The Marine Biologist Who Inspired 'Jaws' in Real Life

In 1975, Jaws had a lasting impact: it revolutionized the summer blockbuster, terrified countless people of the ocean, and gave the great white shark an undeserved bad reputation.

Dr. Donald 'Reef' Nelson, who worked as a science advisor on both the original Jaws and its 1978 sequel, wasn't pleased with how the film shaped public perception of sharks. He also served as a major influence for Richard Dreyfuss's portrayal of Matt Hooper, the oceanographer with a fondness for double denim.

When Nelson first encountered a shark in 1959, little was known about their behavior. Scientists had examined deceased sharks and observed live ones from a distance, but real-life encounters were rare and often more chaotic than ideal scientific conditions.

After completing his biology degree at Rutgers University in 1958, Nelson moved to Florida, where he joined the creatively named spear-fishing team, the Glug Glugs. One day, after spearing a grunt, a small but surprisingly loud fish, he noticed a tiger shark appear, which he then proceeded to spear as well, leading to an epiphany.

But Nelson didn't just take home a fish and a shark. He also took away a crucial question: Were sharks drawn to sound? No one had studied this before, so he and his research partner, Samuel 'Sonny' Gruber, set out to investigate. Using an ultrasonic speaker developed by the Navy, they played fake sounds of struggling fish, like the noise made by his speared grunt. The results were astounding: 22 sharks were attracted to the sounds. In 1963, while still grad students, they published their findings in Science.

Exploring Further

In the years before Nelson’s research, the U.S. Navy had suffered devastating shark attacks that led to numerous casualties. The real-life story behind the USS Indianapolis disaster, which Quint (Robert Shaw) recounts in the original Jaws, was one such tragedy, and similar incidents had occurred in the Pacific, South Atlantic Ocean, and Caribbean Sea.

Nelson and Gruber's findings would ultimately help save lives. They discovered that the sounds made by struggling fish could also be emitted by swimmers—an unfortunate fact for anyone in the water. By 1965, Nelson had moved to California to teach biology at Cal State Long Beach, where he explored methods to repel sharks, including a cattle prod-like device to stun them. Unfortunately, none of these methods were successful. Interestingly, the 1966 film Batman: The Movie, shot in California, featured Adam West's Batman using a can of shark repellent.

What fascinated Nelson more than shark repellents was getting as close to them as possible. For a time, he employed the ridiculously daring 'Kamikaze technique,' free-diving to depths of 60 feet and provoking reef sharks until they became aggressive. This allowed him to study their 'agonistic display,' the behavior they exhibited when feeling threatened.

In the early 1970s, a young Steven Spielberg visited the Shark Lab at Cal State, which Nelson had established in 1966. Known for his habit of sketching on napkins and scraps of paper, Nelson’s office was a chaotic yet fascinating, shark-themed wonderland—a perfect fit for a filmmaker. This portrayal of scientists was unusual for audiences, but Spielberg took full advantage, making copies of maps, napkin sketches, and photos to replicate everything for Hooper’s office in Jaws.

“An Ultimate Marine Biologist”

Although Nelson played a role in the creation of Jaws and Jaws 2, he never let Hollywood fame affect him. Even after the success of Jaws, he continued using the Kamikaze technique, only retiring it in 1976 after a dangerously close encounter with an aggressive shark.

He quickly came up with a solution by inventing a one-person, fiberglass submarine called the SOS (Shark Observation Submersible) and returned to studying sharks in their natural underwater habitat. He even captured video footage, and together with his team, they developed methods for tracking sharks using ultrasonic transmitters. This technology laid the foundation for the advanced tracking systems used in modern shark research.

In the process, Nelson learned an immense amount about sharks. His team became the second in the world to successfully attach a transmitter to a wild shark, opening up an entirely new realm of discoveries. Contrary to popular belief, sharks were not solitary, mindless killers, but rather social creatures (except when provoked), and some species formed complex, mutually beneficial relationships with other marine life. They were far more intricate than the ruthless predators often portrayed in films.

Unfortunately, after the release of Jaws, many people preferred to remain ignorant about the true nature of sharks.

Both Spielberg and Peter Benchley, the co-screenwriter of Jaws and author of the original novel, later regretted contributing to the public's intense fear of sharks and expressed disappointment over the shark killings that followed. In 1978, Nelson himself had supported a publicity poster for Jaws 2 that terrified audiences, claiming the 'seas off our shores are aprowl with many killers' and suggesting that sharks could attack in freshwater and sink boats, urging viewers to 'know their enemy.'

By the time of Nelson's death in 1997, humanity had gained a much deeper understanding of sharks—a knowledge not only used to keep people safe but also to protect sharks from human harm. Thanks to all the video footage he captured with his team, Nelson produced over 20 documentaries between 1968 and 1994, many of which were aired on TV or shown in classrooms. A tribute in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes [PDF] in 2001 hailed Nelson as 'an ultimate marine biologist.'

Throughout his more than three-decade career, Nelson inspired generations of scientists to follow in his (wet) footsteps, delving into the fascinating world of sharks. He also authored nearly 50 papers on the subject, so if you're planning to explore his work... you're going to need a much bigger shelf.