Safe to go back in the water? What we've learned about sharks 50 years after 'Jaws'

Legs kicking lazily in the water. An unknown force moving closer and closer. Two music notes — dun dun — playing faster and faster. Then: blood in the water.

Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws,” the first summer blockbuster, turns 50 years old on June 20. The film, which follows a police chief’s crusade against a great white shark terrorizing his town, popularized the image of the man-eating shark. “You’ll never go in the water again,” boasts the movie’s tagline — and sure enough, “Jaws” has made countless swimmers wary of what lurks below the ocean’s surface.

Dold, a 761-pound, 11 foot, 2 inch male great white shark was tagged by OCEARCH off the Florida/Georgia coast on Feb. 28, 2025.

“By and large, sharks were not that interesting to the public [before 1975], and fishermen basically thought of them as trash fish. ‘Jaws’ transformed that,” Bob Hueter, the senior science adviser with shark researcher Ocearch, said. “It’s made people fearful of even going in the ocean, much less being near a shark.”

But while sharks can pose a threat to humans, they aren’t like the bloodthirsty creature depicted in “Jaws.” Public knowledge of sharks has expanded in the 50 years since the film’s debut.

What are some common misconceptions of sharks?

When Bryan Franks — the executive director of Jacksonville University’s Marine Science Research Institute — talks to school groups about sharks, he corrects the notion that the animals are killing machines.

“For many years, sharks were thought of as these mindless automatons that just swam around looking for something to eat, and whatever they saw that might be food, they would bite it,” Franks said. “But they aren’t just these robots. They are complex creatures with complex behaviors.”

Sharks can navigate long distances, knowing to return to certain areas for feeding, mating and giving birth. They have keen senses, and even a sixth sense: the ability to detect electric fields, like those made by a fish’s heart beating.

Franks said that while the word “shark” usually conjures images of great whites, hammerheads and other large varieties, the vast majority of sharks never grow bigger than 4.5 feet long. And, most sharks eat very small fish and invertebrates, not viewing humans as potential prey.

How often do sharks bite humans?

According to the International Shark Attack File, half of the shark bites in the United States last year occurred in Florida. The state saw 14 incidents in 2024, but none were fatal and none were in Duval County. Since 1882, Duval has only seen 48 unprovoked shark attacks.

The ISAF — which is maintained by the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville — says on its website that the risk of being killed or even bitten by a shark is extremely low.

“I always tell people to not dwell on it too much,” Jim Gelsleichter, a shark researcher with the University of North Florida, said. “It’s common to see sharks within the water, and really, there’s a greater concern with things like rip currents. Those pose a greater risk to most of our local [beachgoers] than sharks.”

When sharks do attack, they commonly employ a hit-and-run method.

“Sharks don’t have hands and fingers to reach out and grab something to see if it’s something to eat,” Franks said. So instead, the shark bites. “The shark realizes pretty quickly that ‘This is not something I expected and certainly not something that I usually eat.’”

After, the shark swims away. These bites tend to be nonfatal.

Which sharks are in the Jacksonville area?

Gelsleichter conducts an annual survey of shark populations on the First Coast, focusing on estuarian and near-shore waters. He said there are about 15 shark species common to the area during summer months.

Many are smaller coastal species like the blacktip, sandbar, sharpnose and bonnethead sharks. Franks said that these coastal species tend to give birth in shallower, protected nursery areas in the late spring, so pups spend the summer on the Florida coast. The area also sees some larger species like tiger and hammerhead sharks.

Great whites spend their winters down South, escaping the colder New England waters. This February, a 1,600-pound great white named Contender surfaced southeast of Jacksonville Beach. It had recently been tagged by Ocearch. At 13 feet, 9 inches, the shark is the largest male the group has tagged. According to Ocearch’s shark tracker, Contender was last pinged near North Carolina.

How do I stay safe at the beach?

Franks said that it’s important for beachgoers to be aware of their surroundings as they’re in a wild habitat. If there are a lot of bait fish swimming around, sharks may be attracted to the area. Gelsleichter said to be careful going to the beach when there aren’t many other people around, especially at times when sharks are most active — at dawn and dusk.

Why are sharks important?

Sharks play a vital role in their ecosystem as predators, regulating the species below them. Gelsleichter said that if you remove them from the food chain, it can have a cascading effect not only on what the sharks eat, but also what their prey feeds on. The ecosystem is thrown out of balance.

Gelschiecter also said that while some sharks — great whites, bulls, tigers — are famously apex predators, many sharks are smaller mesopredators. They occupy the middle part of the food chain.

How did “Jaws” impact public perception?

Hueter, who has researched sharks for almost 50 years, said he saw a large increase in shark fishing after “Jaws.” Even before the movie, industrial fishing fleets in the 1960s killed hundreds of millions of sharks globally as they fished for tuna and swordfish. But “Jaws” ignited a shark frenzy among recreational fishers.

“You saw these kill tournaments for sharks all over Florida,” Hueter said. “And it was quite effective in killing a lot of sharks in certain areas until about 1992, when most of those tournaments started to decline because they had so over-fished the sharks.”

Gelsleichter said that the Florida Shark Club in Jacksonville was one of the largest recreational shark fishing clubs on the east coast. He said that as people believed the only good shark was a dead one, these fishers thought they were performing a service to keep beaches safe.

But while Hueter said recreational shark fishing started the problem, commercial fishing took the biggest toll on shark populations as demand for shark fin soup grew in the 1980s. Hueter said that a group of fishers called themselves the “Revenge fleet” — playing into the image of sharks as bloodthirsty enemies.

What has happened to shark populations since then?

In the ‘90s, the federal government began to regulate shark fishing. Recreational and commercial fishers were limited on how many sharks they could catch, required to identify the species of their catches and prohibited from killing certain shark species. The practice of shark finning was also restricted.

Over time, Gelsleichter said, the Florida Shark Club had noted the population decline. It pivoted to a different public service — tagging sharks for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration instead of killing them.

Gelsleichter said that some shark populations have stabilized in the past two decades, showing positive trajectories. He called it a conservation success story. Public opinion on the creatures has also shifted.

“We’ve progressed to this situation where sharks are all the rage,” Gelsleichter said, noting the popularity of “Shark Week” on Discovery Channel. “There’s this broad fascination with the animals. They’re not the feared animals that they were in the 1970s.”

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Safe to go back in the water? What we've learned about sharks 50 years after 'Jaws'