This year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the classic summer blockbuster, Jaws! A new article from Bluedot Living features Nick's hand-painted Great White Shark illustration. The piece discusses the impacts the release of Jaws had on Great White populations in the Northeast and the field of marine biology as a whole.
The release of the film in 1975 had both negative and positive effects on shark communities. "In the years following the film's release, the number of large sharks in the water east of North America declined by about 50 percent," Thors writes. But Jaws also inspired in many viewers a new interest in oceanography, resulting in increased enrollment in many marine biology programs.
Legislation has since been passed to help reestablish seal populations along the east coast, and shark fishing was also banned in 1997. This enabled the sharks to return to New England and gradually repopulate, soon returning to their past numbers.
Check out the full online issue here, or the blog version of the article here.
