Needle In A Haystack

In a case of life imitating art, the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh - heavily dependent on the tourist trade - suffered from a series of shark attacks in December 2010. The story received worldwide media coverage with many journalists drawing comparisons with Jaws - a de rigeur reference whenever shark attacks are reported in the press. In this case, however, even the experts were invoking the Spielberg blockbuster. When asked to comment on the attacks (which included one fatality and were believed to be the work of a single predator), shark biologist Dr Samuel H Gruber said,  "In all my years reading about shark attacks and writing about them you never hear about sharks biting more than one person. Then for it to happen [ ... ] is almost like a Jaws scenario." He went on to suggest that the chances of finding the shark in the Red Sea were - as Hooper puts it in the movie - a "hundred to one". What this real-life bearded icthyologist in fact said was: "It's really pretty much a crapshoot. Finding the actual shark is like trying to find a needle in a haystack."

Although he probably didn't know it, Dr Gruber was quoting the novel. Quint remains evasive about his methods for tracking down the Great White and Brody tries to prompt him by offering up the very same simile. In another case of the dialogue being flipped from page to screen, it is actually Brody who then goes on to wonder if "it [would] be better if we stayed the night out here." In the movie, of course, he is the one who repeatedly suggests they go back for a bigger boat as dusk falls.

Like Moby Dick, Jaws is built on the false premise that a man could corner a prey in an environment that leaves no tracks or spoors for the hunter to follow. Melville confronts the issue head-on in a chapter called 'The Chart' and makes a good case for the method behind Ahab's madness:

"Now, to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of the leviathans, it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one solitary creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet. But not so did it seem to Ahab, who knew the sets of all tides and currents; and thereby calculating the driftings of the Sperm Whale's food; and, also, calling to mind the regular, ascertained seasons for hunting him in particular latitudes; could arrive at reasonable surmises, almost approaching to certainties, concerning the timeliest day to be upon this or that ground in search of his prey."

By compressing the shark hunt into a day, a night and a day, the film manages to sidestep the issue. Besides, it is one of the tropes of the monster movie genre that the creature - be it a velociraptor learning how to open a door, or a new strain of shark switching on an oven - is more intelligent than you first think. In the novel the shark, once it appears, seems to occupy the same stretch of water - a covenience that allows the Orca to resume the hunt on each successive day.  Throwing credibility to the winds, Benchley also gives Quint a sort of sixth sense ("I got a feeling.") that seems more reliable that Hooper's fish-finder in the movie.