The following is adapted from the introduction to LIFE’s new special issue Sharks: Predators of the Sea, which is available here online and at newsstands:

Few words in the American vocabulary inspire fear and fascination the way shark does. If shouted too loudly on a sunny Cape Cod beach, it could prompt scores of swimmers to rush to shore. When attached to a movie poster—think Jaws and Sharknado—the association has reliably led to big box office. More than half of Americans say they are scared of sharks, and a third have said they are so terrified they suffer from galeophobia (the scientific designation for a shark phobia) and won’t even go in the water. 

There are plenty of reasons we are afraid of sharks. From a psychological perspective, being attacked by a shark looms as a particularly gruesome way to die. “We’re not just afraid of things because of the likelihood that they’ll happen, but [also] because of the nature of them if they do happen,” David Ropeik, who has studied the gap between human fears and reality, told Live Science in 2015. “It may be unlikely that you’ll be attacked by a shark, but it would suck if you did.” On top of that, there have been vastly more unprovoked shark-related incidents in the United States over time—28 in 2024 alone, triple that of Australia, which is next in line. 

The odds of dying in a shark attack during your lifetime are incredibly remote—1 in 4.3 million. Each year, there are typically around six unprovoked shark-related fatalities worldwide. A beachgoer is far more likely to die of sun exposure (.00007 percent chance) or in a car accident (.011 percent chance) than from a shark attack. According to data compiled by the International Shark Attack File, you’re far more likely to be bitten by a New Yorker than a shark.

Perhaps because so much of the United States is landlocked, sharks historically were not on the American radar. In fact, for many years, sharks didn’t bite people in the U.S. Or, at least, that’s what the general population and some academics thought. Consider Maryland-born athlete Hermann Oelrichs, who in 1891 felt so sure
that sharks were harmless, he jumped into the sharky waters outside his home in Newport, Rhode Island, to prove his point to some guests. Oelrichs was fine; the fish and sharks scattered—likely frightened by the splash, according to the Pittsburgh Dispatch. The upshot: Scientists at the American Museum of Natural History in New York later cited Oelrichs’s stunt as scientific evidence that man-eating sharks did not exist. 

The conviction that sharks posed no threat would not last long. Fast-forward to 1916 on the Jersey Shore, when in the course of just 12 days, five people were attacked by sharks. In an attempt to contain public anxiety, authorities blamed all of the attacks on a single young great white that was found with human remains in its stomach. 

The single-shark messaging led to the “mythos of a rogue killer . . . intentionally moving around and finding victims,” says Janet M. Davis, a professor of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, who has studied the history of human-shark interactions. “The fact that these fatal bites [in New Jersey] occurred in such rapid succession really scared people.” Locals fought back, with some tossing sticks of dynamite into a creek where one of the victims was found. President Woodrow Wilson promised federal aid to “drive away all the ferocious man-eating sharks which have been making prey of bathers,” reported the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

During World War II, anxiety about shark attacks was so pronounced, the Navy began work on a shark repellent, with the help of the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency. Among others who devoted themselves to the repellent was OSS executive assistant and future chef Julia Child, who experimented with combinations of nicotine, clove oil, horse urine, rotting shark muscle, and asparagus in the hopes of preventing shark attacks. Before the end of the war, the Navy introduced Shark Chaser, a pink pill of copper acetate that produced an inky black dye when released in the water, obscuring a serviceman from lurking sharks. 

With the war’s end, it would be another 30 years before fear of sharks again gripped the public. The precipitating events: the publication of the book Jaws by Peter Benchley and the release of the Hollywood version, also called Jaws.  

“During the summer of 1975 when Jaws was in hundreds of theaters across the [U.S.] . . . we could see the fear that it was stirring up,” Wendy Benchley, an ocean conservationist and the novelist’s widow, told National Geographic in 2022. For some, that meant avoiding swimming in deep waters. Others were inspired to emulate the film’s heroes and sail out to sea to hunt down these creatures. Across the U.S. East Coast in the mid-1980s, sporting events, such as Monster Shark Tournaments, took place to kill sharks as conquests. “It horrified Peter and me that some people’s first reaction was to kill sharks,” she said. 

But there were also members of the public who found the story thrilling. Thousands of people around the world sent letters to Benchley to describe how the book and film had inspired them to learn more, become marine biologists, or photograph sharks. (One example: Eight years after the release of Jaws, a group of scientists founded the American Elasmobranch Society, to promote the study of sharks.) “There is no question that Jaws made a lot of people scared of sharks, and some responded by killing these animals,” shark scientist Yannis Papastamatiou told National Geographic in 2022. “Jaws had the opposite effect on me. I wanted to work with sharks.”  

America’s post-Jaws reactions to sharks largely centered around another entertainment medium: Shark Week and the rise of television documentaries. If Jaws—both the book and movie—taught television and film executives anything, it was that sharks sell. The Discovery Channel’s weeklong Shark Week event, inaugurated in 1988 as a way to spark ratings, soon became an annual mainstay–akin to a secular national holiday. 

Originally, Shark Week programming was educationally oriented, including the 1988 film Caged in Fear, about the development of technology to stave off shark attacks. But as ratings for Shark Week grew, Discovery amped up the drama, conflict, and sensationalism. Today, Shark Week tends to feature content like Great White Serial Killer: Sea of Blood, which capitalized on a string of fatal shark attacks off the coast of Mexico. In the film, investigators attempted to identify the perpetrator, a massive great white shark, and capture it on film. 

Although sharks continue to be sensationalized in the media, researchers like Papastamatiou work to promote a more accurate understanding of the animals and support conservation efforts. In particular, Papastamatiou, who runs the Predator Ecology & Conservation Lab at Florida International University, is known for his work around sharks’ social and hunting habits. 

Instead of demonizing sharks, the public should follow the example of seafaring communities in the South Pacific, Davis suggests. In Hawaii and Fiji, sharks are not viewed as blood-frenzied serial killers but instead revered as ancestral spirits. Of course, that doesn’t mean these indigenous communities would call sharks cute and cuddly. “This is an animal that is very powerful and strong,” says Davis. “So even in a culture that really looks to these animals as central to their cosmologies and spiritual worlds, there’s still respect for the potential power of these animals.” These centuries-old stories and traditions align with what scientists have been discovering–the ocean is better with sharks in it.  ——By Courtney Mifsud Intreglia ▼ ▼ 

The following is a selection of photos from LIFE’s new special issue Sharks: Predators of the Sea, which is available here online and at newsstands.

Cover photo by Chris & Monique Fallows/Nature Picture Library

Cover photo by Brad Leue/Alamy

Cultures on seafaring islands in the South Pacific consider the whale shark to be a harbinger of good luck and fortune.

Alamy Stock Photo

Marine biologists observed a Port Jackson shark about 20 meters below in the surface in the waters off Sydney, Australia.

Fairfax Media via Getty Images

Bull sharks, seen above in Western Australia, are found in both saltwater and freshwater. They have been spotted in rivers hundreds of miles from the ocean.

Getty Images

The 1975 summer blockbuster Jaws, starring Roy Scheider, had plenty of people afraid to go in the water.

Corbis via Getty Images

In the 2003 movie Finding Nemo, a shark named Bruce looked intimidating but turned out to be kind and gentle.

©Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection

Tourists paddled a kayak, unaware of the great white shark lurking behind them.

Shutterstock/karelnoppe

Sharks circled in the waters off Cocos Island, Costa Rica.

Getty Images

A great white shark leapt against the sunset.

Getty Images/iStockphoto