[3] Once Johnson's term ended in 1969, the Benchleys relocated out of Washington and lived in various houses, including one in Stonington, Connecticut where son Clayton was born in 1969.

During this period, when Benchley would later declare he was "making one final attempt to stay alive as a writer", his literary agent arranged meetings with publishers.

At these meetings, Benchley would frequently pitch two ideas: a non-fiction book about pirates, and a novel depicting a man-eating shark terrorizing a community.

This idea had been developed by Benchley since he had read a news report of a fisherman catching a 4550-pound (2060 kg) great white shark off the coast of Long Island in 1964.

The shark novel eventually attracted Doubleday editor Thomas Congdon, who offered Benchley an advance of $1,000 resulting in the novelist submitting the first 100 pages.

Although Benchley had written the early drafts of the screenplay, Carl Gottlieb (along with the uncredited Howard Sackler and John Milius) wrote the majority of the final script for the Spielberg movie released in June, 1975.

George Lucas used a similar strategy in 1977 for Star Wars which exceeded the financial record set by Jaws, and hence the summer "blockbuster" movie practice was born.

[8] Benchley developed his second novel, The Deep, published in 1976, after a chance meeting in Bermuda with diver Teddy Tucker while writing a story for National Geographic.

[9] This gave Benchley the idea of a honeymooning couple discovering two sunken treasures on the Bermuda reefs — 17th century Spanish gold and a fortune in World War II-era morphine — and who are victimized subsequently by a drug syndicate.

[citation needed] Sea of Cortez indicated Benchley's increasing interest with ecological issues and anticipated his future role as an advocate of the importance of protecting the marine environment.

While the first half of the novel is a relatively straightforward account of a suburbanite's development of alcoholism, the second part, which is set at a New Mexico substance abuse clinic, is written as a thriller.

Among these was his book entitled Shark Trouble,[11] which illustrated how hype and news sensationalism can interfere with the public's understanding of marine ecosystems and potentially cause negative consequences as humans interact with it.

[12] It details the ways in which man seems to have become more of an aggressor in his relationship with sharks, acting from ignorance and greed as several of the species become threatened increasingly by overfishing.