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According to a study published by Nature, the worldwide population of sharks and rays declined by more than 71 percent between 1970 and 2018. A 2013 study estimated that 100 million sharks <\/b>are killed annually. Last year, the International Union for Conservation of Nature said 37 percent of sharks and rays are threatened with extinction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Some say \u201cJaws\u201d influenced that downward trend. Chris Lowe, director of the shark lab at California State University at Long Beach, said the movie <\/b>caused people to view sharks as malicious toward humans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201c’Jaws’ was kind of a turning point,\u201d Lowe said. \u201cIt got people thinking very negatively about sharks, which just made it so much easier to overfish them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Over the years, have researchers documented some of the negative portrayals of sharks in films like \u201cJaws.\u201d A 2021 study concluded that 96 percent of shark films portrayed the <\/b>animals as threatening. Last year, the Florida Museum of Natural History reported that sharks killed 11 people worldwide.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Gavin Naylor, who directs the Florida Program for Shark Research, said Spielberg may be too critical of himself. While Naylor notes that \u201cJaws\u201d created interest in sharks, he believes people would’ve fished and sold them regardless.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cI don’t think he should feel terrible that he has caused everybody to start commercially fishing for them,\u201d Naylor said. \u201cThere was a reaction to the movie by a few people that just wanted to catch a few sharks. But that was happening long before ‘Jaws.’\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Spielberg had directed other projects before \u201cJaws,\u201d but the movie was his first blockbuster. As a 27-year-old, Spielberg adapted the best-selling novel by Peter Benchley. The movie follows residents of a New England beach town hunting a great white shark that’s killing swimmers. \u201cJaws\u201d collected $100 million within 59 days and later surpassed \u201cThe Godfather\u201d as the highest-grossing film worldwide \u2014 a record it maintained until \u201cStar Wars\u201d came out two years later.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Spielberg has since produced dozens of renowned movies, including \u201cET the Extra-Terrestrial,\u201d \u201cJurassic Park\u201d and \u201cSchindler’s List.\u201d Still, he said the legacy of \u201cJaws\u201d has bothered him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cI truly and to this day regret the decimation of the shark population,\u201d Spielberg told BBC, \u201cbecause of the book and the film.\u201d (Benchley, who wrote the \u201cJaws\u201d novel, said in 2000 that he also feels somewhat responsible for the suffering of great white sharks.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Lowe said he believes \u201cJaws\u201d provoked the prevalence of shark-fishing tournaments. When other species became endangered in the 1980s, Lowe said, people overfished sharks with little pushback from the public.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cIt made it easier for people to say, ‘You know what? These things are a menace,’\u201d Lowe said. \u201cThe word ‘shark’ had that connotation, and people were less compelled to protect them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Naylor agrees \u201cJaws\u201d expanded sharks’ popularity, including the demand for shark fin soup in the 1990s. But he said “Jaws” has become a scapegoat for a problem <\/b>that people created.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cPeople have fished for sharks for a long time,\u201d Naylor said. \u201cAnd they’ve been frightened by sharks for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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But Lowe said stereotypes surrounding sharks are diminishing. In the past decade, he said, the majority of his students have pursued shark research to protect them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cI don’t think it has the same impact as it did on my generation,\u201d Lowe said of \u201cJaws.\u201d \u201cThey start to see it as, ‘Okay, well, that was more about entertainment, and less about really informing us about what sharks are really about.’\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Comment on this story Comment Months after \u201cJaws\u201d debuted in June 1975, the thriller became the highest-grossing movie ever. Critics still classify director Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster as one of the most influential pictures in movie history. Spielberg, however, says he still worries about another legacy of \u201cJaws.\u201d In an interview with BBC Radio released Sunday, …<\/p>\n
Steven Spielberg says he regrets impact \u201cJaws\u201d had on shark populations<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nSteven Spielberg says he regrets impact \u201cJaws\u201d had on shark populations - harchi90<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n