The summer thriller “The Shallows” tells the terrifying story of an American girl who combats a large sea predator using her resourcefulness and physical fitness.
The film’s protagonist, Nancy, who is played by actress Blake Lively, is seen surfing on a secluded beach in “paradise” shortly before being violently pulled underwater. Although she is only 200 yards from shore, survival becomes a difficult test of wills, as she unluckily finds herself in a death match with a very large shark.
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While audiences may have enjoyed the movie following its release on June 24, 2016, scientists are quite disappointed with its aspiration of becoming a modern “Jaws.”
“This is a film 40 years behind its time,” Francesco Ferrettii told National Geographic. “While this reference [to 1975’s ‘Jaws’] no doubt works well to launch ‘The Shallows,’ it is also a reference that deeply concerns us in the marine science community, given the precarious state of global shark populations.”
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Ferrettii, a Stanford shark researcher, recently penned an open letter in an attempt to criticize the film, along with six other scientists from several institutions. In the letter, they described shark statistics, pointing out that an estimated 100 million sharks are killed by humans each year, which has driven a quarter of all shark species to at least the level of threatened.
“This mischaracterization spawned interest in popularizing recreational killing of sharks and bred apathy amongst the public regarding spikes in shark mortality associated with the global shark fin trade and bycatch of sharks in the commercial fishing industry,” the scientists wrote.
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Peter Benchley, the late author of the book which “Jaws” was based off of, soon faced regret once recognizing its effect on various readers and viewers, causing many to fear and truly hate such marvelous predators of the sea.
Sure, the 1975 film and recently released “The Shallows” may indeed make sharks look scary, but their story lines certainly do not separate the shark-related facts from fiction.
To distinguish between the two, National Geographic researchers have identified six shark myths within both pictures, hoping that those who visit the beach this summer will remember the truths instead of being fearful.
Myth 1: Sharks are cold-blooded killers who hunt for humans.
A human battling a shark creates an interesting plot but it is quite rare in the wild. In fact, the idea that sharks like to prey on humans is “far from reality,” National Geographic wrote.
“‘Jaws’ started at the boundary of reality and fiction, but it had nowhere else to go from there but down,” said George Burgess, a shark attack expert at the Florida Museum of Natural History. “In an effort to one-up the last shark movie, they get more and more unreal.”
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Burgess says that most shark attacks are caused by relatively small sharks. People splashing their feet and arms often confuse sharks on the hunt for prey. Upon tasting human flesh, the sharks usually flee in disgust.
The few species of large sharks that hunt prey the size of a man, particularly the tiger, bull and great white sharks, often bite people due to their vague resemblance of a seal, Burgess added.
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Myth 2: Sharks leap out of the water, knocking people off boats, rocks, etc.
During “The Shallows,” Nancy climbs onto a rock, where she soon finds herself still at the mercy of the great white shark. But in reality, “We’ve never seen sharks do that,” said Burgess.
While great whites are known to submerge in the water, waiting for vulnerable seals to swim near them, sharks never grab their prey off of land.
“Sometimes we see killer whales doing that, but that’s a special behavior by a special animal, and one that has a lot more brain cells than a shark,” said Burgess.
Myth 3: Sharks kill as much as they can and as fast as they can.
Earlier this year in Wyoming in March, a wolf pack attacked 19 elk during a “surplus killing” in an effort to save up plentiful food for later uses. Sharks, on the other hand, aren’t known to do that, Burgess mentioned.
In fact, sharks frequently lose a majority of their catches to other sharks. At night, they sleep.
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Myth 4: You can avoid a shark attack by hiding in jellyfish.
Burgess adds that this, too, is unlikely. A shark’s skin is just as tough as its teeth.
“The only place where jellyfish might have an effect is if it got in their eyes, but most sharks have tough membranes they can close over them, so they wouldn’t worry about that.”
In this case, the only being that would be harmed by the sting of the jelly fish is the human hiding under it.
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Myth 5: Surfers are the best kind of fresh meat.
Surfing can certainly put people into much closer contact with sharks, as can spear fishing, diving and a few other activities.
However, studies show that a surfer in California has a 1 in 17 million chance of being bitten by a shark. Those chances have in fact dropped by 91 percent over the past six decades.
“Your odds are higher of winning the lottery,” the scientists wrote in their open letter.
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Myth 6: Sharks are vengeful, bloodthirsty and malicious.
In both the “Jaws” franchise and “The Shallows,” the great white sharks seek revenge, waiting patiently and tormenting the human characters in the films.
But in reality, the idea that sharks could hold a grudge or seek revenge is without evidence, said Burgess.
“It’s important that people remember fiction is fiction,” he adds. “Sharks have much more to fear from us than we do from them.”