March 6, 2017 — The 1975 horror movie “Jaws,” featuring a giant, man-eating shark, turned the ocean into a scary place for swimmers.
It got even scarier for sharks.
In large part because of that blockbuster and its many sequels, sharks were hunted increasingly by recreational and commercial anglers in the ’70s and ’80s, to the point that some species nearly disappeared.
Now, a new analysis of seven coastal shark populations led by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester Point indicates that federal protections enacted in the 1990s have brought most of those species back from the brink.