by David Owen
Sharks were well on the nose in the 1970s: other than as a class of boneless fish to go with chips, they were not economically lucrative, and nothing had happened to make their other known feature—people as prey—attractive. Then came Jaws. The potential within the book morphed into a record-breaking Hollywood success story, all based on the myth of a gigantic great white shark turned rogue with a taste for revenge and human flesh. However, unlike other monster stories, it had a basis in reality. Where there could never really be a gigantic ape hanging on to a tall building for all the world to see, there could definitely be something of menace under the waves. This lent to the movie legitimacy and credibility, no matter how unlikely and scientifically inaccurate its premise.
The young director, Steven Spielberg, with just two films to his name, co-wrote a screenplay (constantly changed during the very long shoot) markedly different to Benchley’s novel, stripping much of it away for two essentials: the shark, and the relationship between the three main characters. Crucially, Spielberg included a retelling of the USS Indianapolis tragedy as a key to the storyline. This use of reality enhanced the legitimacy of Jaws and therefore the shark—subsequently almost any shark—as a malevolent, virtually satanic beast.
So powerful was this creature that Spielberg used it creatively and artfully to address some socio-political issues and to pose some interesting psychological questions, in the process making a film that is considered to be a classic. The cinematic storyline: a huge shark starts mauling bathers at Amity Beach, New Jersey. The town relies on tourism. New police chief Brody (Roy Scheider) wants to close the beaches but comes up against the smarmy mayor. After more deaths, Brody enlists the aid of marine biologist Hooper (Richard Dreyfus) and rough, tough shark fisherman Quint (Robert Shaw) to hunt and destroy the shark. They do so, but at the cost of Quint’s life.
Jaws neatly inverted what had been a Hollywood tradition of male heroes (created by macho male directors) by killing off Quint, having first set him up as an obsessive with a death-wish endangering the lives of all three men. It is as if an audacious young novelist at the time had written an international bestseller ridiculing the shark-hunting exploits of Ernest Hemingway and Zane Grey. The inversion sees the manly Quint suffer the ultimate fate/indignity of sliding screaming into the great beast’s maw. In this respect Spielberg continued the tradition of both Copley and Homer, using a shark to subvert convention.
Quint, though, is also an echo of the complexities inherent in Melville’s Captain Ahab. Quint is a USS Indianapolis survivor. His monologue to Brody and Hooper about that horror is a powerful piece of cinema and the core of the film. The deaths of the teenagers at the beginning were scary: Quint’s monologue is chilling.
Politically, the movie can be read as a kind of allegory of the turbulence and trauma associated with the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, in which there were clear demarcations of the left (brainy scientist Hooper) and the right (straight-talking hunter Quint)—with Brody somewhat powerless in the middle, and tainted by the corruption of officialdom that kept the beach open and led to more deaths. How ironic it is that the politics of that shark (Spielberg nicknamed it Bruce, after his lawyer) has led directly to all sharks becoming political, as sides line up for an almighty twenty-first century conservation–exploitation conflict.
Noteworthy, too, because it reinforces our uneasy notions about sharks, Jaws is both a tremendously tense suspense movie and a less successful action movie. The shark is not seen (dorsal fin excepting) until far into the film. This withholding is most effective—even if it may have been forced on Spielberg through the mechanical shark repeatedly breaking down in water—because in reality that’s what we fear most about sharks. We cannot see them coming for us until it is too late. The first full view of the shark is by Brody (the movie’s eventual mundane hero) on Quint’s boat. It glides right past his stunned face, in a richly complex scene:
All the things this creature has been! A dirty old man racked with longing [eating beautiful teenagers]. An insatiable psychopath forced to repeat a sin. A scarlet pimpernel leaving a toothy plume. An insolent catwalk model. A Bond adversary salivating at the possibility of an equal opponent. But from this moment he’s also simply a species enemy. He now exists as a shark. He exists, and like all monsters, he is far, far older than us. And what jerks Brody back, so speedy and rigid it’s as if he were the special effect, is the shark’s silence. Even though its mouth was open there came no growl, no thunder, no list of impossible requests. No proof of this encounter beyond a cool fizz on the water.27
Not so long ago, and not that far away, an old man who knew the way of the shark would have well understood these complexities. We gain much from the natural world, and abuse it at our peril. The ancient elasmobranchs, as greatly threatened as they are, hopefully still have much to teach us about the art of survival.
