The history and politics of shark “attacks”

Show notes

The impact of the Hollywood blockbuster Jaws on shark conservation, public perception and even policy-making has been studied since its release in 1975, but today we’re looking even further back in time to understand where that idea of sharks as man-eating monsters first came from, and how it gained traction to get to where we are today. It’s a fascinating story involving Victorian game hunters, shark “rabies”, the U.S. Navy, film soundtracks designed to make your heart race, and an Australian surgeon who decided to try his hand at marine biology. To walk us through all of this, we have an amazing guest who has pieced all of these puzzle pieces together – Dr Chris Pepin-Neff, senior lecturer in public policy at the University of Sydney, Save our Seas Foundation project leader and expert in shark bite politics.

Before jumping into the public and political discourse around shark bite incidents, we explore Chris’ own relationship with the ocean [5.30]. Like a lot of us, Chris has a strong emotional connection to the water. They remember finding solace in the ocean during a particularly difficult time in their life, feeling the calming movement of the waves and watching the sunset on the horizon. It was a healing experience, and since then Chris has felt peace every time they visit the coast – finding tranquillity even within the power and chaos of the ocean itself.

Chris’ lifelong obsession with sharks morphed into a career as a political scientist interested in public responses to shark bite incidents, emotional and sometimes tragic events [9.33]. For example, while on a research trip to Cape Town, Chris wanted to study the level of pride local communities had towards the local shark population. They looked at two coastal communities – those of Fish Hoek and Muizenberg, two towns on the shores of False Bay, a hotspot for large predatory species of shark including bronze whalers, broadnose sevengills and white sharks. Chris gathered their data and had just arrived back home in Sydney, Australia, when they learnt of a shark bite incident that had occurred in Fish Hoek. This was a rare opportunity to study the responses of communities to such an emotional incident, so Chris hopped straight back on a plane and began surveying again ten days later. The results were surprising. The levels of pride in white shark populations remained steady, even after the incident – suggesting that attitudes towards sharks were more sophisticated than previously thought. Chris has been interested in these dynamics ever since, looking at how public attitudes and policy are influenced by shark bite incidents.

Chris’ research has also involved going back in time, looking at how the discourse on human-shark interactions has shifted over time. Their 2013 paper, Science, Policy and the public discourse of shark “attack”, identified three labels to describe shark bite incidents that stood out through history. Two of these were “rogue shark” and “man-eater”, and we spent some time talking through their fascinating histories [16.40]. Rogue shark theory was invented in the late 1930s and named in the 1950s by Sir Victor Coppleson, a medical surgeon at the University of Sydney. He returned to Australia after fighting in World War I in 1929, a time when more people were swimming recreationally during daylight hours than ever before. As a result, more people were coming into contact with sharks and more shark bite incidents were occurring. Previously, negative interactions between humans and sharks had happened out at sea, as sailors had fallen in the water off the side of a boat after fishing or emptying waste into the water. The idea that sharks developed a taste for human flesh and were actively seeking out swimmers to eat them – the precursor to the theory of “rogue sharks” – didn’t begin until the late 1800s, when two incidents occurred on the same day, in the same body of water in Port Said, Egypt. The British Medical Journal, a highly respected source of information at the time, declared that both incidents were “presumed” to have been the same shark. Also during this period, big game hunting was very popular, and the concept of “rogue” wild animals – such as individual lions and elephants – was coined as a way to explain human injury and fatalities as a result of interactions with wildlife. However, the idea that similar behaviour by sharks could also be classified as “rogue” didn’t come until later.

This is where the surgeon, Victor Coppleson, re-enters the story [20.52]. In 1929, he began collecting newspaper clippings on cases of shark bites from around the world. He also started corresponding with an American author who specialised in stories about big game hunting, called Horace Mazet. At that time, Horace was in an argument with academics about a now infamous cluster of shark bites that occurred in 1916 in New Jersey, U.S. The scientists believed that the bites had occurred ‘too far North to be a shark’ – a popular belief at the time – but later a bull shark had been found with human remains in its belly. This was seen to be so unusual that Horace developed the theory that the shark had rabies! Determined to get the story out there, he contacted Victor and pleaded with him to prove that sharks do attack humans. Victor agreed, and published a book on the subject. The only difference was rather than use the term “shark rabies”, Victor used the term “rogue shark” – which then gave rise to the idea that certain sharks would develop a taste for humans, and repeated incidents would be the result of these individuals.

