August 10, 2007
He’s Not Going to Need a Bigger Boat This Time
BY: suzannah
Fisherman Frank Mundus, 81, once caught a 3,427-pound great white shark using only a rod and reel, but he’s better known as the alleged real-life inspiration behind the character of Captain Quint, the obsessive shark hunter in “Jaws.”
Now it looks like he’s going to be the subject of his very own reality TV show, according to The New York Times. If it’s anything like Deadliest Catch, it will romanticize the image of the lonely fisherman earning his meal – nevermind that most fishing is now undertaken on an industrial scale, and most of the sharks Mundus lands these days are sexually immature, like the four-foot brown shark he uses for chum in the Times story.
Mundus has never proven he was the actual prototype for Captain Quint, but he could take a page out of “Jaws” author Peter Benchley’s book. After the movie spawned a generation of shark-haters, Benchley devoted the rest of his life to shark conservation.