PLATE 1: Prickly dogfish (Oxynotus bruniensis)
© Rodie Kuiter, OceanwideImages.com
PLATE 2: Portuguese shark (Centroscymnus coelolepis)
© CSIRO
PLATE 3: Frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus anguineus)
© CSIRO
PLATE 4: Grey reef shark (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos)
© www.natoliunderwater.com
PLATE 5: Bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas), feeding
© Michael Patrick O’Neill, OceanwideImages.com
PLATE 6: Scalloped hammerhead shark (Sphyrna lewini)
© Michael Patrick O’Neill, OceanwideImages.com
PLATE 7: Collared carpet shark (Parascyllium collare)
© Rodie Kuiter, OceanwideImages.com
PLATE 8: Spotted wobbegong (Orectolobus maculatus)
L. Conboy, © CSIRO
PLATE 9: Zebra, or leopard, shark (Stegostoma fasciatum)
© www.natoliunderwater.com
PLATE 10: Goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni)
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, negative number P.031009
PLATE 11: Shortfin mako shark (Isurus oxyrinchus)
© Andy Murch, OceanwideImages.com
PLATE 12: Grey nurse shark (Carcharias taurus)
© www.natoliunderwater.com
PLATE 13: Great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias)
© Chris & Monique Fallows, OceanwideImages.com
PLATE 14: Basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus)
© Andy Murch, OceanwideImages.com
PLATE 15: White-spotted guitarfish (Rhynchobatus laevis)
G. Yearsley, © CSIRO
PLATE 16: Freshwater sawfish (Pristis microdon)
© CSIRO
PLATE 17: Maugean skate (Zearaja maugeana) (ventral view, note claspers)
T. Carter, © CSIRO
PLATE 18: Elephant fish (Callorhinchus milii)
T. Carter, © CSIRO
PLATE 19: Ancestral sawfish, depicted by Nekingaba Maminyamanja
Reproduced courtesy of the artist
PLATE 20: Antoine Berjon, Still Life with Flowers, Shells, a Shark’s Head, and Petrifications (1819)
Philadelphia Museum of Art
PLATE 21: John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark (1778)
Ferdinand Lammot Belin Fund, image courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
PLATE 22: Winslow Homer, The Gulf Stream (1899)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1906 (06.1234) © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
GLOSSARY
agonistic: competitive aggressive or defensive behaviour, usually within the same species.
ampullae of Lorenzini: electromagnetic sense receptors on the snout.
anterior: the front part.
barbels: tendril-like sense receptors on the head or snout.
basihyal: a structure on the base of the mouth with a suction function.
batoids: skates and rays.
benthic: relating to the bottom of the ocean.
bioluminescence: body light generated by organs.
braincase: the single structure enclosing the brain.
cartilage: firm flexible tissue.
caudal fin: tail fin.
caudal peduncle: tail stalk, often with keels.
caudal vertebrae: bony segments of the vertebral column in the tail.
cephalopods: marine molluscs including octopus, squid, nautilus.
cetaceans: aquatic, mostly marine mammals including whales, dolphins, porpoises.
chondrichthyans: fishes with a cartilaginous skeleton.
circumglobal: worldwide within a specific range.
claspers: paired cartilage extensions of the male pelvic fins which transfer sperm to the female cloaca.
cloaca: the opening between the pelvic fins used for reproduction and passing of waste products.
cnidarians: mostly marine animals, including jellyfish, corals, sea anemones.
continental shelf: the coastal seabed to a depth of about 200 metres.
continental slope: the steep sloping seabed beyond the shelf, to about 4000 metres.
copepods: tiny crustaceans making up a large part of the zooplankton.
crocodilians: marine crocodilians are the saltwater crocodiles and caymans.
crustaceans: characterised by jointed limbs, they include crabs, lobsters, shrimp, krill and barnacles.
demersal: living on or near the bed of a deep body of water.
dermal denticles: toothlike placoid scales (dentine enclosing a pulp cavity) embedded in the dermis, the tips of which erupt through the skin.
dermis: connective tissue beneath the epidermis, the outer layer of skin.
diel vertical migration: rising towards the surface to feed at night and returning to depths during the day usually to avoid predators.
echinoderms: exclusively marine animals including starfish, brittle stars, sea cucumbers and sea urchins.
elasmobranchs: sharks, rays and skates.
endemic: found only in a specific area.
endoskeleton: an animal’s internal support structure.
endothermic circulation: in some lamnoid sharks, retention of body heat in the blood, elevating the body temperature above that of the water.
epiphysis cerebri: light-detecting gland under the skin on the head, also called the pineal gland.
euphasiids: marine shrimp-like invertebrates, or krill.
fin girdles: the structures that anchor the fins to the body.
fin radials: multiple segmented supporting rods that fan out into the fin base.
fusiform: tapering at each end.
gill arches: structures that support the gill filaments.
