May 23, 2025 — From fear to fascination: That’s how humans’ view of great white sharks has evolved, scientists say, since the movie “Jaws” took the world by storm in 1975.
On Cape Cod, this 50th anniversary summer will be filled with the latest in shark research.
State shark expert Greg Skomal, a senior biologist at the Division of Marine Fisheries, works closely with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy in Chatham. He says technologies like acoustic detection and drone cameras are showing scientists more about shark behavior than ever before.
“What’s really cool is, at the time when ‘Jaws’ was made, we knew virtually nothing about the great white shark,” he said. “And in those 50 years, we’ve totally exploded — meaning the scientific community — what we know about this species. So it’s an exciting time, because the tools that we use now didn’t exist back then.”
One relatively new tool is the video tag. This year, Cape shark researchers plan to put video tags on white sharks to get a “shark’s-eye view” of shark activity inside Cape Cod Bay, rather than off the Outer Cape.