JAWS - The last interview with Frank Mundus

By Nick Honachefsky

JAWS would never have happened if it wasn’t for Frank Mundus. Without too much prologue and to put it in a nutshell, the salty prodigal character of Captain Quint in the blockbuster movie JAWS and entire hoopla in 1978 was built upon shark hunter Captain Frank Mundus and his boat the Cricket II. Bar none. Steven Speilberg’s vision of a shark attacking tourists wouldn’t have had nearly the same punch unless he heard someone speak in his ear about Frank Mundus. Mundus, aMontauk angler who targeted monster sharks when shark populations were prolific, was a man among men defined by the times and the moments of the angling community, and the bigger the shark you brought to dock, the more burly, respectedangler you were. The reason, and testament, to Mundus shark prowess, and why JAWS captivated the world community outside of anglers, was the world record great white of 3,427 pounds he caught; a fiberglass replica which still hangs on the Star Island dock for tourists to come in and snap pictures and be in awe or simply to have a good post on Instagram. But there is more, much more, to the story of not only that world record white shark, but of the final days of Frank Mundus. From all knowledge, the following account is the last final interview ever in June of 2008 with Frank Mundus before he passed away threemonths later.

Frank and I became unknowing friends. As an aspiring writer for the sport fishing community, I had no reservations of contacting larger than life angling characters. Way before accessibility came forth through social media to contact individuals, celebrities, people that were “out of reach”, I found Mundus phone number where he lived in Hawaii, simply because I wanted to talk to the man. The term “legendary” gets thrown around a lot nowadays, but back then, the term legend meant something. I figured out Mundus’s phone number from old school journalistic endeavors, and dialed up Frank one drunken night at 3 AM, working on my usual deadlines, and left a simple message. “ Hey Frank, I’m a sport fishing writer and love what you’ve done and wondered what you’re doing nowadays. Sorry for calling you so late but give me a ring back.”  He did. A few days went by when I woke up I saw a message from a Hawaii number on my phone. I listened to it and it said in a gravelly voice almost as if he had a mouthful of granite pebbles, “ Hey Nick Its Frank Mundus. Yeah, Ill talk to you, tell me what you want to know. I just got off a trip and we released some sharks out there, tagged them and let em go. What do you want to know? Give me a call back, Im here.” It was a longshot.

A couple days later, I got really juiced up at like 2 AM east coast time and called Frank back and he answered the phone. “ Allo?  Who’s this?” Franks blurted out. “Its Nick Honachefsky Frank! “ Oh yeah, hey Nick! The writer right?” Yeah Frank but what the hell are you doing right now I want to know?” We then talked about a ton of fishing stuff. About stripers and East Coast fishing, and shark fishing of course, but moreso about what we are doing in our lives and how fishing is out in New Jersey and New York since he moved to Hawaii. Mundus moved from New York to Hawaii, I don’t know the year and am not going to research it for this simple piece, but he operated a pig farm nowadays and was happier than anyone could have imagined. He told me , “I love what I did back in the day to catch all those big sharks, but I am truly happy here raising pigs and just enjoying life. I get to go outside and enjoy the beauty of this world. The farm keeps me going.” We traded phone calls at all hours of the night. We had a ton of fun just talking about how it was difficult raising pigs on his end and how stripers were in the surf on my end. I wasn’t married then, so the 8 hour time zone differential didn’t mean anything to stay up late on our past-midnight night phone calls. His wife didn’t seem to care either, maybe she did I don’t know, and I just kept trying to keep him on the phone and not get bored with me, and some of our conversations lasted 2 to 3 hours. We actually became pretty good friends, talking about life’s journey and being human. It was about the 5th phone call and after a few pleasantries, when I asked him about JAWS. I prodded him to tell me the true story about JAWS, the great white he is so famous for. I got him to speak about everything and all about JAWS, the massive great whites he’d seen on that day he hooked it, the aftermath of his successes.

And this is what happened.

As told by Mundus – (paraphrased as I lost all the direct notes and quotes in Superstorm Sandy, but I remember it well so for those close to him forgive any inaccuracies)

From Mundus_ (paraphrased)

“Oh, that day. It was something Ive never seen before or after. What we did was we went out on a shark fish trip, because that’s what we did back then, to catch makos, whites, whatever sharks were around. On the way back in after a trip, I found a dead whale carcass and usually I’d fish around those because that’s where the sharks would hang around and congregate to feed. The charter I had on board didn’t want to catch any more sharks, they were hell bent on getting back to dock, but I knew this was something out of the ordinary, something special, to see so many whites on a carcass. I had never seen so many monster Great Whites in one place at one time. The guys on the boat wanted to get back in, but I wouldn’t go back. They started to chatter amongst themselves all mad at me. I had my gun at the ready and I wanted to fish.  I knew what was in front of me. So I told the charter, were gonna stay out here and catch the biggest shark ever caught in the world. I told them we are sticking here and there was a big uproar it was near mutiny. We were staying. They were talking among eachother and started getting loud with me. So I said forget it, ill bring you all back to dock or have my other buddy pick you up for those that don’t want to stay here. And that’s what I did.  I called a friend and told him to take these guys off the boat except for my mate Donnie Braddock and stayed on that whale carcass and this is what happened.”

