Vineyard Haven in Massachusetts - Lewis Pugh followed an unspoken domination throughout his career and was one of the world's boldest endurance swimmers: Don't talk about sharks. But he plans to break the issue in Martha's vineyard swimming this week, photographing the "chin" vineyard 50 years ago.
British Africans are the first to complete a long distance swimming in every ocean in the world and are under extreme conditions everywhere from Mount Everest to the Arctic.
“In this swim, it’s completely different: we’ve been talking about sharks,” Pugh joked, who doesn’t wear a wetsuit as usual.
To swim 47 degrees of water in Martha's vineyard, he will wear a tree trunk, a hat and goggles.
Pugh, 55, is challenging because he wants to change the public view of now-risk animals - he said the sensational film is "a villain, a cold-blooded killer." He will urge more protection for sharks.
Starting from Edgar Town Harbor Lighthouse on Thursday, he will swim for three or four hours in the brutal surfing surfing, marking his progress and spending the rest of his wake up time on the vineyards to educate the public about sharks. He will then go into the water and do it again - it will take 12 days or how long it will take for him to complete a 62-mile (100 km) swim.
He embarked on the journey after the New England Aquarium confirmed the first white shark found near the Nantucket coast earlier this week.
"It's not only physically but psychologically," he said. "I mean, every day I talk about sharks, sharks, sharks, sharks. Then, eventually, I have to swim in the water. I think you can imagine what I'm going to think."
Pug said swimming would be one of his most difficult places, which says a lot for those who are near glaciers and volcanoes, as well as hippos, crocodiles and polar bears. Before, no one had ever wandered on Martha's Vineyard Island.
But Pugh often swims to raise awareness of environmental causes—known this year as the "United Nations patron of the Ocean", he said no swimming has no risks and huge measures are needed to convey his message: According to the American Association of American Science Advances, about 274,000 sharks are killed every day worldwide.
"This is a movie about sharks attacking humans, and we're always attacking sharks," he said of "There's totally unsustainable. It's crazy. We need to respect them."
He stressed that swimming is not something non-professionals should try. He accompanied the security personnel and kayaks on the boat and used a "shark shield" device, which used electric fields to stop sharks without damaging them.
Pug remembers the first time he looked at his 16-year-old "chin". Decades of research and research, awe and respect have replaced his fears as he realizes the role they play in maintaining the planet’s increasingly fragile ecosystem.
"I'm even more afraid of a world without sharks or predators," he said.
When released in the summer of 1975, "Ji" was credited with the highest-grossing film for creating Hollywood's blockbuster culture, until then and won three Academy Awards. This will affect the number of oceans viewed over decades.
Director Steven Spielberg and writer Peter Benchley regret the impact of the film on audiences’ views on sharks. Both have since contributed to animal conservation efforts, with population depleted due to factors such as overcapture and climate change.
Discovery and National Geographic channels publish programs about sharks every year to provide education about predators to the public.
Greg Skomal, a marine fisheries biologist at Martha Vineyard Fisheries of Massachusetts Department of Martha’s Vineyard Fisheries, said many people told him that they still wouldn’t swim in the ocean due to the sheer horror created by the film.
"I tend to hear that I have not had any expression of water since I came out," he said.
But Skomal published an inaccurate book challenging the film, and he said that “the chin” also inspired many people (including him) to learn marine biology, thus increasing research, acceptance and respect for biology.
If the "chim" was made today, he thought it wouldn't have the same effect. But in the 1970s, “that is largely uneducated sharks in terms of creating this fear to the public because we are not educated. Scientists know nothing about sharks.”
Skomar said the biggest threat to the decline in the shark population was commercial fishing, which exploded in the late 1970s, today due to the high demand for fins and meat used in food dishes, as well as cosmetics that use skin to make leather, oils and cartilage.
"I think we really got rid of this feeling, or the old adage, 'The only good shark is the dead shark.'" "We are definitely in a variation from fear to obsession, or the combination of both."