Shark Attacks

[GordMay]

The International Shark Attack File: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Sharks/ISAF/ISAF.htm

The International Shark Attack File is a compilation of all known shark attacks that is administered by the the American Elasmobranch Society and the Florida Museum of Natural History.

The ISAF provides Excellent on-line Shark Attack information, including:

Stats, Trends, Analysis
~ Regional Numbers
~ Trends
~ Contributing Factors
~ Florida Shark Attacks
~ California Shark Attacks
~ White Shark Attacks
~ Shark Attacks on Divers
Relative Risk
~ More People Mean More Attacks
~ Compared to Other Risks
~ Your Odds of Being Attacked
Reducing the Risk
~ Advice to Aquatic Recreationists
~ Advice to Divers
~ Menstruation and Sharks
~ Color of Apparel and Sharks
Shark Attacks In Perspective
~ The Truth About Shark Attacks
How, Where, When Sharks Attack

See also:
Shark Research Institute: http://www.sharks.org/
and:
http://www.auscyber.net/shark/

[yona]

Although shark attacks are very rare, deep water divers and surfers may consider buying shark shield.
I saw a TV program about it (not advertisement), and it looks very impressive.
Before attacking, the shark gets eye contact with its victim, but when it reaches 3-5 meters from the victim, the shark shut its eyes and uses some electronic pulses to detect its prey. At that stage the shark shield blocks that pulse and the shark backs off.
For more details:
http://www.sharkshield.com/index.php

[GordMay]

”Sharks in the News” ~ From National Geographic
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/topsharks.html

Interesting Shark articles, Including:

Bull Shark Threat: They Swim Where We Swim
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...ullsharks.html
Bull sharks are chewing up the headlines this summer, but statistics suggest that most of us have little to fear from the marine predators...

"Jaws" at 30: Film Stoked Fear, Study of Great White Sharks
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...awssharks.html
The premiere of Jaws 30 years ago had a mixed impact on great white sharks. Publicly vilified, the predators also drew more scientific scrutiny ...

Shark Facts: Attack Stats, Record Swims, More
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...harkfacts.html
Did you know that sharks are among Earth's most ancient animals? Or that in the U.S., lightning strikes and kills more people in one year, on average, than sharks do in twenty? ...

New Shark Repellent Uses Chemical Signals
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...repellent.html
After years of searching for an effective shark repellent, researchers believe they may have finally found a chemical "signal" that will keep the marine predators at bay ...

World's Oldest Shark Fossil Found
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...arkfossil.html
Paleontologists have unearthed in Canada the world's oldest intact shark fossil—a 409-million-year-old specimen of a small, primitive species that was found with its braincase, jaws, and teeth attached in their correct anatomical position. The find answers and raises important questions about the origin of sharks ...

Shark Season: Hazard or Hype?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...rkattacks.html
It's almost summer and war-weary, economy-embattled Americans will head seaside in their millions. With so much frolicking in the surf there will be a few nips from sharks, experts warn—although bites are statistically extremely unlikely and almost never fatal. Swimming with sharks is not as dangerous as driving to the beach ...

Shark Gives "Virgin Birth" in Detroit

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...rginshark.html
A female white spotted bamboo shark at the Belle Isle Aquarium in Detroit surprised zookeepers in July by giving birth to two babies. Why the surprise? It was a virgin birth: She hadn't been near a male for six years ...

Forget Alligators, This Expert Wrestles Great White Sharks
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...rktagging.html
For the past three years, shark expert Ramón Bonfil has been fitting motion-tracking satellite tags onto great white sharks—by hand. (Includes six-image photo gallery) ...

More good reading at:

Wildlife Conservation Society: Great White Sharks
http://www.wcs.org/greatwhitesharks

Mote Marine Laboratory Center for Shark Research
http://www.mote.org/index.php?src=ge...ark%20Research

[GordMay]

Shark attacks are monumentally rare, more rare than being bitten by someone from New York [1], statistically speaking.
[Maybe that's stretching the statistical correlation, just a little ]

Shark attacks in general are going down per capita [2], even though the number of people that are in the water is going up. And that's because we know we've lost up to 70 per cent of all sharks just in the last 50 years. [3]

[1] U.S. Shark Injuries vs. Bite Injuries in NYC ➥ https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/sh...ting-injuries/

[2] Shark Attack Deaths Surged in 2020, But the Number of Attacks Declined
➥ https://www.newsweek.com/shark-attac...clined-1564236

[3] Half a century of global decline in oceanic sharks and rays
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s415...rer=www.cbc.ca

[ilenart]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Shark attacks are monumentally rare, more rare than being bitten by someone from New York

However, in certain situations the risk of a shark attack is higher. For example, in the southwest of Western Australia the chances of a surfer suffering a fatal shark bite in winter or spring are 1 in 40,000 and for divers it is 1 in 16,000. In comparison to the risk of a serious or fatal cycling accident, this represents 3 times the risk for a surfer and 7 times the risk for a diver.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_attack#Statistics

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3941575/

[GreenWave]

Darn- and here I thought Gord was going to share a recent shark encounter story with us...like first hand experience.


:-)

[nolakennedys]

I don't mind sharks. Prefer those that are much much smaller than me though! lol

[Westcliffe01]

A lot depends on where exactly you are in the water. If you try swimming off a seal colony thats on a small island a mile offshore, you are probably going to have odds close to 1:1 of an attack. If you splash around like an idiot half way from the island to the nearest beach the odds are also pretty good.


