Benchley was quite young when he first became fascinated with the ocean.

His family was accustomed to spending summer vacations on Nantucket, and he became a skilled skin-diver, observing marine life directly. The relationship of humans to the sea is his main preoccupation as an author. It is surprising that he became an English major at Harvard rather than a marine biologist. His love for the ocean's creatures is not sentimental. He realizes that mankind's future is dependent on keeping the seas unpolluted and on maintaining the natural order of their inhabitants. Man himself is the worst predator on earth. The fossil record seems to indicate that he was a killer early in the course of his development.

Quint is as terrible a hunter as the great white shark, and his instincts are not much more refined.

Despite the means man has developed to control and...