Did Hooper from JAWS intentionally ignore his shark-killing tech?
The ending sequence aboard the Orca in both the novel and the movie Jaws are arguably the best, most intense parts of the timeless tale of beast versus man.
But do these men use everything at their disposal during this battle? Or, more specifically, does shark expert Matt Hooper intentionally ignore his modern shark-killing equipment in favor of Quint's traditional fishing methods?
The first sighting of Hooper’s tech occurs when the shark finally surfaces, and the men of the Orca hurriedly prepare for switching from rod and reel to full harpoon and barrel mode. Hooper hurries below to break out his tech pack, briefly displaying a tracking device with blinking light and sound, and a rather impressive extra-large needle mechanism. Instead of brandishing the needle, he selects the tracking device and attaches it to the first barrel, which later is successfully attached to the shark via Quint’s harpoon.
The intimidating needle in question is the Farallon Shark Dart, developed in the 1960s for use by U.S. Navy Seals and later deployed by NASA to protect divers and astronauts during at-sea capsule splashdown recoveries.
Seals versus sharks
The Farallon Shark Dart was developed as a replacement for the current defensive tech of the time, which was the deadly bang stick. A water-proofed shotgun shell or high caliber bullet was mounted at the end of a pole and would fire when pressure was applied.
There were, however, several less-than-desirable effects of the bang stick from the Navy Seals’ point of view, including the shockwave resulting from discharge of the weapon, which not only affected the user but would alert any other interested entities that may be listening in the area of operations. There was also the blood involved, which would attract even more sharks to the area, most likely in a feeding frenzy kind of mood.
Hence the newfangled Shark Dart, which uses a long hollow needle to inject a sudden blast of CO2 into the shark at close range. The Shark Dart Repeater, the device Hooper eventually uses from the cage, is a longer, durable metal pole with a gas discharge button at the end. As the name implies, one could fire several blasts of CO2 into the target without the need for a new cartridge for each instance. Farallon also developed a shorter version of the dart, resembling a slim dagger, for closer encounters. This device, like the earlier bang stick, was pressure sensitive and thus easier to discharge accidentally.
The initial shark dart concept was to stab the shark, causing the CO2 to be released into its body. The original idea was that this would not kill the shark, but affect its buoyancy, forcing it to break off attack without leaving much blood in the water. The reality of receiving a strike from a shark dart was, shall we say, a bit more gruesome, according to the few eyewitnesses who’ve seen the device in action.
Hooper’s hack: double down on deadly
Hooper finally pulls out the device during the shark cage fugue, when Brody and Quint are assembling the cumbersome portable shower/anti-shark cage and Hooper is shown in the boat’s cabin preparing for the dive. The Farallon Shark Dart is the weapon of choice, but Hooper does something interesting: he adds an amount of deadly cyanide to the business end of the dart. This “hack” of the already deadly device adds another dimension of lethal power, using both chemistry and physics to try and destroy the maneater.
Sharp-eyed movie watchers, including stunningly observant The Daily Jaws aficionados, are undoubtedly aware that when Hooper does offer to use poison to kill the shark, he’s showing Quint a different injection device than the one he brings into the cage. The initial device Hooper shows on the deck of the Orca looks like a large animal hypodermic, which Quint points out is not big enough to penetrate the shark’s thick skin.
Later Hooper brings a different device, the Farallon Shark Dart Repeater, into the cage. While not technically a poison delivery device, when Hooper charges it with poison, he is hacking or modifying it, essentially doubling down on the deadly force that this device can already deliver.
Better late than never?
So why wait until lifejackets are distributed to passengers standing in knee-deep water before breaking out with the shark-dispatching tech? Perhaps the answer is in Hooper’s profession, which in the novel is ichthyology, and in the movie is simplified to marine biology. As such, the young scientist may, deep down, have not wanted to kill the animal at all. A 20-foot great white shark would have been an amazing find in the 1970s Great Barrier Reef of Australia, but one discovered off a U.S. northeastern coast would indeed, as Larry Vaughn put it, have gotten Hooper’s name in the National Geographic.
Hooper’s shark empathy is also on display at sea when he grabs his professional 35mm single lens reflex camera at the first sighting of the monster fish. Someone with more fatal intentions would perhaps have loaded the shark dart with its deadly mix first, then grabbed the camera.
Feasibly, Hooper may have been the very first to experience Benchley Remorse, described here for the first time as the feeling of remorse that Jaws author Peter Benchley felt when the popularity of his story helped turn all sharks into the ultimate global bad guys. In the late 1970s and 80s, for those still brave enough to venture into the water, it became sexy to hunt and display large sharks for sport, with the underlying idea that every shark killed is one less to attack people.
Benchley spent most of his post-Jaws life as an ardent ocean conservationist. “Considering the knowledge accumulated about sharks in the last 25 years, I couldn't possibly write Jaws today, not in good conscience anyway,” he wrote in a 2000 National Geographic article. “Back then, it was generally accepted that great whites were anthropophagus (they ate people) by choice. Now we know that almost every shark attack on a human is an accident. A shark mistakes a human for its normal prey."
Thanks to popular entertainment phenomena such as The Daily Jaws and the annual Shark Week, the tide for killing all sharks for sport has mostly evaporated, while the continual rise for increasing the knowledge base of these ancient predators continues.
As a disclaimer, I recently wrote a sea adventure novel set in the 1970s called “The Topaz Beetle,” using multiple references to the SCUBA diving tech of the time, including several mentions of the father of ocean conservation, Jacques Ives Cousteau, and his famous exploration vessel, the Calypso. The young hero in the novel, Sean McCauley (yes, named after Brody’s youngest son : ) uses his own crabbing money to purchase a Farallon Shark Dart once a breathtakingly large predator is discovered loitering in our heroes’ search area, refusing to leave.
I wanted to capture the shark phobia of the time, and while writing the novel I began wondering who, if anyone, would remember this intimidating self-defense device called the Farallon Shark Dart. The shark dart also makes an excellent writing device, with our hero Sean in a moral dilemma of using such brutal lethality on an animal which has yet to attack anyone.
I decided to go ahead and include the device in the Topaz Beetle story as a special treat for anyone who still remembers.
That must be you, dear reader, because here you are at the bottom of this article, with no real protection against any maneaters that may be swimming through the murk and heading this way right now.
About the author
Steve Delgado is a U.S. Navy veteran, accomplished media professional and author of the fictional Dive Plane adventure series. His latest novel, The Topaz Beetle, tells the story of a young boy and his stepfather who use a "lucky" refurbished cabin cruiser and an ingenious underwater dive plane to search for lost valuables outside Tampa Bay. More info can be found on the Amazon author page here https://www.amazon.com/stores/Steve-Delgado/author/B087QT6Z99
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References
Hambling, David. “SEALs vs. Sharks 2: Darts!” WIRED, June 7, 2007, https://www.wired.com/2007/06/seals-v-sharks-1/
“1960's Farallon Shark Dart Developed for Navy Seals for Nasa Splashdown Recovery,” Worthpoint, publish date unknown. https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1960s-farallon-shark-dart-developed-2007914512
Delgado, Steve. The Topaz Beetle, Oct. 4, 2022, Amazon books, https://www.amazon.com/Topaz-Beetle-Steve-Delgado/dp/B0BGNF1M7N