It took Brett Rutledge nearly an hour to boat one of the biggest sharks in Alabama history on July 22. While competing with a team of anglers in the Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo, Rutledge hauled in a tiger shark weighing roughly 1,019 pounds.

If the catch holds up to scrutiny by the state, Rutledge’s tiger shark will set a new Alabama record for the species. The current state-record tiger shark, according to the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, weighed 988 pounds. It was caught near Gulf Shores by angler Larry Eberly in 1990.

“We caught seven sharks this morning, and this happened to the biggest,” Rutledge told Fox-10 News over the weekend. “I’m excited … and if it does hold, it will be a new state record, so that would be cool.”

No official length measurement was available, but judging from the photo of the anglers standing beside it, the tiger shark appeared to be well over 10 feet long. It also had some tremendous girth, along with a huge, blunt-nosed head that’s typical of big tigers.

Spud Marshall, who was fishing with Rutledge during the tournament, said they caught the shark while trolling. It turned a tough day of tournament fishing into one for the record books.

Read Next: Watch: Shark Drags Fisherman Overboard in Florida Everglades

“It was a fight, but we got it,” Marshall told reporters. “We went out to catch swordfish, but the bite just wasn’t happening. So, on our way in we decided to set some lures out, and we caught it on the way in.”

This year marks the 90^th annual Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo. Billed as “the largest fishing tournament in the world,” the three-day event brings in over 3,000 anglers each year. It’s located on Dauphin Island where Mobile Bay meets the Gulf of Mexico.   

The world-record tiger shark was caught by Kevin Clapson on in March, 2004 near Ulladulla, Australia. Its official weight was 1,785 pounds, 11 ounces.

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Sharks have been a major problem in the Northeast U.S. in recent weeks. Five people were bitten by the toothy predators in just two days around July 4th on New York’s Long Island; now videos have surfaced showing a shark attacking and killing a seal in Massachusetts has prompted authorities to close some beaches near Nantucket Island.

The video, recorded by Nick Gault from a boat near Great Point on the northern tip of Nantucket Island, shows blood-stained water from a shark ravaging a seal right beside the beach. The seal, missing its tale but still alive, later washes ashore and is set upon by gulls. The Costaka-Coatue Wildlife Refuge at Great Point was closed to swimming as a precaution against sharks, according to the Nantucket Current.

“Those videos are pretty troubling, and no human could survive that,” Diane Lang a stewardship manager on Nantucket told Fox News. “The policy is in place now. We’re telling our visitors no swimming at Great Point. I was in touch with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and they’re in full agreement [with the closure].”

Lang said that seal populations in the area have disappeared following the shark attack at Nantucket. Apparently, seals knew it was time to skedaddle. Tiger shark schools have been spotted in some Northeast coastal areas recently, with up to 50 sharks in one school seen cruising near the Long Island shore.

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Major shark precautionary measures are underway in the region. Lifeguards are patrolling beach areas with jet skis, and aerial drones are being deployed in some Northeast coastal regions to monitor sharks and warn swimmers about their presence.

“Drones will increase the shark monitoring capacity of local governments across Long Island and New York City, ensuring local beaches are safe for all beachgoers, Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement.”

Meanwhile, wildlife managers are reminding beachgoers that shark attacks on humans are the exception, not the norm.

“New York’s shores are home to a wild and natural marine ecosystem that supports the annual migration of sharks to our coastal waters,” New York Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner Basil Seggos said in a statement. “While human-shark interactions are rare, DEC encourages the public to follow shark safety guidance to help minimize the risk of negative interactions with sharks this summer.”

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Sharks rob anglers of their catches all the time. They’ll often follow a hooked fish all the way to the boat and rip it off the line at the last second, when both the angler and the fish are out of gas. Other times the shark will just take a bite out of the fish. All the angler gets is a bloody head and less meat for the cooler. It happens so frequently that deep-sea anglers have nicknamed this kind of shark “the taxman.”

In a video West Virginian Robbie Smelser posted to Instagram on June 14, a group of offshore fishermen get a close-up view of the taxman doing what the taxman does best. As one of the anglers fights to land a big tuna, a mako shark comes up to take his cut. The incident took place off the coast of Nags Head, North Carolina on a charter trip run by Fin Planner Sportfishing.

