Annual Shark Sightings Hard to Swallow

After the movie “Psycho” opened, a man sent director Alfred Hitchcock a pleading note.

“What should I do? My daughter is so frightened by the shower scene that she refuses to bathe,” the concerned father is said to have written.

“Perhaps you should have her sent out for dry-cleaning,” Hitchcock is said to have replied.

To my knowledge, Steven Spielberg has never come up with as pithy a response to the question he surely has been asked for each of the 24 summers since the release of “Jaws”:

“My daughter (son) (wife) (self) (extended family) (neighborhood) (greater metropolitan area) (cultural grouping) is frightened to death of taking a dip. With our hands on our hips, we just dig our toes into the mud until some joker hums ‘Da-duh, da-duh, da-duh ... ‘ and then everyone runs back to the umbrella. What should I do?”

Steven, phone home: We on the Ventura County coast can really, really use an answer.

Once again, they’ve spotted great white sharks in the Santa Barbara Channel. There’s a sighting or two every summer, it seems. The great whites usually hang around in the chillier waters to the north, but now and then, they like to visit the seals that thrive in the Channel Islands. It’s their equivalent of going out for sushi.

Along the way, they invariably encounter homo videocamus. A few summers ago, a great white shark repeatedly rammed a boatload of camera-toting insurance agents on an outing in the Santa Barbara Channel, scaring the actuarial daylights out of them.

So far this summer, there has been no great-white encounter quite that threatening. The big sharks have been seen only doing what they do best--circling innard of sea lion and carcass of whale, and posing horrifically for fishermen.

Even so, this upsets people. Around my house, we like to think of a trip to the beach as an activity that does not ultimately require hundreds of stitches and several transfusions.

A few soothing words from Spielberg could help us regain that innocent view: “It was only a movie, kids. We made it all up. The great white shark is more scared of you than you are of it. Relax.”

But, no! From Spielberg there has been only silence on the issue, with the brutal words of Quint, the grizzled “Jaws” shark hunter, tumbling in to fill the vacuum.

“Bad fish! Not like goin’ down to the pond and chasing bluegills and tommycods. This shark, swallow you whole. No shakin’, no tenderizin’, down you go.”

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I must point out: Quint’s swallow-you-whole assertion does not reflect the latest in shark research.

Scientists in Northern California theorize that the great white shark is not “a mindless eating machine,” as claimed in the preview for “Jaws,” but a kind of misunderstood gourmet.

The shark does not reflexively set out to consume the human being who is unfortunate enough to be swimming in the wrong place, according to the June issue of Discover magazine. Instead, it shuts its mighty jaws just enough for a taste--and it much prefers the taste of seal and whale to the taste of human.

This puts a different spin on the thoughts of the great ichthyological (look it up; do you good!) lyricist Kurt Weill, who observed: “The shark bites with his teeth, dear--and he shows them pearly white.”

The line should read: “The shark bites with his teeth, dear--and he gags on anything without blubber or barnacles.”

At autopsies, the stomachs of great white sharks have been found to contain fish of all kinds, whole sheep and, once, a cuckoo clock. It is not known whether in the last case, researchers also found a box of Swiss chocolates and a first-edition of “Heidi.” At any rate, humans seldom are consumed.

I suppose we should be elated, but the question lingers: If we’re happy enough to dine on shark, why then do they turn up their massive snouts at dining on us? Are we not tasty? Are we not nutritious?

So what are we--chopped liver?

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But if they want to refrain, fine. I’m not about to argue. The ocean is scary enough without convincing sharks that we really taste like chicken, so eat, eat.

Even if great whites aren’t genetically programmed to kill, anything with a fin should be viewed with caution.

Dolphins have fins. As a sometime kayaker, I have been approached by these playful and marvelously intelligent mammals. In these situations, I paddle as fast as I can for shore.

Grizzled old kayakers say you can tell a dolphin because its fin curls over a bit, giving it the appearance of a jester’s cap. But even if you know that the thing beneath the water--da-duh, da-duh, da-duh--is a dolphin, do you really want to play with a smart 300-pound fish that knows you don’t always check the label to see if your tuna is dolphin-free?

These days, I don’t paddle much in the ocean--just the harbors, where the biggest dangers are sodden sailors trying to maneuver into their slips.

It brings to mind the final lines of “Jaws,” an exchange between Brody, the police chief, and Hooper, the shark expert.

Brody: I used to hate the water.

Hooper: I can’t imagine why.

Steve Chawkins is a Times staff writer. His e-mail address is steve.chawkins@latimes.com.