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Steven Spielberg says he still "really, truly regrets" how Jaws negatively impacted the public's perception of sharks. The filmmaker expressed guilt over the fact that the hit thriller was built on false assumptions incited by Peter Benchley's novel, and how the subsequent fishing boom led to a notable decline in the creatures' numbers.
While appearing as a guest on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs recently, Spielberg explained: "I truly, and to this day, regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film. I really, truly regret that.
"That's one of the things I still fear," he continued candidly. "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."
While Jaws isn't, of course, solely to blame for the diminishing amount of sharks worldwide, conservationists have previously criticized the film for sparking an increase in shark hunting. "Jaws was a turning point for great white sharks. I actually saw a big change happen," Oliver Crimmen, fish curator at the Natural History Museum in London, told the BBC back in 2015.
"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," George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research in Gainesville, added. "It was good blue collar fishing. You didn't have to have a fancy boat or gear, an average Joe could catch big fish, and there was no remorse, since there was this mindset that they were man-killers."
Starring Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, and Rob Scheider, Jaws follows a marine biologist, a professional shark hunter, and a police chief, who band together to catch a great white shark that's been attacking beachgoers in their summer resort town.
"Knowing what I know now, I could never write that book today," Benchley admitted before his death in 2006. "Sharks don't target human beings, and they certainly don't hold grudges."