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The short clip shows the nearly-10-foot mako shark sinking its teeth into the tuna right after one of the mates hits it with a gaff. A brief tug-of-war ensues. The mako whips the fish side-to-side while the mate tries to haul it over the gunnel. Not surprisingly, the shark wins the round. It rips the tuna off the gaff and breaks the line as it chomps down on the fish’s tail.

At the end of the video, what’s left of the bloody tuna floats up to the surface. The mate gaffs the head again and hauls it over the gunnel. Still a good tuna, it’s roughly two-thirds the size of its former self. The mate drops it into the fish box.

Read Next: Federal Ban Ends Decades of Mako Shark Fishing Fever in the Northeast

“Tax man taking his taxes,” one commenter says of the video.

Another jokes that it’s “shotgun time.” But there wasn’t much the anglers could do in this scenario because Atlantic shortfin makos are now a protected species. Last year the federal government re-classified the species as “overfished,” prompting a full ban on mako fishing in the Atlantic. (This ban also makes it illegal to intentionally harass or harm a mako shark.)

Under the new rule, which went into effect last July, both commercial and recreational fishermen in the Atlantic are prohibited from landing or retaining mako sharks. Any makos that are hooked or caught by accident must be released immediately. This rule applies regardless of whether the shark is dead or alive.

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Veteran surf fisherman Glenn Laskowski Jr. and his buddy JR had their hands full on May 5, when they hooked a beast of a shark from shore on the South Texas coast. The two anglers were fishing from JP Luby Beach on the gulf side of Padre Island, a large barrier island that separates the Gulf of Mexico from Laguna Madre. They hooked the roughly 14-foot, 4-inch hammerhead using heavy-duty tackle and a 24/0 hook baited with a 20-pound cownose stingray. The shark weighed roughly 1,054 pounds, according to the scale the men used at the public pier.

“It was a battle back and forth for almost an hour and 30 minutes,” Laskowski told KIII-TV News in Corpus Christi. “We finally were able to land the fish and get to see the true size of the monster. We quickly dehooked the fish, and got some quick pictures then went to release the fish.”

The anglers spent at least 30 minutes trying to revive the half-ton hammerhead, but they were unsuccessful. A video that Laskowski shared to social media shows him standing chest deep in the water as he tries to revive the huge shark in the surf.

“We honestly gave it hell and did our best to let her go,” Laskowski wrote on the Facebook post. “But after a long battle back and forth, unfortunately she didn’t make it. Me and my partner JR were blessed to see a fish like this along with all the family and people on the third coast.”

The anglers decided to keep the shark, which was well over the minimum length of 99 inches required to harvest hammerheads in Texas. They ended up donating most of the meat to locals, who received it gladly, according to Laskowski.

Read Next: South Carolina Captain Catches Would-Be Record Hammerhead Shark, Decides to Release It Instead

While Laskowski’s shark is huge by any standard, it’s more than 200 pounds shy of the IGFA all-tackle world record for the species. That 1,280-pound hammerhead shark was caught in May 2006 by Bucky Dennis at Boca Grande, a famed spot on the Florida Gulf Coast that’s known for its tarpon fishing.

Dennis also used a stingray for bait, according to the IGFA record book. Photos of the catch and the story of the shark battle were chronicled in Outdoor Life by the magazine’s longtime former fishing editor Jerry Gibbs. Interestingly, Dennis’ world-record shark measured 14-feet, 3-inches, which is one inch shorter than Laskowski’s Texas coast hammerhead.

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Shore-based charter shark fisherman John McLean led a group of four clients to the catch of a lifetime on Feb. 12. The group hooked, battled, landed, and promptly released a large great white shark from Pensacola Beach in Florida’s far western panhandle. White sharks are rarely caught by land-based anglers.

McLean, who operates Big John Shark Fishing Adventures, specializes in catching big toothy critters, but he wasn’t expecting to hook a great white.

“I was not targeting great white sharks, I was attempting to catch my clients the largest shark possible,” he told Fox News. “It is very rare to catch a great white in this area, especially from the Gulf Coast.”

White sharks are a prohibited species, meaning they must be released immediately.

McLean had help that day from Pensacola charter Capt. David Miller. It was Miller who paddled a small one-person kayak 900 yards off the beach to drop a massive tuna head for shark bait. Only a giant shark would be big enough to gobble down the large bait.

