The Deadly Shark Attack That Rocked a Community: ‘It Was Like Jaws’

A beach and fishing community reels in the wake of a fatal shark attack that has everyone on edge. How will order be restored? You don’t have to make Jaws inferences; the new HBO documentary After the Bite does the work for you. “I’m not exaggerating, it was like Jaws,” exclaims a local fisherman of a particularly shark-infested day. We see a drive-in theater marquee that advertises a double feature of Steven Spielberg’s proto-blockbuster with one of his later spectacles, Jurassic Park. The doc makes note of its fictional forefather. Then it gets down to its real business, which goes well beyond the realm of its finned predators and into something far richer and more complex, something about an intricate community and an ecosystem in an accelerating state of flux.

Yes, there are sharks off the coast of Wellfleet, a tight-knit Cape Cod town that likes to surf and fish and swim. There are also an increasing number of seals, preserved under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, on which the sharks feed. And a decreasing number of fish, due to a rise in both those seals and in the private fishing industry. Meanwhile, rising water temperatures send all manner of seafaring beast scurrying north for cooler climates, including seals and the sharks that feed on them.   

And, of course, there are those two-legged creatures: humans. Some of them want an aggressive tact against the sharks and the seals that draw them, for the sake of both safety and commerce. (Breaking news: Seals are still impossibly cute). Some work to tag and monitor the sharks, a task made easier by giving them names. Rudolph. Joanie. Scarface. Cool Beans. Some make a living on fishing boats. Some test the seals for contagious viruses. Some just want to surf and enjoy the sunshine. “It’s easy to get caught up in the Jaws-esque angle to things,” says a Tufts University professor, “and take our eye off the big picture, which is that the health of one species really does impact all of us.” Or, as a longtime resident puts it, “Humankind must learn humility in the face of nature.”

Director Ivy Meeropol and her crew capture this swirl of interests and passions and species with an open ear and mind, meeting their subjects where they live, letting them talk, and giving them room to breathe. This is an action film, in the sense that we get to observe everyone doing what they do, on sea and land, out in the ecosystem. The closest thing to a talking head is New Yorker staffer and Cape Cod native Alec Wilkinson, who has written about these matters extensively and emerges as a sort of philosopher-poet of life on the Cape. There’s an unassuming visual poetry to the rhythms captured here, a tonal match to the natural ebb and flow of the lives depicted. The film doesn’t privilege anyone or any creature; it’s a holistic portrait of the big picture and its many small details.

This is not to diminish the tragedy of the event that sets the film’s central drama in motion. On a beautiful late summer day in 2018, 26-year-old Arthur Medici was killed by a shark. The fatal attack, the first on the Cape in 80 years, understandably put the Wellfleet community on high alert, and Meeropol was there for the contentious soul-searching and town hall meetings (again, you half-expect to hear Robert Shaw’s Captain Quint scraping his fingernails against a blackboard). Medici’s death is the catalyst for all that follows. But there’s a lot that follows. At first, you think After the Bite is about the sharks. Then you think it might be about the seals. Before long, you realize it’s about the whole thing. As a marine biologist puts it, “the ecosystem provides balance and stability, if we just give it balance and stability.” Therein lies the film’s overarching irony. As some humans complain that not enough is being done to fight the sharks, it is human negligence, largely through global warming, that makes these northern waters so appealing to sharks in the first place.

Near the end of the film, a group of conservationists encounters the massive carcass of a humpback whale far from the shore. Seagulls feast on the fat, which will give them energy to migrate. And then, on cue, a massive white shark swims up and commences to dining. It’s a majestic moment, the power of which isn’t lost on the in-person observers. This is nature red in tooth and fin, as it was long before we showed up and made everything so complicated.