Shark Week: Deadly Shark Attacks Of Summer Of 1916 On Jersey Coast Were An 'Anomaly'

Editor’s note: This story first ran back in 2011. In celebration of Shark Week on the Discovery Chanel, we’re running some of our New Jersey coverage of sharks.

by Patricia A. Miller

When the late Peter Benchley saw the hysteria his classic book “Jaws” created, he was appalled, the executive director of the Princeton-based Shark Research Institute said.

“He said ‘Don’t they realize they bought it in the fiction aisle?’ “ recalled Marie Levine, who knew Benchley.

“Peter Benchley was one of our strongest supporters,” she said. “He just wanted a good story.”

Great white sharks, like the fictional shark in “Jaws,” can frequent waters off the New Jersey coast. And although they are the largest predators in the world, human beings are not their first food choice, she said.

“They are sensitive, intelligent animals,” she said. “They are curious. Every creature has a menu imprint on its brain of what’s edible and what’s not. Humans are not part of a shark’s menu. White sharks have been demonized. It kind of goes back to Jaws. That was a mythical white shark.”

If a shark encounters a human, it may bite out of curiosity or fear, not hunger, Levine said.

“Sharks cannot swim backward, so if they encounter a surfboard or surfer, they may bite out of fear,” she said. “That animal is scared. It might nip something, but it’s out of fear. It’s not aggression.”

Great white sharks made the news last weekend, when Berkeley Patch was the first to report that the U.S. Coast Guard had confirmed a about 200 feet offshore from Island Beach State Park.

But back in the torrid summer of 1916, five swimmers were attacked and four died by what some believed to be a great white.

Twenty-five-year-old Charles Vansant was the first to die, on July 1. The young Philadelphian went for a late-afternoon dip in the waves off Beach Haven. He was attacked in chest-deep water, according to Richard G. Fernicola’s “12 Days of Terror.”

Charles Bruder, 28, a bell captain at the Essex & Sussex Hotel in Spring Lake, was next, on July 6. Whatever attacked him tore the lower half of his legs off, the book states.

On July 12, young Lester Stillwell headed toward Matawan Creek with buddies to escape the blistering heat. He was pulled below the surface by a shark with a white underbelly. Stanley Fisher, a local businessman dove into the muddy creek waters to retrieve the boy’s body. Fisher was attacked as he stood in waist-deep water, Fernicola wrote.

The only one to survive the attacks was Joseph Dunn, who was swimming about a half-mile away from the area where Stilwell and Fisher were attacked, the book states.

The 1916 shark attacks were an anomaly, Levine said.

“A white shark is not going to stay around very long” she said.

There were far more sharks throughout the world at the time of the 1916 attacks. Today, the great white shark population around the world has been decimated, primarily by overfishing, Levine said.

“The white shark is protected in U.S. waters,” she said. “Nobody can kill one.”

Great whites are an endangered species. Levine estimates there are only 3,500 worldwide and most are juveniles. That’s not good news for the continuation of the species, since many juveniles never survive until adulthood, she said.

“We have not had the shark population we should have in a long time,” Levine said. “The white shark population has plummeted worldwide. They really are on the edge of extinction, which does not bode well for the ocean. We should have a healthy population of sharks off New Jersey.”