Joe Queenan in the LA Times tries to justify his hatred of sharks, hyenas and anacondas:
Like most people in this country, I have long hated sharks, largely because of what they did to Robert Shaw in “Jaws.” For years, I thought of sharks as mindless, demonic eating machines, an attitude reinforced by the harrowing story Shaw told Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider about the 1945 Japanese torpedo attack on the U.S. cruiser Indianapolis. Although many of the 880 casualties died because of exposure or drinking saltwater, many were eaten by the tigers of the deep. So, all in all, it seemed almost unpatriotic not to hate them.
Ok, yes, but a he gets a lot more intelligent later into the article.
The propaganda at the time couldn’t believably say that the victims of the US Indianapolis were eaten by the Japanese, so they had to blame it on sharks.
I live right next door to the site of the biggest naval battle in history (Leyte Gulf) and I can swear I’ve never seen a shark here, ever.
If local fishermen ever catch them, they chop off the fins, and let them rot.