McLean usually employs a small remote controlled boat to send baits off a beach. But the tuna head was too large for the RC boat, so Miller offered to paddle through the Gulf surf and drop the bait far out where big sharks roam.

In a YouTube video detailing the catch, McLean says Miller had just returned to the beach from dropping the bait offshore. When a heavy fish took the bait, the battle was on.

All four anglers were actively engaged in battling the shark with heavy offshore tackle and stout braided line. The rod was set in a four-station gimbal mount rod holder, like those used on offshore trolling boats. The heavy-duty rod holder was anchored into a pair of PVC pipes driven deep into the sand of Pensacola Beach. McLean calls the setup a “shark rack.” 

“My fishing gear was pushed to the limits, but it was up to the task to effectively reel in this massive white shark,” McLean says. “Since I used proper equipment, we were able to make a quick release. Shark fishing and conservation starts with using the right gear.”

Each of the four charter anglers took turns on the oversized big game reel, gaining braided line with each handle crank. At times, all anglers and captains had to help hold and stabilize the “shark rack” during the fight.

In his YouTube video, McLean says the reel got loose on the rod because of the torque of fighting the heavy shark from a stationary position. There was no usual pump-and-reel in catching the shark, just brutal winding of the reel while it was in a gimbal mount. All the while, beach visitors sat nearby watching the battle.

“The great white shark my clients caught would have never been reeled in from a boat,” McLean says. “My clients reeled this white shark in with a fight time of just over an hour, but had they been attempting to reel in a shark of this size and weight from a boat it would have been a five-hour fight.”

Fighting big sharks in deep water takes more time, says McLean, because the fish can dive below the boat, while a shark hooked from shore has to fight in relatively shallow water.

“This fish is the strongest fish I’ve ever had,” McLean says in his video. “It’s the only time I’ve seen my fishing gear pushed to the absolute limit.”

He says once the fish was drawn into the surf and identified as a great white, the only thing he wanted to do was cut the line and release the shark as quickly as possible.

The tired shark in the surf was handled by the men using a large rope with a tail loop. McLean straddled the shark, then opened its mouth to insure the hook and cable leader were gone. Then the men led the shark away from the beach, where it eventually swam out into deeper Gulf waters and disappeared.

“I did not measure the shark,” says McLean. “[But,] based on the amount of 12-foot sharks my clients have landed, I knew this was something bigger than anything I had seen before.”

McLean and others estimated the shark was 13 feet long. Its weight is unknown.

Great White Sharks in Florida?

Ocearch, a shark tracking website, documented a white shark nicknamed “Maple” not far off the Florida Panhandle on March 6. That fish was measured at 11 feet, 7 inches when it was fitted with a tracking device, and Ocearch scientists estimate it now weighs 1,264 pounds.

READ NEXT: Will a Few Oblivious Anglers Get Land-Based Shark Fishing Outlawed Entirely?

Their research shows that great white sharks can be found in the Gulf of Mexico, and if McLean’s fish was 13 feet long, it’s possible the fish weighed over 1,000 pounds.

“I grew up in Minnesota and had no saltwater fishing experience until playing my last year of professional hockey in Florida in 2017,” McLean says. “I transitioned careers into shark fishing after connecting with some amazing friends, Henry Everett and David Miller, who introduced me to the sport.”

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Dillon May was fishing for yellowfin tuna on a private boat off the coast of Venice, Louisiana, last month when the water began to churn. Soon the ocean erupted into mayhem as hundreds of sharks began a massive feeding frenzy on a school of baitfish.

Fishermen searching for yellowfin tuna came across a chaotic scene of sharks in a feeding frenzy off the coast of Venice, Louisiana, recently posted footage shows. pic.twitter.com/qooI0sIRCd

— Storyful (@Storyful) February 28, 2023

The sharks chased the ball of baitfish—likely menhaden—toward the boat, seeking shelter beneath and around the boat. By now the Jacksonville man had gotten out his phone to video the boiling water, and the footage has since gone viral.

The sharks pushed right up to the fishing boat, slapping their tails against the hull and spraying fishermen with water as they fed. Dorsal fins, bodies, and tails of the moderately sized sharks thrash above and below the surface. They are most likely bull sharks, which reach five to eight feet in length and are abundant this time of year in the Gulf of Mexico, when baitfish (and their predators) migrate through the waters each spring.

