cultural repercussions, as well. Similar to the way the pivotal scene in 1960's Psycho made showers a new source of anxiety, Jaws led many viewers to fear going into the ocean. Reduced beach attendance in 1975 was attributed to it, as well as more reported shark sightings. It is still seen as responsible for perpetuating negative stereotypes about sharks and their behavior, and for producing the so-called "Jaws effect", which allegedly inspired "legions of fishermen [who] piled into boats and killed thousands of the ocean predators in shark-fishing tournaments." Benchley stated that he would not have written the original novel had he known what sharks are really like in the wild. Spielberg later echoed this sentiment, stating that he regretted "the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film".<ref>{{cite web |first=Abbey |last=White |title=Steven Spielberg Says He "Truly" Regrets 'Jaws Influence on the "Decimation of the Shark Population" |date=December 18, 2022|publisher=The Hollywood Reporter |url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/jaws-steven-spielberg-regrets-decimation-sharks-1235284344/ |access-date=December 20, 2022}}</ref> Conservation groups have bemoaned the fact that the film has made it considerably harder to convince the public that sharks should be protected.Jaws set the template for many subsequent horror films, to the extent that the script for Ridley Scott's 1979 science fiction film Alien was pitched to studio executives as "Jaws in space". Many films based on man-eating animals, usually aquatic, were released through the 1970s and 1980s, such as Orca, Grizzly, Mako: The Jaws of Death, Barracuda, Alligator, Day of the Animals, Tintorera, and Eaten Alive. Spielberg declared Piranha, directed by Joe Dante and written by John Sayles, "the best of the Jaws ripoffs". Among the various foreign mockbusters based on Jaws, three came from Italy: Great White, which inspired a plagiarism lawsuit by Universal and was even marketed in some countries as a part of the Jaws franchise; Monster Shark, featured in Mystery Science Theater 3000 under the title Devil Fish; and Deep Blood, which blends in a supernatural element. The 2009 Japanese horror film Psycho Shark was released in the United States as Jaws in Japan. Richard Dreyfuss made a cameo appearance in the 2010 film Piranha 3D, a loose remake of the 1978 film. Dreyfuss plays Matt Boyd, a fisherman who is the first victim of the title creatures. Dreyfuss later stated that his character was a parody and a near-reincarnation of Matt Hooper, his character in Jaws. During his appearance, Dreyfuss's character listens to