This past weekend saw the opening of The Meg, a science fiction/action thriller co-produced by U.S. and Chinese movie studios about the pre-historic Megalodon shark. Based on the book Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Alten, this film is about a team of scientists that tussle with two Megalodons that, instead of being extinct for 2.6 million years, have been hiding in the depths of the world’s oceans in the Marians Trench. Measured by scientists to be nearly 7 miles deep, but fictionally portrayed to have a false bottom in The Meg, you may remember Titanic director James Cameron’s voyage to its depths via the Deepsea Challenger.
Given that Discovery Channel produced a false Megalodon documentary that seeded doubt about Megalodon’s extinction amongst its viewers and author Alten has taken every opportunity to espouse his non-expert beliefs that the Megalodon may still exist, fears about this latest take on Megalodon re-popularizing conspiracy theories about undiscovered Megalodon populations as well as other falsehoods about the extinct predator are well-founded.
For example, our knowledge of Megalodon’s existence comes from the fossil record, which reveals teeth designed for hunting dolphins and whales. These teeth occur in the fossil record between 15 million and 2.6 million years ago. Because sharks shed their teeth throughout their lifetimes and leave bite marks on escaped prey, it would be easy for us to detect the presence of an enormous whale-hunting shark even if the shark itself eluded us.
Additionally, while the movie suggests the Megalodon could be up to 90 feet long and that their particular foe was 75-feet long, shark paleobiologists have used fossil teeth to estimate Megalodon’s size between 50 and 60 feet. Additionally, the Marianas Trench, where Megalodons are purported to still exist, could not possibly support a shark of Megalodon’s size. These fossils are found along shallow continental shelves at 50-200 feet below the ocean’s surface, where waters were much warmer than they are in the Marianas Trench and where larger prey are far more plentiful than in the deep ocean.
The movie also states that Megalodon is capable of biting a whale in half and destroying an “unbreakable” dive cage. However, experts say that evidence in the fossil record suggests that the movie’s claims are exaggerated. However, with jaws that would have been six feet across, Megalodon could easily have swallowed a human being, though not at the voracious rate portrayed in the movie. Calculations suggest that a 105,000 pound Megalodon (for comparison, the largest mammal on Earth, the Blue Whale, weighs ~300,000 pounds) would only need to consume one human per day to survive.
But, there is a moment in the film when a Megalodon attempts to bite through the glass window of the underwater research station, Mana One, that Statham and his team occupy. Given the shark’s sharp teeth and the contact area required for breaking through highly durable glass, it is maybe possible that the shark could damage the exterior glass without successfully shattering the entire window.
While the horrific nature of the movie comes from our societal fear of sharks (jump-started by Jaws, which The Meg has been accused of ripping off), this reputation is unfair to sharks. There are less than 100 shark bite events around the globe each year, few of which are serious or fatal. In 1996, you were 200 times more likely to be injured by an air freshener and 846 times more likely to be hurt by a bucket than you were to be attacked by a shark. And, where sharks kill approximately 5 humans per year, humans kill ~10 million sharks per year. Some estimates suggest that up to 100 million sharks are removed from the ocean by fisheries each year.
Sharks, in fact, provide important services that benefit us. For example, they patrol seagrass meadows that sea turtles and manatees would graze on if it wasn’t for their fear of being eaten by tiger sharks. With sharks present, these important nursery habitats allow young fish to grow and survive. Additionally, the wonder and fascination that sharks inspire the world over create eco-tourism opportunities where these sharks are protected. Even if their predatory nature and the legacy of Jaws incites fear in us, we must recognize that these creatures are under threat and in need of protection. And, as apex predators, they comprise a unique niche that human intervention alone cannot fulfill.
