For decades, the standard response to sharks was simple: keep them away or kill them.

The release of Jaws in 1975 did not create our fear of sharks, but it helped cement the animal as a cultural shorthand for danger at the same time commercial fishing was putting enormous pressure on shark populations.

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, something was changing in destinations where divers were willing to pay to see the animals people had traditionally tried to avoid.

The calculation was remarkably simple.

A dead shark could be sold once.

A living shark could bring paying tourists back again and again.

What changed was not the shark.

It was the math.

That calculation eventually became a global business model. A landmark 2013 global study published in Oryx estimated that shark ecotourism generated over $314 million annually and supported around 10,000 jobs worldwide.

The numbers behind specific destinations were even more striking. A 2011 study led by the Australian Institute of Marine Science found that a single grey reef shark in Palau was worth roughly $179,000 a year to the local dive economy or nearly $1.9 million across its lifetime compared to about $108 if caught and sold at a fish market once.

In the Bahamas, government figures have shown that shark diving contributes over $114 million annually to the national economy, driving the vast majority of the country's dive sector.

To make sure tourists actually see what they paid for, many operators rely on regular feeding. In Oslob, in the Philippines, local guides drop food into shallow water every morning, keeping wild whale sharks lingering near the surface like livestock waiting for breakfast.