A shark week gift to all of you

[LeftyMom]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB8AoAn48Pc&mode=related&search=

Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief. It was comin' back, from the island of Tinian Delady, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know, you know that when you're in the water, chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. Well, we didn't know. `Cause our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh huh. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, chief. The sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it's... kinda like `ol squares in battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark would go for nearest man and then he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got...lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin' and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in and rip you to pieces.
Y'know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men! I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand! I don't know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin' chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, bosom's mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well... he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He'd a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks ttook the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

[outofbounds]

1. Hoooper quit playin with yourself,

slow ahead, if you please.

[bridgit]

2. "here's to swim'in with bow legged women"

[Guava Jelly]

3. that was my favorite dialog from jaws

thanks for the link.

Were gonna need a bigger boat

[LeftyMom]

5. That is one of the best monologues in film

Speaking of Jaws, Peter Benchley who wrote the book and was pretty involved in the creation of the movie went on become a tireless advocate of shark conservation for the remainder of his life.

[Guava Jelly]

6. Jaws didn't do much to help out the species thats for sure

Now if we can just stop the practice of catching definning and dumping them back in the ocean to drown.

I always found this factoid interesting
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/08/0820_030820_sharkcancer.html
"Sharks have survived some 400 million years on Earth. Could their longevity be due in part to an extraordinary resistance to cancer and other diseases?"

Leave it to humans to destroy the very thing that could save them.

[LeftyMom]

7. I think he struggled with that

http://www.peterbenchley.com/JawsToday.htm

He did speak out a lot against finning and gave some talks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium (the first and only place to keep a healthy great white in captivity for much time at all and a big funder of research into shark migrations and population) about shark conservation and research.

[smokey nj]

4. "Fair well and adieu to you fair Spanish Ladies..."

[wain]

8. Those brave sailors gave so much for our families

This was a tragic event. The skipper of the cruiser Indianapolis should have been performing zigzag maneuvers on this moonlit night. Sorry. This means more to me than just "favorite lines" in a movie.
:-(

[LeftyMom]

9. I don't think it was intended as exploitative or disrespectful

I think they included the scene both to explain Quint's fear/hatred of sharks but also to convey the horror of the event in a respectful way. There's no way one could to much research on shark/human interactions without reading an account of the sinking of the Indianapolis and gaining a great deal of respect for the horror those men faced. The death was likely compounded by some of the shark attack survival advice offered by the Navy at the time. They encouraged people to scare sharks off by thrashing and making noise, which acutally both attracted more sharks and signaled that the men in the water were prey. It probably contributed to losses due to exhaustion and sunsequent drowning as well to encourage that sort of wasted energy.