Even on an Island that knows a little something about shark
hysteria, the upcoming Boston Big Game Fishing Club Monster Shark
tournament is a frenzied event.

Most people think of the shark as the ultimate symbol of dread,
giants with cold lifeless eyes who cruise the ocean looking for swimmers
they can tear from limb to limb. The very word itself is used to
describe people in society who prey on others or who engage in deceptive
practices.

There is probably not an animal in the world more despised or feared
then sharks, ranking right down there with snakes and spiders.

A great white shark was reported twice in Vineyard waters this past week, the most recent off Menemsha Beach on Wednesday evening.

Capt. Buddy Vanderhoop of Aquinnah called the Gazette Wednesday night to say a great white shark had been seen 50 feet off the Menemsha beach at about 6:30 p.m. He said the animal was finning and moving up the beach. Later it moved toward the Brickyard.

Capt. Scott McDowell of Chilmark was out fishing on a charter on Sunday afternoon when, he said, a great white shark came out of the water three times near his new boat.

Scientists and naturalists working on and near the Vineyard worry that recent reported sightings of great white sharks near the Island will feed fears that get ahead of the facts.

Naturalist Gus Ben David, shark expert Greg Skomal and oceanographer Anthony Wood downplayed the threat to humans from sharks.

It was 35 years ago that Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws, about a great white shark that terrorizes a resort town, was first published, starting a run of 44 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and inspiring the Steven Spielberg film of the same name, filmed off the shores of Martha’s Vineyard.

This week the novelist’s widow, Wendy Benchley, made a visit to the Oak Bluffs selectmen to take aim at what has become, in recent years, a focal point in the battle over shark conservation: the annual Oak Bluffs Monster Shark Tournament.

Several people reporting seeing a shark off South Beach in Edgartown on Saturday, prompting swimmers to evacuate the water and giving at least one person a scary close encounter.

Eva Bradford, 22, of Westport, Me., was swimming about 30 feet from shore at about 7 p.m. when she heard her two cousins screaming. At first she couldn’t make out what they were shouting about, but soon realized they were yelling “shark.”

It’s been 35 years since the movie Jaws forever linked great white shark attacks and Martha’s Vineyard in the popular imagination of the world, yet in all that time no one has ever been attacked.

Then, long after all thought it was safe to go back in the water, along came the U.S. Coast Guard with last week’s holiday boating advice, headed “Shark Advisory” and warning swimmers, kayakers and small boaters of the danger of great white sharks.

Every jittery Vineyard beachgoer is familiar with the iconic image of the restless great white patrolling the shallows, mouth agape, in search of a fleshy excuse to close it. Stacks of shark books celebrating the more lurid aspects of their behavior, particularly their extremely rare propensity to attack humans, already fill library shelves, but in Demon Fish, Washington Post environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin makes the case that the more fearsome animal is in the mirror.

Knowledge of the Atlantic great white shark has been relegated for too long to the fevered imaginations of nervous beachgoers and boaters. With the animals returning to the New England coastline in larger numbers, one state scientist with Vineyard roots is bringing that understanding out of the realm of the mythical and uncovering fascinating insights into this elusive two-ton, apex predator’s behavior.

Three Vineyard fishermen had a real-life Jaws moment on Friday morning when they encountered a great white shark circling a dead minke whale that had become tangled in lobster line in the area known as Devil’s Bridge off Aquinnah.