Peter Benchley best known for shark stories, but his love was the ocean

T

he late Peter Benchley, an American author, best known for his novel Jaws and its subsequent film adaptation, co-written by Benchley with Carl Gottlieb and directed by Steven Spielberg, said:

 

“Without the oceans there would be no life on Earth”.

 

Peter Benchley - life on earth depends
 on the health of our oceans.

In the last decade of his career, Benchley wrote non-fiction works about the sea and about sharks advocating their conservation.

Among these was his book entitled Shark Trouble, which illustrated how hype and news sensationalism can help undermine the public's need to understand marine ecosystems and the potential negative consequences as humans interact with it.

This work, which had editions in 2001 and 2003, was written to help a post-Jaws public to more fully understand "the sea in all its beauty, mystery, and power." It details the ways in which man seems to have become more of an aggressor in his relationship with sharks, acting out of ignorance and greed as several of the species become increasingly threatened by overfishing.

Benchley was a member of the National Council of Environmental Defense and a spokesman for its Oceans Program: "The shark, in an updated Jaws could not be the villain; it would have to be written as the victim; for, worldwide, sharks are much more the oppressed than the oppressors."

He was also one of the founding board members of the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute (BUEI).