Following the popularity of his 1975 film “Jaws,” director Steven Spielberg expressed his sincere concern for the “decimation of the shark population.”
The scenario of a man-eating great white shark attacking a US beach community was told in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning movie, which led to an increase in sports fishing around the country.
“I truly and to this day regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film. I really, truly regret that” Spielberg, 75, told BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs program.
According to research published in Nature the previous year, overfishing has caused a 71% decline in oceanic shark populations worldwide since the 1970s.
Meanwhile, according to the Shark Conservation Fund, 36% of the world’s 1,250 species of shark and ray are currently in danger of going extinct.
The public’s perspective of sharks has been attributed to movies like “Jaws,” which has led to support for shark finning.
Others, however, contend that this gives too much weight to Hollywood’s impact.
In the Sunday show, Spielberg, who is also well-known for Hollywood blockbusters like ET, Indiana Jones, and Jurassic Park, selected the ten recordings he would bring with him if he were abandoned on a desert island.
When asked how he felt about seeing actual sharks circle his desert island by presenter Lauren Laverne, he said: “That’s one of the things I still fear.
“Not to get eaten by a shark, but that sharks are somehow mad at me for the feeding frenzy of crazy sports fishermen that happened after 1975.”
Spielberg also spoke about his accomplished filmmaking career and his most recent picture, the semi-autobiographical “The Fabelmans.”
In his newest movie, Spielberg largely recounts his youth and how he first became interested in filmmaking in post-World War II America.
The movie, which stars Paul Dano and Michelle Williams, has already won top nominations for the 2023 Critics’ Choice and Golden Globe Awards.
Discussing the making of the film, Spielberg admitted he had initially thought the project would be the “most self-indulgent thing I’ve ever asked people to accompany me through”.
Describing it as “$40 million of therapy”, he said: “I didn’t know really what I was doing, except I was answering a need I had.
“Being an orphan, or recently orphaned by the loss of both parents, to recapture some of those memories in some way that wouldn’t seem too indulgent to actors I respected.
“So it was a tightrope for a while.”