Director Steven Spielberg said he "truly regrets" the decimation of the shark population that was at least partially triggered by his film "Jaws."
The 1975 classic tells the story of a massive, vengeful great white shark that terrorizes a New England seaside town. In the years after the film's release, the shark population plummeted dramatically on the U.S. eastern seaboard, leading many to speculate that "Jaws" had prompted a massive uptick in sports fishing across the U.S. — something that Spielberg admitted he feared during an interview for BBC Radio 4's "Desert Island Discs" podcast Sunday.
The topic came about when the show's host, Lauren Laverne, asked if Spielberg would fear sharks if he lived on a deserted island.
"One of the things I still fear [is] 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," he said. "I truly and to this day regret the decimation of the shark population because of the ['Jaws'] book and the film."
According to a 2021 study in the journal Nature, the world's population of oceanic sharks has fallen by 71% since the 1970s due to overfishing. George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research in Gainesville, told the BBC that this could be related to the "collective testosterone rush" that "swept through the East Coast of the U.S." after the release of "Jaws."
"Thousands of fishers set out to catch trophy sharks after seeing 'Jaws,'" Burgess said.
"'Jaws' was a turning point for great white sharks," added Oliver Crimmen, who's been the fish curator at the Natural History Museum in London for more than 40 years. "I actually saw a big change happen in the public and scientific perception of sharks when Peter Benchley's book 'Jaws' was published and then subsequently made into a film."
Peter Benchley has publicly apologized for his role in the drop of the shark population.
"Knowing what I know now, I could never write that book today," he previously said, according to the BBC. "Sharks don't target human beings, and they certainly don't hold grudges."