Shark Sightings, and Limits, Increase in the Gulf

“Over the past 10 years I’ve seen a tremendous increase in many shark species throughout Louisiana,” says Capt. Mike Frenette, owner of the Redfish Lodge of Louisiana in Venice. “They’re not only in deep water at the mouth of the Mississippi River, but throughout the shallow waters of the Mississippi Delta.”

Some fishermen believe shark numbers have increased to perhaps unprecedented numbers. For that reason, Louisiana increased commercial shark fishing limits late last year. The Louisiana Fisheries Commission also re-opened the commercial shark season, which had been closed to commercial shark fishing from April through June.

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries says the increased limits aim to target more great hammerheads, scalloped hammerheads, smooth hammerheads, nurse sharks, blacktip sharks, bull sharks, lemon sharks, sandbar sharks, silky sharks, spinner sharks, and tiger sharks. (Other sharks, such as dusky sharks, remain protected.) The increase was authorized by the state’s Wildlife and Fisheries Commission after it learned of a similar adjustment in federal waters.

“For the past five years, during the yellowfin tuna run, there are places at the mouth of the Mississippi River that giant dusky, bull, and possibly silky sharks attack maybe 80 percent of the large yellowfins we hook,” says Frenette. “I’ve never [before] seen the number of sharks that we now have in coastal and offshore waters of Louisiana.”

Feeding frenzies like the one May filmed last month often occur when predators, like sharks, scare schooling fish into a bait ball. The sharks work together to corner the baitfish near the surface, then individually attack and feed on the prey.

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Michael Hengel and his dad, Chuck, had an eventful evening in the Florida surf on Feb. 12. Standing on the beach of Virginia Key at sunset, they hooked a giant bull shark that could have potentially broken the state record. It was dark by the time Hengel landed the shark, and even though they estimated it weighed around 550 pounds (the current state record is 517), he decided to cut it loose.

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“I knew this shark had to be well over the state record,” Hengel told the Miami Herald. “I can dead-lift 500 pounds, but I couldn’t move it.”

The Allure of Battling Sharks from the Beach

Hengel, 22, tells Outdoor Life that he’s been fishing for sharks since he was 13 years old, when he first saw an angler land a shark on the beach at Sanibel Island. He also tends to get seasick, so he’s always preferred surf fishing to fishing from a boat.

“I just love it,” he said. “With the boat, you can follow [the shark] around when it’s pulling you. But on the beach, it’s you versus the shark.”

The lifelong Minnesotan explains that his family spends winter vacations on Captiva Island, where they can escape the snow and ice that coats their hometown of Minnetonka each year. And while the sharking can be great on the Gulf side of the state, he says he recently heard from a good friend that some big sharks had been caught on the Atlantic side.

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“Elliot is a good buddy, and he told me the water quality was better and warmer, with no red tide near Miami,” he says. “So, we headed over there [on Sunday] to go surf fishing, and it worked out pretty well.”

After getting to the beach southeast of Miami, Hengel and his dad rigged up a couple of extra-heavy offshore rods. Hengel’s Avet 80 wide reel was spooled with 1,300 yards of 200-pound braided line, complete with an 800-pound steel cable leader. He tied on a 20/0 circle hook and baited it with a 20-pound bonito.

Casting this huge, unwieldy rig into the surf would be a challenge to say the least, so Hengel hopped in a sit-on-top kayak and paddled out with the bonito while his dad free-spooled the reel from the beach. Once he got out a few hundred yards to deeper water, he dropped the bait, paddled back to the beach, and waited.

He says it was right after sunset when the rod started going off. He grabbed hold with both hands and set the hook.

After a battle that lasted roughly an hour, Hengel eased the shark into the shallows. A couple beach walkers who were passing by helped the two men as they wrestled the big female out of the waves and onto the wet sand.

The Release

The two anglers worked quickly to measure the shark. They taped it at 114 inches long, with a 55-inch girth. Then they plugged these measurements into various length-girth formulas to get a rough idea of the shark’s weight. (Determining the exact weight of big fish, and especially live sharks, is difficult. These formulas serve as broad guidelines, and they vary considerably depending on the species.)

