Jaws legacy: When people, not sharks, are at fault for attacks

The National

25-04-2025

Jaws turns 50 in June but its legacy of invoking a fear of sharks remains as strong today as it did in the 1970s. However, a new study shows it is sometimes the person, and not the shark, who is the aggressor. Only this week the potential dangers were highlighted when a swimmer disappeared after an apparent shark attack off Hadera in Israel. Despite the shark's fearsome reputation, self-defence is behind some incidents, according to findings based on decades of data on bites in French Polynesia in the South Pacific. In a new paper published on Friday, scientists revealed that about five per cent of shark bites were probably motivated by self-defence, with the animal perceiving that the human was a threat. The data recorded the type of shark involved, the circumstances, the injuries and the location. The person might have been, for example, trying to grab the shark, such as when a 12-year-old boy was bitten when he tried to pull the head of a tawny nurse shark out of the water to show it to tourists. Self-defence bites have also taken place when sharks have been unwittingly trapped in fish pens, while other incidents have involved people spearfishing underwater. These incidents typically involve non-lethal force and multiple bites and, while the victim usually needs surgery, little tissue is removed. 'The motivation for these defensive bites can be distinguished from other drivers, such as the predation motivation on humans, which involves heavy loss of tissue,' the researchers wrote in Frontiers in Conservation. The scientists looked at nearly 7,000 incidents from 1863 to 2024 in a database called the Global Shark Attack Files and found that 4.6 per cent were prompted by self-defence. They generated this result by searching for bites that were linked to fishing or spearfishing, and where provocation was thought to have been involved. The first author of the study, Prof Eric Clua, a veterinary surgeon and marine ecologist at France's Centre for Island Research and Environmental Observatory (CRIOBE), told The National that he was 'not really' surprised by the findings. 'My impression was that this type of incident was probably present to the tune of five to 10 per cent,' he said. 'At five per cent, we're at the low end of the scale, but nonetheless significant in drawing the attention of sea users to the need not to interact with sharks or risk being bitten. It seems obvious but is probably worth recalling.' The risk means that the public should not come to the aid of a shark that appears to be distressed, Prof Clua said, because 'it will not necessarily perceive this action positively and may react aggressively'. Instead, professional help for the animal should be sought. Anyone fearing that a shark could bite them should, Prof Clua said, not lose sight of the creature, 'and above all not to try to interact with it by touching or handling it'. Even approaching the animal is not advised, he said, because reef sharks have a 'very present' notion of territoriality. To avoid the risk of a predatory bite, which is much more likely to prove fatal than a self-defence bite, people should not be alone in the water. 'Two people can deter the shark from biting and, in the event of a bite, the second person can come to the victim's aid and deter the shark from biting again, bearing in mind that sharks, whatever their species or size, are generally afraid of humans,' Prof Clua said. A victim should always defend themselves, because advice to stand still – given to protect against attack by land predators – 'doesn't work in the water with sharks'. Jaws is blamed for ushering in a wave of mistreatment of sharks that was so severe that numbers of the animals off the east coast of the US reportedly fell by half. Steven Spielberg, the director, told the BBC in a 2022 radio interview that he 'truly' regretted his film's apparent impact on sharks. Aware of the threats faced by sealife, Peter Benchley, the author of the novel on which the film is based, became a campaigner for marine conservation. Prof Clua indicated that there was 'an incredibly negative perception bias towards sharks', especially given that 'they are responsible for less than 10 human deaths a year worldwide'. 'Dogs are responsible for more than 10,000 deaths yet are perceived positively by the public, no doubt because they are land animals and people know the difference between a Yorkie and a pit bull, whereas they don't know the difference between a blacktip reef shark and a bullshark, which are their marine equivalents,' he said. In the study, the scientists said that the media 'often sensationalises' self-defence bites by describing them as attacks, and could help by 'more objectively reporting the culpability of humans in triggering them'. The other authors of the study were Dr Thomas Vignaud, of the Mayotte Integrated Innovation Hub, a centre in a French Indian Ocean archipelago, and Prof Aaron Wirsing of the University of Washington's college of the environment.