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Scene from »Jaws«
Photo: ddp images / ddp
His big breakthrough came with the film, but Hollywood director Steven Spielberg still regrets the effects of his hit movie »Jaws« on the population of predatory fish.
“To this day I regret the decline in the shark population caused by the book and film.
I really regret that," the 75-year-old filmmaker said in an interview with Britain's BBC on Sunday.
Jaws is about a man-eating shark that attacks bathers on a beach on Long Island on the east coast of the United States.
The local police chief goes on a hunt for the animal with a marine biologist and a shark hunter.
With the film adaptation from 1975, Spielberg achieved worldwide success.
When asked by the BBC presenter how Spielberg would feel if real sharks circled a desert island he inhabited, he replied: "It's one of the things I still fear." being eaten by a shark, "but that the sharks are kind of mad at me because of the post-1975 crazed sport fisherman binge."
According to a study published last year in the journal Nature, the global shark population has declined by 71 percent since the 1970s due to overfishing.
Researchers blame films like »Jaws« for people supporting the killing of predatory fish.
ele/AFP