Jaws is 40.

Yes, that's right - it really has been almost 40 years since we were all too scared to go back in the water after watching a gigantic great white shark menace the small island community of Amity, leading a police chief, a marine scientist and grizzled fisherman to set out to stop it.

Released in 1975, Jaws was a summer blockbuster, written by Peter Benchley and directed by Steven Spielberg, that gave us all nightmares and changed the way we saw sharks, but are sharks really a threat to us on the South Coast of England, or are the waters too cold?

Here's 40 shark facts to celebrate the release of the movie, and help you make up your own mind....

1. The great white shark is the most famous but, as of April 2015, 510 species of shark have been identified.

2. Sharks' hearing is extremely sensitive, with some hearing sounds more than 700 feet away.

3. Unlike other species of shark, the great white is warm-blooded, although it does not keep a constant body temperature and needs to eat a lot of meat in order to be able to regulate its temperature.

4. More than 30 species of shark are found in Britain’s coastal waters. The largest being the 25-foot-long basking shark, which visits in summer months.

5. Although sharks inhabit our waters, you're unlikely to encounter them on a trip to the beach as many shark species are rare and any encounter should be seen as a privilege.

6. Shark teeth are lined with nerve endings that can sense the calorie-rich blubber of a seal as opposed to the bone and muscle filling most humans.

7. All sharks have many rows of teeth with new ones ready to replace old ones as they become worn. In some sharks, rows of teeth are replaced every 8-10 days.

8. Great whites are the largest predatory fish on Earth - they swim at 15 mph, weigh 5,000lbs and grow to a typical length of 15ft.

9. Pygmy sharks are among the smallest in the world, measuring an average of 8" or 20cm in length.

10. The whale shark can grow up to 40ft long, but they are not predatory.

11. Scientists think that ancestors of sharks lived more than 400 million years ago - about 200 million years before dinosaurs.

12. A fossil bed discovered in Europe suggests that the waters off of France and the U.K. teemed with sharks 100-72 million years ago.

13. When battling orca whales, great whites don’t always win - it’s an ongoing fight for top of the food chain.

14. Sharks rarely pose a danger to humans, with just 72 unprovoked shark attacks being reported worldwide in 2014, according to the International Shark Attack File.

15. But humans do pose a danger to sharks - journal, Marine Policy, estimate that approximately 100 million sharks are killed by humans every year. However, they add that this is a conservative estimate, and the true number could be as high as 273 million.

16. You are more likely to be killed by a falling coconut than being killed by a shark. Roughly 150 people are killed each year by coconuts compared to around 4 by sharks. Coconuts are more dangerous than sharks!

17. A group of sharks is called a gam, herd, frenzy, school or shiver.

18. About 75 shark species are in danger of becoming extinct.

19. A shark's tooth-shaped scales, called denticles, allow it to move swiftly through the water without collecting barnacles and algae deposits.

20. The liver, not the stomach, is the largest organ in a sharks body.

21. Swimming in cold water boosts the odds of surviving a shark attack. Cold water drops your body temperature, which will slow your blood loss.

22. Many people consider sharks to be the world's deadliest animal, but you are more likely to be killed by wasps, bees, or dogs.

23. All sharks are carnivorous.

24. Some sharks produce live young while others lay special egg-cases on the sea bed.

25. The mako shark is the world's fastest shark and has also been found in U.K. waters.

26. Sharks do not have a single bone in their bodies, instead they are made up of cartilage.

27. Sharks keep populations of smaller fish in check and without them entire ecosystems are disrupted.

28. While more likely to die from drowning, surfers can succumb to shark attacks because their boards resemble seals to a great white.

29. You'd need much more than a "bigger boat" to track down a shark responsible for an attack, they can travel hundreds of miles in a day.

30. Tiger sharks, great white sharks and bull sharks are behind most shark attacks on humans. These species live almost everywhere and are powerful enough to inflict a fatal bite

31.More than eighty percent of people who are bitten by sharks live to tell the tale.

32. Sharks can be found in all of Earth’s oceans.

33. If a shark was put into a large swimming pool, it would be able to smell a single drop of blood in the water.

34. The average shark lives to be 25 years old, but some can get as old as 100!

35. Men account for about 90 percent of shark attack victims.

36. Sharks don't like eating humans as we are not fat enough and they prefer blubber.

37. Many victims of shark attacks find they are bitten and then released when the shark realises its mistake.

38. When it’s almost time to give birth, a female shark will lose her appetite to ensure she won’t eat her pups.

39. Pups are on their own from the moment they are born, they are excellent swimmers and able to find food and fend for themselves.

40. Although heavily fictionalised, the film Jaws was based on a real incident in 1916, in which four people were killed by a shark off the New Jersey coastline.