 million Americans served in the armed forces, many of whom fought in the Pacific. Meanwhile, 15 million civilians crossed county lines to work in the defense industries, many of which were in coastal cities, such as Mobile, Alabama; Galveston, Texas; Los Angeles; and Honolulu.
Local newspapers across the country transfixed civilians and servicemen alike with frequent stories of bombed ships and aircraft in the open ocean. Journalists consistently described imperiled servicemen who were rescued or dying in “shark-infested waters.”
Whether sharks were visibly present or not, these news articles magnified a growing cultural anxiety of ubiquitous monsters lurking and poised to kill.
The naval officer and marine scientist H. David Baldridge reported that fear of sharks was a leading cause of poor morale among servicemen in the Pacific theater. General George Kenney enthusiastically supported the adoption of the P-38 fighter plane in the Pacific because its twin engines and long range diminished the chances of a single-engine aircraft failure or an empty fuel tank: “You look down from the cockpit and you can see schools of sharks swimming around. They never look healthy to a man flying over them.”
‘Hold tight and hang on’ American servicemen became so squeamish about the specter of being eaten during long oceanic campaigns that U.S. Army and Navy intelligence operations engaged in a publicity campaign to combat fear of sharks.
Published in 1942, “Castaway’s Baedeker to the South Seas” was a “travel” survival guide, of sorts, for servicemen stranded on Pacific islands. The book emphasized the critical importance of conquering such “bogies of the imagination” as “If you are forced down at sea, a shark is sure to amputate your leg.”
Cover depicting a cartoon shark about to attack someone stranded in the ocean. ‘Shark Sense’ sought to prepare troops for encounters with the marine predators. Navy Archives Similarly, the Navy’s 1944 pamphlet titled “Shark Sense” advised wounded servicemen stranded at sea to “staunch the flow of blood as soon as you disengage the parachute” to thwart hungry sharks. The pamphlet helpfully noted that hitting an aggressive shark on the nose might stop an attack, as would grabbing a ride on the pectoral fin: “Hold tight and hang on as long as you can without drowning yourself.”
The Department of the Navy also worked with the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, to develop a shark repellent.
Office of Strategic Services executive assistant and future chef Julia Child worked on the project, which tested various recipes of clove oil, horse urine, nicotine, rotting shark muscle and asparagus in hopes of preventing shark attacks. The project culminated in 1945, when the Navy introduced “Shark Chaser,” a pink pill of copper acetate that produced a black inky dye when released in the water – the idea being that it would obscure a serviceman from sharks.
Nonetheless, the U.S. military’s morale-boosting campaign was unable to vanquish the glaring reality of wartime carnage at sea. Military media correctly observed that sharks rarely attack healthy swimmers. Indeed, malaria and other infectious diseases took a far greater toll on U.S. servicemen than sharks.
But the same publications also acknowledged that an injured person was vulnerable in the water. With the frequent bombing of airplanes and ships during World War II, thousands of injured and dying servicemen bobbed helplessly in the ocean.
One of the worst wartime disasters at sea occurred on July 30, 1945, when pelagic sharks swarmed the site of the shipwrecked USS Indianapolis. The heavy cruiser, which had just successfully delivered the components of the Hiroshima atomic bomb to Tinian Island in a top-secret mission, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Out of a crew of 1,196 men, 300 died immediately in the blast, and the rest landed in the water. As they struggled to stay afloat, men watched in terror as sharks feasted on their dead and wounded shipmates.
Only 316 men survived the five days in the open ocean.
Survivors are carried on stretchers following their rescue. Not everyone made it to shore after the torpedoing of the USS Indianapolis.
‘Jaws’ has an eager audience World War II veterans possessed searing lifelong memories of sharks – either from direct experience or from the shark stories of others. This made them an especially receptive audience for Peter Benchley’s taut shark-centered thriller “Jaws,” which he published in 1974.
Don Plotz, a Navy sailor, immediately wrote to Benchley: “I couldn’t put it down until I had finished it. For I have rather a personal interest in sharks.”
In vivid detail, Plotz recounted his experiences on a search and rescue mission in the Bahamas, where a hurricane had sunk the USS Warrington on Sept. 13, 1944. Of the original crew of 321, only 73 survived.
“We picked up two survivors who had been in the water twenty-four hours, and fighting off sharks,” Plotz wrote. “Then we spent all day picking up the carcasses of those we could find, identifying them and burying. Sometime only rib cages … an arm or leg or a hip. Sharks were all around the ship.”
Benchley’s novel paid little attention to World War II, but the war anchored one of the movie’s most memorable moments. In the haunting, penultimate scene, one of the shark hunters, Quint, quietly reveals that he is a survivor of the USS Indianapolis disaster.
