When the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute (BUEI) celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the making of ?The Deep? with a gala fund-raiser to launch its $5 million Education Endowment Campaign on Saturday evening, it will be with celebrated author and marine conservationist Peter Benchley among the star-studded guest list. Mr. Benchley wrote both ?Jaws? and ?The Deep?. His close association with BUEI goes back to its initial planning stages, and he has served on its international advisory board from inception. His first-hand experiences and invaluable knowledge of sharks led Mr. Benchley to recognise the threat this endangered species faces, and he now lectures on marine conservation and saving sharks. He is also involved in making ?World of Water? marine conservation films, which are screened in museums and schools around the world. BUEI holds Mr. Benchley in the highest esteem, and he has been an asset in helping to develop its exhibits and education programmes. His knowledge of the marine environment is invaluable and enables the facility to provide visitors with the latest information. In this interview, the author and marine conservationist discusses his work, his book, and his association with BUEI with Lifestyle?s Nancy Acton.

@EDITRULE:Q. How did your interest in marine conservation come about?

A. At the time ?Jaws? was published, the world knew very little about sharks and less still about the ocean. The seas seemed to be infinite and invulnerable to everything man could throw at them.

I had had the good fortune to meet Teddy Tucker for a story in the National Geographic magazine about Bermuda?s history as reflected in the shipwrecks around it, and during the six weeks I was on the Island for research Teddy sparked an interest in me that had, in fact, been there since childhood; I grew up on Nantucket, the little island off the coast of Massachusetts, and I had spent my youth in and on the ocean.

After the book came out, however, and especially after the movie was released, I was given dozens of opportunities to do television and magazine stories about diving and the sea, especially about demystifying marine animals. Gradually, as I learned more about the oceans and the creatures in them, the concept of conservation become more and more important. The damage man has done to the oceans in the last thirty years has been catastrophic.

Those thirty years have been a superb education for me, thanks largely to Teddy, with whom I?ve gone on countless adventures and from whom I?ve learned an incalculable amount.Q. What is your connection with National Geographic magazine?

A. I have no formal connection with National Geographic. I?ve always been a freelancer, though just before ?Jaws? was published, I did compose a letter begging for a job at the magazine.

At the time, I had a wife, two children and $300 in the bank. The letter was never sent. It was intercepted by the pre-publication whoop-de-doo over ?Jaws?.

Since 1970, I?ve done more than a dozen stories for the magazine ? about everywhere from South Island New Zealand to the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda and every from giant manta rays to great white sharks. I?ve done a television special for the TV division and a couple of articles for National Geographic Traveller, one of which won the 2003 Lowell Thomas Gold Award for Adventure-Travel Writing. (He said modestly.)Q. The theme of this fund raiser is ?The Deep?, the book you wrote and consequently filmed in Bermuda some 27 years ago. I now understand you are doing films about the marine environment, so why or how did you make the transition?

A. I think I answered this question in #1, but I?ll go further. The more TV and magazine work I did, the more I learned about the ocean, the more damage I saw being done by overfishing, mismanagement and ignorant greed, the more conservation became most important issue.

A. Teddy Tucker told me the story of the , which sank in 1943, and the story of the shipwrecks that lie beneath her. The coincidence was too tempting to pass up, and the plot began to form itself in my mind.

A. BUEI can have a major impact on preserving the marine environment, primarily by education.

For example, the short films Greg Stone and I have done are given away free to aquariums around the world, and we guess that each one is seen by more than 15 million people every year. The wonderful camps and classes that Crystal Schultz runs have become a model for marine education elsewhere. Our best hope is to reach the next generation, today?s children, and teach them that they must become stewards of the environment. And they are.A. The word ?films? needs to be qualified. Television films? No. The medium is too chopped up, too diverse. There?s so much junk on the air that it?s hard to know who?s watching what. Feature films? Well, perhaps, though there are so many more forms of entertainment now than there were 25 years ago that single medium has the impact it once had.

A. Giant squid were the subject of my 1991 novel, ?Beast?. Teddy Tucker and I have been looking for giant squid around Bermuda since 1979 and have never seen one alive ? nobody has ? though we believe we?ve encountered them a couple of times. Giant squid are, to me, the ?Last Dragons?, some of the few remaining uncaught, unknown and unphotographed marine animals that we know of. I think they?re wonderful. And the brooches are gorgeous!

A. Percy has never left the third-story landing in our house in Princeton, N.J., since he moved there in 1977 after retiring from films. He is happy to be in Bermuda (or so he says in his e-mails), though he?s having trouble adjusting to the food. Someone fed him a full Bermuda breakfast on his first day there, and he was one unhappy critter. He?s accustomed to boned fillets of Dover sole, lightly saut?ed in butter and served with a chilled Pouilly-Fum?.

A. I dove in the tank several times. It was entirely realistic, and, as you know, it was home to everything from fish to eels to a good-sized shark that scared the wee out of the art director when it awoke from a slumber and began to mosey about.

A. ?Shark Trouble?, a non-fiction book about my experiences in the ocean and the lessons I have learned, was published in hardback in 2002 and in paperback in 2003, and this year new editions for different age groups are being prepared. I have nothing new in the pipeline at the moment.

Mr. Benchley?s books ?Shark Trouble?, ?Ocean Planet? and ?Jaws? are sold at the BUEI gift shop, along with the DVD of ?The Deep?.