 | |
| Author | Peter Benchley |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Publication date | 1994 |
| Media type | |
| Preceded by | Beast |
White Shark is a 1994 novel by author Peter Benchley, famous for Jaws , The Island , Beast and The Deep . [1] It is similar to Jaws, but it does not feature a shark, despite what the title suggests. To avoid confusion and to capitalize on the miniseries adaptation, the book was republished as Creature in 1997.
At the close of World War II, Nazi scientist Ernst Kruger perfects a biological weapon he calls Der Weisse Hai ("the White Shark"). The weapon is packed in a casket-like box and loaded aboard a German submarine to escape the Allied capture of Germany. When the submarine is attacked and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean, all hands, including Kruger, and the box containing Der Weisse Hai are lost at sea.
Decades later, unsuspecting divers find the wreckage of the German submarine and recover the box, becoming the Great White Shark's first victims and inadvertently releasing it into the waters off Long Island, where it kills sea mammals, pets and random people. The novel's protagonist, a marine biologist named Dr. Simon Chase, examines several of the victim's corpses and concludes that the attacker can't be a sea creature, since its teeth and claws leave metallic traces.
The creature's exact nature is not described or revealed until near the climax, when Jacob Franks, a Holocaust survivor, tracks down the protagonist and reveals he was forced to assist Kruger's experiments to create an amphibious human to act as the ultimate commando soldier. All of Kruger's test subjects were too weak to survive the experiments, until they were given a psychotic SS officer and ex-Olympic triathlete, who was surgically altered and psychologically manipulated into becoming Der Weisse Hai, including the implantation of steel claws and teeth. Before sealing him into the box, Kruger also put the Shark into a hibernation state, which enabled him to survive the decades following the war. Franks also explains that Kruger had taught the Shark how to drain his lungs and breathe air, but not how to reverse the process, meaning that once the Shark comes ashore, he will be unable to return to the water. Alarmed, Chase reveals to Franks that this has already occurred.
Chase and his helper lure the Shark into a decompression chamber and explode him.
White Shark was adapted into a 1997 miniseries called Creature . The film was set at a top secret island military base instead of a science lab. Additionally, instead of an amphibious human, the titular creature was redesigned as a human/great white shark hybrid capable of evolving legs, arms and lungs. It starred Craig T. Nelson as Simon Chase and Kim Cattrall as Dr. Amanda Mason (instead of Macy). It was primarily filmed on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia and in Vancouver. To take advantage of the movie's publicity and to avoid confusion with sharks, the book was republished as Creature in 1997.
The great white shark, also known as the white shark, white pointer, or simply great white, is a species of large mackerel shark which can be found in the coastal surface waters of all the major oceans. It is the only known surviving species of its genus Carcharodon. The great white shark is notable for its size, with the largest preserved female specimen measuring 5.83 m (19.1 ft) in length and around 2,000 kg (4,410 lb) in weight at maturity. However, most are smaller; males measure 3.4 to 4.0 m, and females measure 4.6 to 4.9 m on average. According to a 2014 study, the lifespan of great white sharks is estimated to be as long as 70 years or more, well above previous estimates, making it one of the longest lived cartilaginous fishes currently known. According to the same study, male great white sharks take 26 years to reach sexual maturity, while the females take 33 years to be ready to produce offspring. Great white sharks can swim at speeds of 25 km/h (16 mph) for short bursts and to depths of 1,200 m (3,900 ft).
Jaws is a 1975 American thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley. It stars Roy Scheider as police chief Martin Brody, who, with the help of a marine biologist and a professional shark hunter, hunts a man-eating great white shark that attacks beachgoers at a summer resort town. Murray Hamilton plays the mayor, and Lorraine Gary portrays Brody's wife. The screenplay is credited to Benchley, who wrote the first drafts, and actor-writer Carl Gottlieb, who rewrote the script during principal photography.
The goblin shark is a rare species of deep-sea shark. Sometimes called a "living fossil", it is the only extant representative of the family Mitsukurinidae, a lineage some 125 million years old. This pink-skinned animal has a distinctive profile with an elongated, flat snout, and highly protrusible jaws containing prominent nail-like teeth. It is usually between 3 and 4 m long when mature, though it can grow considerably larger such as one captured in 2000 that is thought to have measured 6 m (20 ft). Goblin sharks are benthopelagic creatures that inhabit upper continental slopes, submarine canyons, and seamounts throughout the world at depths greater than 100 m (330 ft), with adults found deeper than juveniles. Some researchers believe that these sharks could also dive to depths of up to 1,300 m (4,270 ft), for short periods of time.
Megalodon, meaning "big tooth", is an extinct species of mackerel shark that lived approximately 23 to 3.6 million years ago (Mya), from the Early Miocene to the Pliocene epochs. It was formerly thought to be a member of the family Lamnidae and a close relative of the great white shark, but has been reclassified into the extinct family Otodontidae, which diverged from the great white shark during the Early Cretaceous.
Jaws is the nickname of a fictional henchman in the James Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979), played in both films by actor Richard Kiel. The character is known for his towering height 2.18 m and his metal teeth.