Their math came out to around 550 pounds, which could have easily replaced the current Florida state record—a 517-pound bull shark that was caught off Panama City Beach in 1981. However, the only way to determine the true weight of Hengel’s shark would have been to kill the fish and bring it to a certified scale with witnesses present.

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He decided to release the shark instead. After slipping out the barbless circle hook, they carried the shark back into the surf and watched it swim away. The whole process took about 60 seconds, he says. Of course, the release also means that someone else might get the chance to do battle with the same bull shark in the future. Who knows. There might even be a 13-year-old kid watching.

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A group of anglers were chasing tuna off the North Carolina coast when they unexpectedly hooked a giant thresher shark in just 60 feet of water on Jan. 10. Steven Viltoft of Southport, North Carolina, was on the rod at the time. He was able to boat the shark, which weighed 589 pounds and 1 ounce, making it the biggest thresher shark ever recorded in the state.

The giant thresher shark was certified as a new North Carolina state record on Feb. 9, obliterating the previous record—a 185-pound thresher caught in 2005—by more than 400 pounds.

Viltoft’s group was fishing with Oak Island Charters aboard Capt. Wally Trayah’s 30-foot Contender. The 45-year-old charter captain tells Outdoor Life that he typically releases large sharks because they pose a risk to clients. However, he explains that since the thresher shark did not survive the fight and was dead when Viltoft reeled it in, they decided to haul it aboard and weigh it on certified scales at a private dock. Threshers have a reputation as excellent table fare, and Trayah says none of its delicious meat went to waste.

According to the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, Viltoft and crew caught the shark near the Knuckle Buoy, which is located near a large shoal area southeast of Cape Lookout. Viltoft was using a custom tuna rod and an 80W Shimano Tiagra Reel spooled with 130-pound line and rigged with a mullet bait. The shark’s overall length was 164.75 inches, measured from the tip of its head to the end of its prominent tail.

What’s a Thresher Shark?

Thresher sharks are easily recognized by their massive, sickle-shaped tails, which they use to stun baitfish and other prey. The species name derives from this technique of “thrashing” their tails when attacking schools of smaller fish in the open ocean.

Read Next: South Carolina Captain Catches Would-Be Record Hammerhead Shark, Decides to Release It Instead

Common threshers can be found in temperate waters around the world, and they are highly migratory—sometimes traveling over entire ocean basins, according to NOAA Fisheries. They’re found in the Pacific and Indian Oceans as well as the Atlantic, where they range from Newfoundland down to Cuba. They’re considered a game fish here in the U.S., and in North Carolina they’re regulated as a pelagic shark species, which means they’re exempt from harvest and size restrictions. The IGFA all tackle world-record thresher shark was caught off Bay of Islands, New Zealand, by angler D.L. Hannah on Feb. 26, 1983. That shark weighed 767 pounds, 3 ounces.

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The video is hard to watch. Cringeworthy doesn’t begin to scratch the surface. It’s not so much that I’m against eating sharks, because I’ve done so myself. If you’re harvesting them responsibly, within the law, and not killing one every other Tuesday, I have no issue. But a popular Chinese video blogger who goes by Tizi recently crossed more lines than a 5-year-old on a party boat when she documented the illegal purchase, butchering, and cooking of a great white shark from start to finish. The problem? Great whites are one of the most highly protected fish swimming on this planet.

Throw Another Jaws on the Barbie

CBS News reports that Tizi’s culinary stunt dates back to July 2022, when she originally posted the video on Douyin, which is a Chinese version of TikTok. Authorities in Nanchong, a city in Sichuan province, eventually found the video and determined that she had violated China’s Wild Animal Protection Law, according to a statement released on Jan. 28. They determined that Tizi, who’s real name is Jin Moumou, had purchased the shark for 7,700 yuan (or around $1,142 USD) through an online marketplace known as Taobao. After confirming the species of the shark by taking DNA samples, Jin was fined 125,000 yuan, or roughly $18,500, and the sellers of the sharks were arrested.

I don’t speak the language, so I can’t tell you what Tizi is saying during the video. But if I had to guess, she thought cooking a whole shark would simply make a great video and was not concerned with the conservation status of the species or the illegality of possessing it. There is, of course, no pass given for ignorance when it comes to the law, and if documenting the purchase of a protected species isn’t bad enough, her preparation of it borders on slapstick.

