Jaws at 50: How a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution marine specialist made a pivotal scene come to life

Woods Hole, Mass. (June 4, 2025) – In the summer of 1974, Martha’s Vineyard, and by extension, the Cape Cod towns that serviced the island, were abuzz with Hollywood fever. The movie Jaws was being filmed, which went on to become the first summer blockbuster when it was released a year later in 1975.  Many of the extras seen in the film were locals, so perhaps it made sense that when the film’s producers (including a young Steven Spielberg) needed expertise for its problem-plagued mechanical star – Bruce the shark – the team turned to the experts at nearby Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

As the world’s leading ocean science research organization, WHOI was already – more or less – a part of the film. The shark expert Matt Hooper, played by Richard Dreyfuss, was from the “Oceanographic”, which many took to imply Woods Hole Oceanographic. But as the crew neared the end of the production, it was a real WHOI marine specialist who helped save the day.

One of the most iconic scenes in the film comes at the end, when - spoiler alert - the shark is blown up and Roy Schneider and Richard Dreyfuss make it safely back to land. Producers reached out to WHOI looking for help with the logistics of this scene, and found marine superintendent Richard “Dick” Edwards.  He had a boat for the quick ride over to the island, but more importantly, a blasting permit and expertise in explosives from serving in World War II.

The night before the big blast, Edwards loaded sticks of dynamite onto his 63-foot Coast Guard buoy tender, the John A. Edwards, tied up in Great Harbor, Woods Hole, and slept onboard. In the morning, he picked up his wife, Anne, who planned to assist him on the movie set, and they steamed over to the Vineyard.

When they got to the island, they met Spielberg and the stunt person who’d be helping on the explosion scene. The first step was to carefully place a few sticks of dynamite inside the jaws of the shark. Edwards wanted to position them from the inside, but he couldn’t crawl in through the mouth opening—too many massive teeth in the way. So, he entered the 25-foot mechanical great white through a “back door,” and wriggled his way through, not an easy feat as the shark’s steel-framed body was lined with shards of fiberglass.  “It was so rough inside, I couldn’t put my hand down,” Edwards recalled in an oral history given to WHOI Archives. “I got a pair of gloves and knee pads,” he recalled, “and then wrapped towels around my knees to protect them.”

His wife handed him raw steaks and hamburgers through the shark’s mouth, which he stuffed into the rear of the shark. Since Jaws was filmed long before modern special effects, it was a clever, albeit crude way to achieve the kind of realistic, guts-galore effect the production team was envisioning.

His wife wasn’t the only Edwards family member working on the film.  Their son Sean Riley, who was 12 at the time, had been hired as an extra for the beach and water scenes, and got paid $25 a day for his service. “I got to wear the same clothes every day and got paid for going to the beach all summer,” Riley recalled.

Back on the dock, Edwards decided to carry the sticks of dynamite with his own teeth as he crawled towards the nose of the shark. Along the way, he got a firsthand look at the engineering work that brought Jaws to life: hydraulics that moved its jaws up and down, and pneumatic controls that worked its body movements. When he reached the mouth area, he planted the dynamite inside the jaws of the mechanical beast. Later, once the cameras were rolling and the detonation went off in sync with actor Roy Schneider’s miraculous rifle shot, the Vineyard sky rained fake shark guts. The dramatic scene left many moviegoers cheering, yet terrified to step into the ocean.

Years later, Jaws author Peter Benchley would lament how the movie villainized sharks. Most scientists today are uncomfortable with the way the movie portrayed the shark, and WHOI shark researchers point to their critical role as an apex predator in the ocean, and the importance of shark conservation for the health of the ocean. “We know now that sharks are an incredibly important part of our ocean ecosystem, facing far more challenges from human impacts than we do from them,” said Camrin Braun, assistant scientist and ocean ecologist at WHOI.

According to Edward’s daughter, Arden Edwards, working on the Jaws set had been an “interesting” experience for her dad, but that he never considered a professional highlight. Both she and her brother Sean said that their father’s proudest career achievements were his naval service, during which he led a minesweeping operation that destroyed more than 350 mines in Korean harbors, and his subsequent work at WHOI, where he applied his knowledge of explosives to seismic studies and handled the day-to-day logistics of WHOI’s research fleet between 1960 and 1988.

“My father was a very serious man, so doing something like this was very different for him,” Arden said.

Perhaps it wasn’t all in a usual day’s work, but as the world celebrates the film’s 50^th anniversary this summer, we can thank the ingenuity of a WHOI marine specialist for its dramatic ending.

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About Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, non-profit organization on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930, its primary mission is to understand the ocean and its interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate an understanding of the ocean’s role in the changing global environment. Top scientists, engineers, and students collaborate on more than 800 concurrent projects worldwide—both above and below the waves—pushing the boundaries of knowledge and possibility.