I remember that the day I bought my first serious wetsuit was the day a scuba diver was fatally bitten on the surface, right next to the dive boat. She was one of a party trying to recover an anchor that had previously fouled on a reef. She was fussing with her BC on the surface minutes after everyone else has submerged when she was hit. The attacking shark was reported to be about 5m long and the bite penetrated both hips severing the femoral arteries. She had bled out before they could get her back on the boat and went into cardiac arrest.


The dive location was a short distance offshore from a popular tourist beach and as news of the attack broke, the population responded by getting out their heaviest fishing tackle to catch the offending shark. Dozens of great whites were pulled out the water in the next few days within a mile of the attack site, none of which matched the bite marks on the victim, but the population was educated about just how many of these huge predators there were right off their bathing beach.


False Bay, east of Cape Town has its own seal colonies and as a spear fisherman you are unlikely to go on a dive without seeing at least one great white shark, which is usually the end of the outing. I mention spear fishermen specifically, because unlike a lot of other people in the ocean, spear fishermen tend to be very observant of their surroundings and aware of their position in the predator hierarchy. The other scuba divers in the first incident did not see the shark and were even unaware that the girl on the surface had been attacked. Generally scuba divers tend to be very task oriented, especially in water that does not have great clarity. The same with surfers who tend to be blissfully unaware of what is going on below them and only focused on the next set of waves.

[jpr_jpr]

Should I be concerned about sailing a laser or sunfish in an area like this? There have been a number of shark sightings on Cape Cod recently. This picture is from Nauset Beach. Presumably Cape Cod Bay would be safer, but would it have as much wind?

Plus, the problem with Cape Cod waters is the fact the water visibility is usually quite murky and the seal population has exploded. Not a good combination for shark bites or fatalities.



I like my chances better in the clear water of Hawaii, but they have issues there, too. Very infrequent given the number of people in the water.

[Compass790]

Originally Posted by jpr_jpr

Should I be concerned about sailing a laser or sunfish in an area like this? There have been a number of shark sightings on Cape Cod recently. This picture is from Nauset Beach. Presumably Cape Cod Bay would be safer, but would it have as much wind?

Plus, the problem with Cape Cod waters is the fact the water visibility is usually quite murky and the seal population has exploded. Not a good combination for shark bites or fatalities.



I like my chances better in the clear water of Hawaii, but they have issues there, too. Very infrequent given the number of people in the water.

Looks like a great white dorsal to me. I would be wearing a very smelly wetsuit if I was that surfer.

[GordMay]

Cape Cod has become home to one of the largest concentrations of great white sharks in the world, joining places like Mexico’s Guadalupe Island, and South Africa’s Seal Island, and making it the only aggregation site [an area where sharks reliably gather] in the North Atlantic.

You might be interested in the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s Sharktivity App, which uses crowd-sourcing critical data points on where sharks are spotted so as to reduce encounters and promote safety. Data from sharks with acoustic tags, and Smart Position and Temperature Tags (SPOT), are also available on the App.
Sharktivity ➥ https://www.atlanticwhiteshark.org/sharktivity-app

[jpr_jpr]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Cape Cod has become home to one of the largest concentrations of great white sharks in the world, joining places like Mexico’s Guadalupe Island, and South Africa’s Seal Island, and making it the only aggregation site [an area where sharks reliably gather] in the North Atlantic.

You might be interested in the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s Sharktivity App, which uses crowd-sourcing critical data points on where sharks are spotted so as to reduce encounters and promote safety. Data from sharks with acoustic tags, and Smart Position and Temperature Tags (SPOT), are also available on the App.
Sharktivity ➥ https://www.atlanticwhiteshark.org/sharktivity-app

Yikes. The app paints a pretty broad brushstroke of shark sightings on the Cape, which is not a surprise. Not so much off the Connecticut coastline, but this is probably a function of where the app is based. I am not sure I'd want to sail a flippable boat in an area with a heavy shark presence. Dang seals.

[GordMay]

N.S. woman airlifted to hospital after suspected shark bite
A 22-year-old woman has been airlifted to hospital with serious injuries, after being bitten, by what is believed to be a shark, near Margaree Island, which is off the coast of Cape Breton, near Saint Rose.
➥ https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-...eton-1.6140890

[deblen]

Great White attacks swim platform-Bay of Fundy,Grand Manan-July 2023


https://youtu.be/Yyzjx81BsoU?list=PL...mq5mZIoQK8gn8f

[GordMay]

When you go into the ocean, you are not going to be eaten by a shark.

Sharks kill, in unprovoked attacks [those in which the victim was not attempting to feed or touch the shark], between five and ten of us globally.
There are a further sixty-odd nonfatal unprovoked attacks, reported each year.
You are significantly more likely to be bitten by a person, in Manhattan. than you are to be bitten by a shark, anywhere off the North American coast.

We kill a hundred million sharks annually.

In comparison, very conservatively, snakes kill eighty thousand people a year, crocodiles a thousand, hippopotamuses five hundred, and lions two hundred. You are more likely to die from constipation, tornadoes, or lawnmowers.

Fear is, of course, a great good. It can be a form of wisdom. But if we could reorient the sentiment—and direct it, for instance, toward those humans whose vested interests lie in persuading us to acquiesce in the living world’s destruction—we would fare better.

Beware an ExxonMobil-infested State Department; beware a fossil-fuel-infested politics. These are dark times, and there are many things to fear. But none of them are found swimming under a vast sky as the waters around us warm and empty.

Snippets, excerpted from: "Beware of Sharkless Waters" ~ by Katherine Rundell
Our nightmares may be haunted by circling dorsal fins—but there’s something more sinister happening below the surface of the sea.
➥ https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...arkless-waters