Frank sank the anchor into the whale carcass. And then sent out chunk of whale on the hook along with other baits. Great White sharks were circling the carcass and as Mundus said “I’ve never seen so many big sharks on one whale at one time” Whites were circling the boat and the whale and one rod went off. Mundus can’t recollect how many “smaller” sharks they caught and released, but Mundus had his eye on the one, and it took a bait. After a grueling fight over hours, they landed the 3,427 pound great white shark. JAWS as we know it. But the story doesn’t end there. Mundus said out of the dozen or so great white taking chunks out of the whale, on a scale of 1 to 10 that World Record Great White was probably the 5th largest shark on the carcass. He said two of the sharks there were twice the size and all they did was launch themselves on the whale, rip a bite out, then descend back into the water to consume the chunk, then vault themselves back onto the whale to do it again and again and again. Mundus had never in all of his years, seen such a congregation of large Great Whites. After untold hours of hooking whites and breaking them off, they decided to come back in with the 3,427 pounder they kept. He left that whale knowing there were Great White pushing the 4,000, 5,000, even 6,000 pound mark. It was a once in a lifetime moment. “The sharks I saw were bigger than anything I had ever seen. There are bigger sharks out there than anybody knows about” Mundus said.

Nowadays, we all know times have changed. And for all the new schoolers with new regulations and protecting sharks, you’re right, shark fishing is generally a thing of the past. He did what was allowed at the time and regulations. Shark populations are considered endangered or at the very least, are super protected as a species in whole. In contemporary times, Frank has an onus on him, that he was a shark “killer”.  His feats, while great back in the day, were looked at nowadays as wasteful, unnecessary, disgusting, and even more to simply kill such a magnificent creature just to hang on the dock. The consensus of shark fishing and its heroism and bravado intensified in the 70s, 80s and 90’s to put the largest shark on the dock to bragging rights, in the 2000s, and up to today it is generally looked down upon. A paradigm shift has happened since those days. As Mundus was perceived as a bloodthirsty “shark killer” times have moved on, and for the right reasons. And that’s where the story picks up.

My late night conversations with Mundus were wonderful and profound, that’s the only way to describe them. I was talking to a man that a billion dollar blockbuster movie was built upon him, his entire personae, killing sharks, and wasn’t sure how to approach it or react to what he thought about any of it.  

And that’s when I asked him and really nailed it down about JAWS and shark fishing and the angling world as a whole. On one of our phone calls I breached the subject of sharks. What I heard not only surprised me, but gave me a hopeful faith of a man of such shark-catching caliber. His gravelly voice stated off saying “Hey Nick we just went out and tagged three thresher sharks today. I love seeing those fish go back into the water to live another day, to survive and hopefully carry on. Back then, that’s all we would do – catch and kill sharks and see who caught the biggest, who had the bragging rights on it. I don’t care about any of that anymore and wish I didn’t back then. I’ve done a lot to take sharks out of the water, to decline their populations, and I hope I can be forgiven. I’ve influenced a lot of people to hang sharks at the dock. I don’t like that. I am not that man anymore, in fact I am against all of that. We need to see these creatures as our own brethren, to exist with them and to take care of them. I feel regret what I did back in the day, but I don’t get myself worked up over it, it’s the way it was. If I can do one thing its to bring light on how beautiful and worthy these creatures are and that they have a lifespan like we do, once they are gone, there is no turning back. I want to devote myself to spreading the word that all sharks are so valuable and not to be caught and killed, but to be revered and precious and to preserved and to protect them. That’s why I am an advocate nowadays of tagging and researching the sharks to see what they do, where they go, how they exist, not to catch them and kill them. All I ask is that I get forgiven for the damage I’ve done to hurt shark populations and if I can spread my word to protect them, then my real job is done.”

The thing is, yes, Mundus made a living out of catching the biggest and baddest sharks out there for bragging rights. But in eternal discussions nowadays, was JAWS the movie itself the impetus that truly hurt shark populations? Did not Mundus, but JAWS cause us to fear the unknown, the deep dark underwater, underground secret that is always there, waiting to pounce, to hurt, to take what you have away? Did Mundus have an unwilling presence in doing that?

Frank and I made an appointment to meet up in Montauk in June 2008 at his catch and release shark tournament to actually meet face to face and talk a bit more. He sent me some really cool official signed “Frank Mundus” t shirts in the mail and I wore them religiously, waiting for the opportunity to meet him up in Montauk. I had a pressing obligation and couldn’t meet him up there in June but we made plans to meet again at another function a few months down the road to really dive deep into his “newfound” ethos of shark research and tagging. After his shark tagging tournament in that June, he passed away less than three months later. Our meeting was never to be had.

Now that JAWS is in its 50th anniversary, such a lexicon of the modern international media, I wanted to be able to semi-talk about Frank from my own point of view of what I knew of the man. As far as I know, nobody interviewed him professionally in the prior months to his passing and at the time I felt like I was hearing something profound, even captivating to hear the man who built his personae on being the man who caught the largest shark ever recorded, the character whom Spielberg and production companies made hundreds of millions of dollars off of, to put shark fishing and the everpresent ominous presence of sharks that dominate the airwaves every summer to beware and watch out for the “Boogeyman” in the water. In the end, Mundus was a simple pig farmer in Hawaii, far away from Montauk boisterous fishing scene, just enjoying life on a farm dealing with my late night drunk calls to him waking his wife up. He didn’t have disdain for sharks, he truly loved them. He died a man, loving, respecting and dedicating his latter years to protecting the bounty that made him who he was. His parting words to me were to the effect of “If my legacy is JAWS and all that, that’s fine, but the real story is how to protect these creatures from now on and more. That’s what I want to be remembered for”.