Canned laughter is piped in as Tizi and an older woman start by dumping gallons of oil into a giant wok. The entire tail section of the juvenile shark is scored and roasted over an open fire while upbeat pop music blasts. The whole front half, nose to pectoral fins, is dropped into the sizzling oil while Tizi keeps adding ingredients until they start sloshing out of the wok. The video ends with them chowing down on bowls of white shark in an overly ravenous way that I guess is supposed to be funny.

At one point in the video, Tizi picks up the entire cooked tail section and takes a bite like it’s a turkey leg. Tizi also reportedly says: “It may look vicious, but its meat is truly very tender.” That part I believe.

Twenty Thousand a Plate

Of all the shark species, Makos and threshers are the most prized for their meat, at least in the United States. The reason for this is their muscle structure. All sharks urinate through their skin, and their bloodlines—the strips of dark red muscle running down the body—holds the ammonia they produce. The closer that bloodline is to the skin, the more ammonia-flavored the meat will taste. The bloodlines of makos and threshers, however, are deeper and thinner, closer to the body cavity, which means their flesh is much cleaner and ammonia free.

A great white’s red muscle structure is similar to that of a mako shark, which would likely make its meat pretty mild. Regardless, as a lifelong saltwater angler, it’s jarring to watch Tizi’s video. Mainly because it’s common knowledge in the fishing world that these sharks are off-limits and should be treated with reverence. Occasionally, great whites have been misidentified as extra-large makos and brought to tournament weigh-ins, inevitably making the news and bringing shame (and charges) to the angler.

Great whites have been protected on the Pacific Coast of the U.S. since 1994, and in American Atlantic waters since 1997. Not only is it illegal to possess them—you aren’t even supposed to target them. If one is hooked inadvertently, it is to be released as soon as possible after being identified, even if that means cutting the line to avoid a prolonged fight.

Read Next: Steven Spielberg Regrets ‘Jaws,’ My All-Time Favorite Movie

Whites are protected in many other countries, including Australia, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and, of course, China. Still, my hunch is that Tizi’s great white isn’t the first—and likely won’t be the last—sold in a Chinese market.

That fact that the video was posted on social media essentially forces the authorities to act. Had there been no video, it’s likely nothing would have happened. Perhaps this will prompt the Chinese government to actively hunt around at seafood markets looking for more illegal species, though I wouldn’t count on it. Congrats to Tizi, though, for documenting what could be on of the most expensive seafood meals ever, and in doing so I hope she learned the most important lesson of modern times: If you’re going to do illegal stuff, don’t film it for social media.

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In a recent interview with BBC Radio, director Steven Spielberg expressed remorse about how his epic 1975 film, Jaws, negatively shaped the public’s perception of sharks. Jaws did, after all, paint the great white as a vengeful creature, intent on singling out humans to satisfy its unquenchable thirst for blood. That portrayal made Jaws terrifying, and subsequently one of the most acclaimed and widely viewed films in the horror genre. It is hard to deny, of course, that interest in recreational shark fishing spiked after Jaws. The late 1970s and early 1980s are considered by many offshore anglers the heyday of shark fishing, and with minimal regulations, or a complete lack of them in some regions, most of the time a caught shark was a dead shark. 

In those days sharks were hung up at the marina scale for crowds to gawk at, regardless of the food value of the species. 

“That’s one of things I still fear. Not to get eaten by a shark, but that sharks are somehow mad at me for the feeding frenzy of crazy sportfishermen that happened after 1975,” says Spielberg. “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.”

It’s true that shark populations are in trouble the world over these days. Many species, including the great white and, more recently, mako sharks along the Eastern Seaboard, have been given protected status and made off limits to recreational and commercial anglers. The reality, however, is that while Jaws may have fueled the recreational shark fishing fire, it was not the spark that ignited it, nor is it the strongest flame still burning down shark numbers.

