Firas moukalled | While there has been a rise in the number of people bitten by sharks, the actual risk of being involved in an attack has fallen significantly. According to a new study, the individual risk of a person entering Californian waters being involved in a shark attack is 91% lower than it was in 1950. To come to this conclusion, scientists from Stanford University looked at both ocean use by humans, for example swimming or other recreational activities, and shark attack records of the coast guard off the coast of California between 1950 and 2013. Although it’s difficult to determine how much time an individual would typically spend in the water, they found that the chances of suffering a bite in this region are minuscule, but the risk also depends on what you’re doing. For instance, the minds of scuba divers can be put at ease with a one in 136 million chance of an attack, and while the risk for surfers may be higher, it’s still only one in 17 million. And those who enter the water are almost 2,000 times more likely to die from drowning than an attack. The focus of this study may have been California, but that does not necessarily mean the figures do not reflect the rest of the world. George H. Burgess, the director of the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History, says the team’s findings are consistent what he’s seen worldwide with shark attacks. As the human population expands and more people are in the water, the chance of a human-shark interaction occurring increases: “It leads to a higher absolute number of attacks, but that doesn’t translate into an increased rate of attacks,” he says. “Our odds as individuals actually go down because there are so many more of us in the water.” If we look at the ISAF’s stats, compiled by the Florida Museum of Natural History, the odds of a shark attack across all U.S. coastal waters in the year 2000 was just one in 11.5 million, but drowning was one in 3.5 million. Nowadays, the threat of shark attacks is seriously minor, despite recent reports of attacks that could lead many to believe that they are becoming more commonplace. Although it’s difficult to pinpoint why the risk has fallen so dramatically, the Stanford study suggests that declining shark numbers, in particular great whites, could be playing a role. Alternatively, seal populations seem to be flourishing, meaning sharks have plenty of other prey to focus their attention on. Another reason attacks might be down is that humans have wised up. “People may have also learned where and when sharks occur and thus adapted their behavior when engaging in ocean activities,” write the study’s authors. Even though the chances of suffering an attack are tiny, the chance still exists if you enter the water. So what’s the best way to avoid it? Certainly not culling, the researchers say, which has been shown to have no effect on the risk of an encounter, mainly because those removed tend to be the ones that don’t actually pose a danger to humans. Instead, it would be far better to monitor sharks and determine when and where the safest spots to enter the ocean are, helping people make informed decisions.