“Sometimes the sharks look right into your eyes,” he says. “You know the thing about a shark, he’s got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes. He comes at you, he doesn’t seem to be living until he bites you.”
The power of Quint’s soliloquy drew upon the collective memory of the most massive wartime mobilization in American history. The oceanic reach of World War II placed greater numbers of people into contact with sharks under the dire circumstances of war. Veterans bore intimate witness to the inevitable violence of battle, compounded by the trauma of seeing sharks circle and feed opportunistically on their dead and dying comrades.
Their horrifying experiences played a pivotal role in creating an enduring cultural figure: the shark as a mindless, spectral terror that can strike at any moment, a haunting artifact of World War II that primed Americans for the era of “Jaws” and “Shark Week.”
"JAW"s put fear of sharks into every American who saw the movie.
We are now into shark season, and will get plenty of shark news daily in Newspapers, TV, magazines etc.-and from Freepers like me. -Tom
You just need to swim faster than the person next to you.
We’re watching Jaws right now on prime. Don’t drink that.
Grew up near Lake Michigan where nothing could eat you when you swim.
Then saw “Jaws”.
Not an ocean fan. At all.
People do not need to fear shark attacks as long as they wear a mask when swimming...../s
Perhaps this section was most telling:
But a six-month study commissioned by the Outer Cape towns and released in October 2019 looked at the efficacy of more than two dozen shark-mitigation strategies, including the Clever Buoy, as well as nets, virtual barriers, electromagnet devices to deter sharks, and drones, among others. The report ultimately concluded that most either didn’t have enough evidence that they actually worked, had limited efficacy, or wouldn’t work on Cape Cod’s shoreline—except one: modifying human behavior.
This has been the primary way that public-safety officials have mitigated shark risk over the past eight to nine years, said Suzanne Grout Thomas, director of community services for Wellfleet, a fishing town about 15 miles from the tip of Cape Cod. Since Medici’s death, towns have stepped up their protocols, limiting how far out people can swim and closing beaches to swimming, sometimes several times a day. Lifeguards and even some members of the public are trained in “stop the bleed” practices for bites, and signs warn about the presence of sharks. “Our biggest contribution to this is educating the general public as to how sharks can be anticipated to behave,” says Thomas. And she already sees signs it is working. People swim closer to shore, or don’t swim at all, and they react faster when the lifeguards blow their whistles to clear the water.
So, let me get this right....the govt worked hard and succeeded in getting the seal population back up, but seals are a great source of food for sharks, creating this situation, but it's human behavior that has to change?
I mean, I get it...fish will be fish. But now people are being blamed for the shark attacks. That's like blaming people wearing expensive watches for getting robbed.
When he comes at ya, he doesn’t even seem to be livin’… ’til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin’ and your hollerin’ those sharks come in and… they rip you to pieces.
Robert Shaw was really a great actor.
Discovery Channel “Shark Week” debuted in 1988. Odd that I’ve never even heard of it. It sounds like a big hit. Is that something like “Black Month”?
He got the month wrong (it was July and not June), but a fine presentation nonetheless. I think this scene in such a popular movie immortalized the sinking of the Indianapolis.
More from The Atlantic….
“This is a story about fish. Not the tasty kind like you find at Long John Silvers where you can get the Steamer Special for $10 with all the napkins and straws you want.”
One of my sons and his friends have seen JAWS so many times, they know the dialogue and character names. He even took his boat to Martha's Vineyard to do a JAW's tour a few summers ago. - Tom
I thought the sharks were from all the slaves thrown overboard while bringing them to North America during the 1700 and 1800’s?
Stupid movie. The police chief waits halfway through the show to put the semi auto rifle to work. He had a gun on his hip too. Could have put a lot of lead in it’s head when it came up for chum.
That is what is happening, because as long as the seals and sharks are protected by the Federal Govt. and the States, any solution will fail.
. This goes back to 2019 when a study group released its findings. Excerpt below: -Tom
"The only way to be completely safe from a shark attack, a new report released Wednesday concludes, is to stay out of the water".
"The $50,000 study by the Woods Hole Group analyzed 27 shark mitigation alternatives but did not recommend any single or group of solutions. "
That scene in “Jaws” piqued a 12-year-old boy’s curiosity and he went on to learn all he could about the USS Indianapolis. His efforts led eventually to the exoneration of its captain, James McVay, who never got over the sinking and court martial and had killed himself in the ‘60s.
How long a movie would Cujo be if the Trentons had a biden shotgun...
I’d argue Jaws had a lot to do with it.
And Jaws was heavily inspired by the 1916 New Jersey shark attacks.
What the Navy did to McVay was an outrage.
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