gill filaments: tissue structures containing rows of lamellae in which gas exchange takes place.
gill rays: cartilage rods to which the gill arches attach.
heterocercal: unequal in size.
holotype: the single specimen designated as the type for describing a species.
homocercal: similar in size.
ichthyologist: a zoologist who studies fish.
keels: fleshy ridges.
lateral line system: lines of pits, grooves and canals in which are mechanoreceptors sensitive to water movements.
littoral-fringe: occurring near the shore.
monophyletic: an ancestor and its descendants.
morphometrics: the size and shape of an organism.
nares: paired nostril-like holes on the snout and the mouth.
nasoral grooves: furrows that connect the nares to the mouth.
neoselachian: modern (living) species of sharks and rays.
nictitating membrane: a third eyelid which can completely cover the eye.
nudibranchs: soft-bodied marine molluscs without shells.
obligate ram filtering: passive intake of water from which plankton is extracted.
obligate ram ventilation: water enters a swimming shark’s mouth and passes over the gills, enabling gaseous exchange.
oophagy: the practice of live young developing within the mother feeding on unfertilised eggs.
oscillatory propulsion: movement through wing-like flapping of the pectoral fins.
otic capsules: paired structures containing the inner ears.
oviparous: laying eggs that develop and hatch independently of the female.
ovoviviparous: producing embryos that develop within eggs in the mother’s body, nourished by the yolk.
palaeoichthyology: the study of fish fossils.
pelagic: describing the upper ocean zone.
pharynx: throat region.
philopatry: in migrating animals, the tendency to return to the same area to breed or feed.
phytoplanktons: microscopically small plantlike organisms commonly occurring as bacteria or algae.
pinnipeds: fin-footed semi-aquatic marine mammals, being the seals, sea lions and walruses.
pit organs: sensory organs scattered across the upper body of many elasmobranch species.
polychaetes: segmented, bristled marine worms including lugworms, sandworms and clam worms.
protrusible: capable of being thrust outward/forward.
quadrangular: having four distinct sides.
requiem sharks: also called the whaler sharks, the family Carcharhindae.
respiratory pumping: the ability of many elasmobranch species to pass water over the gills while motionless.
rete mirabile: netlike masses of arteries that capture heat from warmed blood and transfer it to colder blood.
rhomboidal: in the shape of a diamond.
rostrum: a projecting snout.
saddles: coloured blotches on the upper part of the body.
serrated: having sawlike edges.
sirenians: marine mammal herbivores, the manatees and dugongs.
spatial dynamics: the study of geographic movements of an organism.
species: organisms that breed and reproduce with their own kind.
spiracles: remnant gills evolved as paired openings at the front end of the pharynx.
squalene: a liquid organic compound, lighter than water, that is obtained from shark livers and forms the chemical basis of the steroids.
stromatolites: layered structures formed in shallow water by either biological or non-biological processes.
taxonomy: the science and practice of classification, particularly of plants and animals, using specific classification schemes.
terminal: the end part, front or back.
thorax: the region between the head and stomach.
underslung: jaw underneath the head.
ventral: describing the underside.
vertebral centra: strengthened disk-like structures from which the arches of the vertebrae radiate.
viviparous: bearing live young that develop within the mother.
zooplankton: aquatic organisms ranging in size from tiny krill to large jellyfish.
NOTES
Introduction
1 This whale shark was harpooned in 1912 by Captain Charles Thompson of Miami, Florida. He had it preserved, stuffed and mounted on a railroad flat car, on the side of which its dimensions were given as 45 feet long and weighing 30 000 pounds. There is uncertainty as to whether it was accidentally destroyed by fire in 1922 or deliberately destroyed because of its stench.
2 Black, Chris (2008), White Pointer South: The Tasmanian white shark chronicles, Hobart: Ragged Tooth Productions, p. 164.
1. Shark Attack: Controversy, Reality, Response
1 Quirke, Antonia (2002), Jaws [BFI Modern Classics series], London: British Film Institute, p. 52.
2 Pemberton, David, personal communication to the author, 23 September 2008.
3 Capuzzo, Michael (2001), Close to Shore: The extraordinary true story of the New Jersey great white shark attacks of 1916, London: Headline, p. 174.
4
5
6
7
8 Coad, Brian W. and Papahn, Frough (1988), ‘Shark attacks in the rivers of southern Iran’, Environmental Biology of Fishes, vol. 23, no. 1–2, pp. 131–4.
9
10
11
12 Steel, Rodney (1992), Sharks of the World, London: Blandford Press, p. 52.
13
14
15
16
17 ibid.
18
19
20
21 The Australian, 25 January 2007, p. 7; The Mercury, 25 January 2007, p. 3;