Fifty years ago, Peter Benchley’s novel “Jaws” was released. The following year, 1975, Steven Spielberg’s movie of the same name captivated audiences everywhere and our view of sharks and the ocean changed forever.
Benchley died in 2006, but his widow, Wendy, told the Wall Street Journal this month that her husband never intended for the shark to be the focal point of the story. He “had no interest in writing a one-note horror story: shark eats people,” she said.
But we know the shark was the attraction, which led to both fascination and fear. It spawned sequels, copycat movies and endless documentaries about sharks. John Williams’s famous score from “Jaws” still triggers thoughts of imminent danger and the movie’s ominous tagline was a warning: “You’ll never go in the water again.”
All the focus on sharks also caused many people, me included, to think twice before swimming in the ocean.
Last week my wife and I, like all good West Virginians, spent a couple of days at Myrtle Beach. I did not go in the water. Okay, full disclosure, we walked along the beach and I let the dying waves wash over my feet, but that was it.
I used to enjoy playing in the ocean and riding the waves, but now I am hesitant to commit to water where I cannot see what is near me. I know, it is not rational. After all, the odds are in my favor as well as everyone else swimming in the ocean.
The Florida Museum keeps an International Shark Attack File of shark-human interactions. Here are a few notable statistics:
–There were 69 “unprovoked” shark bites of humans worldwide last year. Unprovoked is defined by the Florida Museum as an incident in which “a bite on a live human occurs in the shark’s natural habitat with no human provocation.”
–There were 22 “provoked” shark bites, which I define as encounters where the human was stupid enough to harass a shark!
–In 2023, 36 of the unprovoked shark bites (two were fatal) were in the United States. That is more than any other country, but that is a tiny number when you consider between 180 million and 200 million people visit U.S. beaches every year.
And that is why you see shark attacks in the news.
By definition, they are so rare that when it does happen, it stands out. Plus, there is a sensational aspect to the story. Go most of the summer without a shark encounter at your favorite beach and no one cares, but a bite on Labor Day weekend is going to be a significant story. A quick internet search easily turns up video of a swimmer surrounded by sharks on some otherwise peaceful beach.
The odds of being attacked by a shark are miniscule, about one in 11.5 million, and the odds of dying from an attack are less than one in 264 million. As a comparison, according to the National Safety Council, the odds of dying in a dog attack are one in 44,000. It is hundreds of times more likely that you will die from sunstroke at the beach (one in 4,400) than from that shark just a few feet away in the water.
I had a good time at Myrtle visiting with friends, watching the waves and taking long walks on the beach. I thought several times about taking a dip, but I didn’t. After all, the odds of being attacked by a shark while standing on the beach are exactly zero.