Underwater footage of the sharks and other marine life were largely captured by a waterproof GoPro on a stick.
The film derived from director Ivy Meeropol's interest in Wellfleet, one of her childhood haunts. Although she didn't witness the shark attack death that sparked the story, she knew all about it at the time.
Premiered at the Provincetown International Film Festival in June 2023, followed by its debut on HBO a month later.
One of the strands of the narrative was intended to be how the presence of sharks affected the local economy as it dissuaded people from going to the beaches. What Ivy Meeropol didn't expect to factor in was the more present effects of the Covid-19 pandemic which did even more harm to the local economy.