Rogue shark theory would soon develop into something much bigger; the narrative that sharks “attack” with intent [25.00]. The phrase “shark attack” rises in popularity after the 1930s. Before that, shark bites were referred to as “shark accidents”. As more of serious incidents begin to occur – most likely due to the rise of recreational swimming – Chris says that a ‘war of words’ began, mainly through academic articles and letters. It starts with Victor Coppleson’s work. At the end of an article for the Australian Medical Journal, he writes “the evidence that sharks will attack man is complete”. Remember – this is a human medical surgeon, not a marine biologist! Some years later, the U.S. Navy had a conference on how the military should refer to shark bites (during World War II, there were increasing reports of military personnel coming into contact with sharks while at sea), with the outcome being that shark “attack” was the most commonly used label. Here the phrase shark “attack” is really reinforced, and in the decades that followed it remained largely uncontested until the 1970s. At this time, scientists – including David Baldridge, founder of the Mote Marine Lab, and Doctor Samuel Gruber – start disproving the myth of sharks as man-killers, stating biological, ecological and behavioural factors that explain why shark bites occur. However, they struggled to communicate their findings to the public. That is, until Chris came along! Following a conversation Chris had at Sharks International, they began to piece this story together and dedicated his career to changing the framing of shark “attack” to shark incident, or shark bite incident.

Of course, we can’t talk about public perception of sharks without also mentioning the cultural phenomenon that was Jaws [33.00]. Chris states that the entire universe of shark research and conservation can be split into ‘pre-jaws’ and ‘post-jaws’. When Jaws was released, it had a million-dollar budget for marketing, and every penny was spent around something that the producers called “Jaws consciousness”. Everything was designed to scare people, from the voiceover on the trailer, to the editorial decision to deliberately not show the shark, to the iconic soundtrack – which was composed to mimic a heartbeat getting faster and faster. It was so effective that even just the Jaws theme can still trigger fear and anxiety in people today, and it is still being used in association with sharks in popular culture. As Chris puts it, there are a system of tropes that are used to encompass the way we communicate about sharks, an echo of Jaws that still affects public sensibility.

And these tropes don’t just put fear into cinema and television audiences – they also have influenced policy [37.50]. After Jaws (and its sequels) came out there was a change in U.S. fisheries laws that changed the classification of sharks from valuable fish to waste fish, meaning that you could catch as many as you wanted, land as many as you wanted and discard as many as you wanted. This was policy decision made directly in response to Jaws.

So has that continued in more recent years? In the last two decades, there have been what are known as ‘cluster’ incidents, where multiple shark bites have occurred in the same area [40.20]. As Chris explains, scientists have proven that these are the result of human behaviour (for instance, spearfishers keeping their catch inside their wetsuit, or surfers heading out in areas where large numbers of sharks had been seen) and ecological or oceanographic factors (e.g. sewage outlets, currents, certain weather conditions), not evidence that sharks are actively seeking humans out to eat. In their 2019 book FLAWS: shark bites and emotional public policy-making, Chris compares and analyses three different policy responses to such cluster incidents: Sydney, Cape Town and Florida. In Sydney, the government began aerial patrols using helicopters following what is known as the ‘Summer of the Shark’ [42.00]. Chris concluded that this was, essentially, a scam. The helicopters were ineffective, but it was a way for the ministers to deflect from accusations of corruption. Similarly, in Florida, the state government responded to a cluster of incidents by banning shark-feeding ecotourism ventures [44.00]. The caveat being that no such businesses existed – the ban was just for effect, to make it appear as though something was being done. However, one good example of policy-making following fatal shark bites was of the Shark Spotters Programme in Cape Town [42.00]. It’s success was largely down to the involvement and organisation of the local community.

So, where do we go from here? How do we improve our communication around shark bites and beach safety, without perpetuating the negative perceptions around sharks [51.00]? Chris, who has published research on the subject, says that we need to consider intentionality in our framing of shark bite incidents. Studies of human behaviour have proven that if we believe a negative act to have been carried out with the intention to do harm, it triggers our fight-or-flight response. For example, participants of a study had more brain activity when watching footage of someone being pushed down a hill, than footage of someone falling down it. Therefore, language that frames sharks as intentionally biting humans is more likely to encourage public fear and dislike of sharks, whereas framing of this behaviour as accidental and unintentional helps to lessen these emotions. Chris’ take-home message is: “we are in the way, not on the menu. That is closer to reality than any of these movie myths we’ve been talking about.”

About our guest

Dr Chris Pepin-Neff, senior lecturer in public policy at the University of Sydney

Chris Pepin-Neff completed the first PhD on the “politics of shark attacks” at the University of Sydney in 2014. They are the author of the book, “Flaws: Shark Bites and Emotional Public Policymaking,” which was published in 2019. Their research looks at public perceptions about sharks and ways to improve communication about beach safety and risks from human-shark interactions. Chris’ research has been featured or noted in the New York Times, Cape Town Times, Economist, Time magazine, the Guardian, The New Yorker, and Washington Post. Their academic research on Cape Town, Sydney, Western Australia, and the United States has been published in the journals Biology, Conservation Letters, Marine Policy, Human Dimensions of Wildlife and Coastal Management.