The three local fishermen who crowd around the dead shark's gaping maw have the appearance of a knockabout comedy act. There's the bulky curly-haired one in the camouflage jacket with the whiny voice, the plump wise-cracking one with the mustard-coloured pork pie hat, yellow shirt and blood-stained light blue jacket, and the narrow-eyed creepy-looking thin one dressed in grey. Creepy Guy taps the snout of the dead fish with a pen and wrongly calls it a mako (which he also mispronounces, shortening the vowel and putting the stress on the second syllable) whilst Pork Pie Hat peers into the gullet and makes a joke that references both Seventies mainstream porn and politics. Hooper is revealed as a passer-by in yellow crosses the frame from right to left, and he identifies the catch as a tiger shark, whereupon Camouflage Jacket turns and stretches out the word what? in a high camp voice. As Mayor Vaughn approaches, shaking hands as if he were running for office, Hooper, who has begun propounding his bite radius theory, is hemmed in by the locals. Creepy Guy stands behind him and in a strangely unsettling moment blows on the back of his neck. In a movement that acts as a counterpoint to Vaughn's eager advance, Hooper retreats across the frame from right to left as the fishermen, not wanting to be robbed of their moment of glory, shout down any suggestion that they've caught the wrong shark. Hooper himself seems to be doing a bit of back-pedalling by finessing his words - 'I'm not saying it's not the shark. I am saying that it may not be the shark. It's just a slight difference in semantics, but I don't want to get beaten up for it.' Hooper will revert to more semantic distinctions in the following dinner table scene when he tells Ellen Brody 'They caught a shark. Not the shark.'
