Inside NJ.com’s epic shark tale: Blood, panic and Jersey’s ‘Jaws’ legacy

Spielberg’s thriller “Jaws” came out in 1975. I couldn’t believe it when I read that in Adam Clark’s epic shark tale.

Before moving to New Jersey, I lived near the beach in Southern California, where visits to Universal Studios were a family must. As a kid, I thought sharks were only a California thing. It was always a thrill to get jump-scared by the mechanical great white flashing its teeth at the Amity Island set.

I hadn’t paid much attention to the film’s origins. Through NJ Advance Media’s months-long report, I learned the J in “Jaws” stood for Jersey. A half-century before Spielberg’s movie, a shark panic swept through New Jersey and across the country.

Clark’s odyssey, “The Shark State,” began with a vivid memory his editor Jeff Roberts shared during a story-ideas session: a dead shark and a blood-splattered shirt.

“When I was a kid, my parents took us down the Shore to Seaside Heights. My younger brother Tim found a dead baby sand tiger shark,” Roberts recalls on a video call, holding his hands about 18 inches apart. “It was about that big, and he carried him around all day. I remembered so clearly, he had on a Mickey Mouse Disney World shirt — covered in the shark’s blood.”

That was 1985. Decades later, with rising shark sightings along the Shore and the 50th anniversary of “Jaws,” Roberts thought: “It just seemed like the right story.”

Little did he know assigning Clark would lead to another unforgettable moment — a professional shark angler, wearing a rock band T-shirt, soaked in blood from a shark bite. As Clark wrote:

I’ll witness a provoked shark attack. I’ll hear the panicked cry. I’ll see the gushing blood. I’ll come face to face with a terrified 7-foot shark, a legend that never wanted to be seen.

Adam Clark, 37, an award-winning investigative reporter, is known for only-in-New Jersey long-form stories like “The Oral History of Wawa” and “The Rise and Fall of the Jersey Seagull.” He joined our newsroom in 2014.

His seven-chapter, 7,000-word saga frames a century-old shark panic against the reemergence of this misunderstood beast.

It features stunning images and videos by photographer Andy Mills and videographer Andre Malok. Don’t miss Malok’s adrenaline-drenched video of Mills, a seasoned lifeguard and EMT, applying a tourniquet on the veteran shark fisherman who was bit during an outing Clark was reporting. NJ.com’s immersive multimedia presentation also includes interactive maps, fun facts and quizzes. Click here to check it out.

I chatted with Clark to get a behind-the-scenes look at how his investigation came together. This interview was edited for clarity.

What did you know about sharks before you got into this project?

Clark: I had been going to the Jersey Shore almost my whole life. I had never seen a shark, never given much of a second thought to the fact that there are sharks out there, not that far away from us.

And so what kind of research did you do before you made your first phone call?

Clark: I got a couple shark books from the library. I read in our news archives about sharks and on newspapers.com back to 1916, the original reporting on the shark attacks in New Jersey — and I watched “Jaws” from start to finish. I could immediately see why it has held such a special place in our culture for so long.

You really underlined the notion why that’s misguided. One of my favorite lines: “I know I’m more likely to die from a mosquito bite than a shark bite.” Tell us about that.

Clark: I knew from the beginning that the story was not just about sharks, as much as it was about our relationship with sharks — the narrative we’ve created and how we’ve reacted. And then there is the way experts talk about sharks: basically harmless fish that almost never bother you.

And that is true. Sharks are completely harmless until that fateful moment when they’re not. The story had to really find that intersection of these two realities.

That leads into what were your surprises? Was there an aha moment for you in your reporting?

Clark: The biggest surprise for me was that New Jersey, as this tiny little state in the North Atlantic, actually has this special place in shark history and in shark culture. With the 1916 attacks, that changed the way sharks are perceived and our understanding of what’s possible.

And then you have the 1960 shark attack in New Jersey, which isn’t discussed that often, but actually leads to some of the most important shark research of the last 100 years. At the same time, we have “Jaws.” Peter Benchley writing “Jaws” right here in Pennington, New Jersey. We have Frank Mundus, who is the shark fisherman who helps inspire “Jaws.” He’s a Jersey native. We have actors in “Jaws.” Roy Scheider is a Rutgers guy born in New Jersey.

New Jersey is really this great American shark state. And I had no idea.

Let’s talk about Bill Gordon and his frightful moment. And Andy Mills, just amazing. I imagine you didn’t think you would see blood in this story, human blood, at least. What were your impressions of that?

Clark: We knew from the beginning that one of our best chances to see a shark in the wild was through fishing. As Gabe Farina says, that encounter between man and beast and someone pulling a shark out of the water was our best chance — to capture the intersection of man and shark, the meeting of these two forces.

The first time we went shark fishing, we were out there for nine hours — didn’t catch anything.

On that night, when we went out in Cape May, several hours had passed. They hadn’t caught anything.

Then, they get the bite on the line, and, you know, you can see everyone comes to life. The adrenaline is pumping. They’re excited. We’re excited to finally get a shark on video.

Right before Bill gets bit, one of the members of the team is basically saying to me the number one most important thing is for everyone to be careful. Making sure that nobody gets hurt. So, when it happens, it was just completely stunning. Everyone was stunned.

Bill hobbles out of the water, and in that moment, you don’t realize immediately how bad it is. Fortunately, Andy Mills was there, and as soon as he saw that wound, he just went into lifeguard mode. Your instinct is to forget the story and make sure he’s OK.

But Andy runs over to me, he says, “Here, hold my camera.” I take it, and our videographer, Andre says to Andy, “What do you need from me?” And Andy just looks at him and says, “Keep filming.”

That is the trigger for me. I’m not only watching Andy take care of Bill, I then remember the shark is still on the line. I’m trying to watch both of these scenes play out: making sure that Bill is OK, while at the same time seeing the rest of the crew tag the shark, which is what we came to see.

I can’t say enough about Andy and the way that he handled that. He really was heroic in that moment.

Research. Reporting. Nine hours fishing. A few hours in that day. How many months were you in by then? How long before it was done?

Clark: About five months in, with another month to finish editing.

When I realized Bill was going to be OK, I knew this was going to be an incredible story. One of the things that was interesting was Bill’s reaction to getting bit. He was stunned, and then within a couple minutes, he was completely calm. A lot of people, if you got bit by a shark, would be freaking out.

Somehow, he managed to calm himself down, relax his breathing. And then, he tells everyone else to tell the crew to go take care of the shark.

To read Monster sharks have returned to the Jersey Shore. Is it a nightmare or a new golden age?, click here.