Monsters Are Real

The shark in Jaws may be the most psychologically disturbing monster in horror history, and the reason for that is simple. King Kong, as an example, terrified viewers when it was released in 1933, but no one was genuinely worried about a gigantic ape attacking their city. It was just too fictional. But Lake Placid depicted a giant saltwater crocodile consuming bathers, and Anaconda showed us Jon Voight getting regurgitated by a 40-foot snake. Both of those animals exist in the real world, it’s just that most Americans don’t put themselves in habitats where they live. However, most of us spend time on the beach and swim in the ocean, and Jaws reminded us that we can’t always know what’s swimming out there with us. While the shark in the film was bigger than average, great whites large enough to consume a human exist along almost every coast on the planet. 

Captain Frank Mundus was one of the first people to ever capitalize on the public’s fear of sharks. In the 1950s, while running charters for bluefish off Montauk, New York, Mundus noticed the abundance of sharks in the area and shifted his business model. He began offering “monster fishing” trips. He advertised by routinely hanging huge great whites, threshers, and makos at the dock, becoming somewhat of a tourist attraction in the seaside town. Eventually, Jaws author, Peter Benchley, would wind up on Mundus’s boat, and although Benchley never officially confirmed it, it is widely believed that Mundus was the inspiration for the Captain Quint character. It was this meeting between the self-proclaimed “Monster Man” and the novelist that would change the course of recreational shark fishing. 

Cheap Thrills

Guys like Mundus existed all over the country before Jaws, it’s just that their numbers were relatively small. The charter fleet in Florida was always happy to let Midwest vacationers crank on tiger sharks and hammerheads, and just the experience of catching a 10-plus-foot fish was thrilling for tourist anglers. A lack of edibility didn’t matter, but that wasn’t the case for fishermen elsewhere. 

Where I grew up in the Northeast, mako sharks were as coveted for the table as tuna and swordfish. On both the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, there had always been a contingent of offshore anglers who treated them with reverence and respect. What Jaws did was draw more thrill seekers to shark fishing than serious anglers, prompting more captains to focus on sharks, and new captains to jump into the game to grab a piece of the action. 

Ironically, whereas Spielberg and others believe Jaws started the downfall of sharks, I credit the movie with my deep love of fishing. It is my all-time favorite film that I’ve been watching since I was about 6 years old. Quint and the shark planted the notion that there are bigger fish to catch than the bluegills and stocked trout I knew. Jaws created aspiration. 

In my opinion, hook-and-line anglers have never been as damaging to shark populations—even in the post-Jaws era—as mass harvesting. After all, only so many large sharks can be hooked in a single day on the water with a few lines out. But the fear created by Jaws also lead to beach communities around the world using everything from miles of entangling nets to long lines in attempts to rid large stretches of coastline of sharks in order to make bathers feel safer. Thankfully, much like how recreational fishing regulations have been drastically altered to protect sharks, new technology is making it possible to repel sharks instead of kill them. Why then are these fish still in so much trouble? At this point, it has little to do with a movie and much more to do with greed. 

Stop the Shark Finning

Just recently, the US House of Representatives approved legislation to ban the buying and selling of shark fins in the United States. Shark fin meat is considered a delicacy in many Asian countries, where it can fetch incredible amounts of money. It has been outlawed by many nations and is highly regulated in others, but as it goes with any trade, if there’s money to be made, rules and laws will often be skirted. What’s so brutal about shark finning is that no species is safe—any shark that comes aboard is finned alive and its body is tossed back into the sea. By discarding the body, more space is created onboard for more fins, which means more sharks can be killed in a single trip. And while there isn’t much of a market for shark fins in the U.S., this illicit practice still takes place in our waters to supply the foreign market. 

From Thehill.com: “This bill will finally remove the U.S. from the devastating shark fin trade once and for all … [and] will also help to fight illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing by giving the U.S. more tools to take action against countries that fail to address these devastating and destructive practices in their fleets,” Oceana’s Beth Lowell said.  

Although this is a great step in the right direction, the sad reality is that we’re a long way from ending shark finning on a global scale, and this trade stems in no way from the fear or thrill-seeker curiosity created by Jaws. Take the practice out of the equation, and shark populations could rebound over time, because while there was certainly damage done in the past by recreational anglers, attitudes have now largely shifted and regulations have changed. Fishermen are arguably more in tune with the plight of these fish and have more respect for them than ever before, so in a strange way it can be said that Jaws also led to this stronger conservation ethic. It created more shark anglers, and over a generation Jaws ended up being the catalyst for the complete debunking of the idea that all sharks are hellbent on killing you. 

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