The cookiecutter shark, also called the cigar shark, is a species of small squaliform shark in the family Dalatiidae. This shark occurs in warm, oceanic waters worldwide, particularly near islands, and has been recorded as deep as 3.7 km (2.3 mi). It migrates vertically up to 3 km (1.9 mi) every day, approaching the surface at dusk and descending with the dawn. Reaching only 42–56 cm (16.5–22 in) in length, the cookiecutter shark has a long, cylindrical body with a short, blunt snout, large eyes, two tiny spineless dorsal fins, and a large caudal fin. It is dark brown, with light-emitting photophores covering its underside except for a dark "collar" around its throat and gill slits.
Peter Bradford Benchley was an American author, screenwriter, and ocean activist. He is known for his bestselling novel Jaws and co-wrote its film adaptation with Carl Gottlieb. Several more of his works were also adapted for both cinema and television, including The Deep, The Island, Beast, and White Shark.
The Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 were a series of shark attacks along the coast of New Jersey, in the United States, between July 1 and 12, 1916, in which four people were killed and one critically injured. The incidents occurred during a deadly summer heat wave and polio epidemic in the United States that drove thousands of people to the seaside resorts of the Jersey Shore. Since 1916, scholars have debated which shark species was responsible and the number of animals involved, with the great white shark and the bull shark most frequently cited.
Sea Monsters, marketed as Chased by Sea Monsters in the United States, is a 2003 three-part nature documentary television miniseries created by Impossible Pictures and produced by the BBC Natural History Unit, the Discovery Channel and ProSieben. Following in the footsteps of The Giant Claw (2002) and Land of Giants (2003), special episodes of the nature documentary series Walking with Dinosaurs, Sea Monsters stars British wildlife presenter Nigel Marven as a "time-travelling zoologist" who travels to seven different periods of time in prehistory, diving in the "seven deadliest seas of all time" and encountering and interacting with the prehistoric creatures who inhabit them. The series is narrated by Karen Hayley.
The Land Shark was a recurring character from the sketch comedy television series Saturday Night Live.
Seal Island is a small land mass located 5.7 kilometres off the northern beaches of False Bay, near Cape Town in South Africa. The island is so named because of the great number of Cape fur seals that occupy it. It is 5 acres in area and home to 64,000 cape fur seals. It is also home to seabirds, and it is likely that non-marine species fly there to breed as well. The island is an outcrop of Cape granite and rises no more than about 4 to 6 metres above the high tide mark. The island is long and narrow – 800 by 50 metres. There is no vegetation, soil of any significance, or beach.
Jaws Unleashed is a 2006 action-adventure video game inspired by the 1975 film Jaws. It was developed by Appaloosa Interactive and published by Majesco Entertainment. This game features open world gameplay, with the player assuming control of a large great white shark and being able to roam freely throughout the water, eating other animals and humans, while destroying everything in its path. Jaws Unleashed was released for Microsoft Windows, Xbox and PlayStation 2.
The silvertip shark is a large species of requiem shark, in the family Carcharhinidae, with a fragmented distribution throughout the tropical Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is often encountered around offshore islands and coral reefs, and has been known to dive to a depth of 800 m (2,600 ft). The silvertip shark resembles a larger and bulkier grey reef shark, but can be easily identified by the prominent white margins on its fins. It attains a maximum length of 3 m (10 ft).
The pelagic thresher is a species of thresher shark, family Alopiidae; this group of sharks is characterized by the greatly elongated upper lobes of their caudal fins. The pelagic thresher occurs in the tropical and subtropical waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, usually far from shore, but occasionally entering coastal habitats. It is often confused with the common thresher, even in professional publications, but can be distinguished by the dark, rather than white, color over the bases of its pectoral fins. The smallest of the three thresher species, the pelagic thresher typically measures 3 m (10 ft) long.
Jaws is a novel by American writer Peter Benchley, published in 1974. It tells the story of a large great white shark that preys upon a small Long Island resort town and the three men who attempt to kill it. The novel grew out of Benchley's interest in shark attacks after he learned about the exploits of Montauk, New York shark fisherman Frank Mundus in 1964. Doubleday commissioned him to write the novel in 1971, a period when Benchley worked as a freelance journalist.
Built for the Kill is a nature series made by Granada Wild for the National Geographic Channel. It was produced from 2001 to 2004, with a total of 31 episodes. Each episode runs for approximately 48 minutes including the credits and opening titles.
Creature is a 1998 American television miniseries starring Craig T. Nelson, Kim Cattrall and Matthew Carey. It is based on the 1994 novel White Shark by Jaws author Peter Benchley. The miniseries is about an amphibious shark-like monster terrorizing an abandoned secret military base and the people who live on the island where it is located.
Representations of the shark are common in popular culture in the Western world, with a range of media generally portraying them of eating machines and threats. In some media, however, comedy is drawn from portrayals of sharks running counter to their popular image, with shark characters being portrayed as unexpectedly friendly or otherwise comical. The lists below give an approximate sample of the many forms of representation of the shark in popular culture.
Galeophobia is the medical term for a fear of sharks. The name galeophobia derives from the Greek language with galeos meaning shark and phobia meaning fear. This phobia is diagnosed using DSM-5 criteria and is characterized by a patient showing marked fear or anxiety about sharks that leads to severe impairment of their quality of life. Although it is not known exactly how many people have been diagnosed with galeophobia, a study conducted in 2015 revealed that just over half (51%) of Americans are absolutely terrified of sharks.