'Jaws' Sparked America's Fascination With Sharks — And Left Behind A Complicated Legacy

It's been 50 years since the Steven Spielberg blockbuster hit theaters.

Last summer, a great white shark washed up on the shore of Nantucket, Massachusetts. When a family on vacation came across the beached behemoth as it flailed in the shallow waves, they made a surprising choice. Members of the group cautiously approached the shark and pushed it back into the ocean. Video of the event quickly went viral — a feel-good story with a hint of danger.

But 50 years ago, during the same summer that “Jaws” first swam into theaters, a similar encounter might have gone very differently.

On June 20, 1975, Steven Spielberg unleashed “Jaws” on the world, inventing the modern blockbuster and launching a global fascination with sharks. It was the first film to gross more than $100 million at the U.S. box office, according to the American Film Institute. Based on the best-selling book by Peter Benchley, “Jaws” sparked a surge of interest in studying the ancient apex predator — and an obsession with hunting sharks as trophies.

“When ‘Jaws’ came out, there was an uptick in shark tournaments,” said Wendy Benchley, a longtime ocean conservationist who is married to the “Jaws” author and appears in the upcoming National Geographic documentary “Jaws @ 50.” “This fictional book and movie somehow gave people the license to kill sharks.”

In the half-century since, our understanding of great white sharks has increased dramatically, but there’s much we still don’t know about the ruler of the sea. At the same time, shark populations around the world have decreased dramatically due to overfishing, although sightings (and attacks) have increased recently along the East Coast of the United States for reasons that scientists still don’t fully understand.