With 32 confirmed reports of sharks biting a human unprovoked last year, Florida once again led the United States in shark attacks, according to the International Shark Attack File’s annual report.
Volusia County, a surfer’s haven located on the Atlantic Ocean coastline of the state, was the site for 15 of those attacks.
The ISAF, which is maintained by researchers at the University of Florida, reported that, worldwide, the number of shark attacks declined from a record-setting 98 instances in 2015 to 81 in 2016.
“A shark attack is a human phenomenon,” Dr. George Burress, who curates the database, said. “Sharks are a natural part of the ecosystem. The ocean is a foreign environment to humans, and when we enter the sea, we’re entering a wilderness.”
The report only includes encounters with a shark that are unprovoked meaning that they were not caused by human interaction such as bites that occur while handling a shark while fishing or diving.
Of those unprovoked attacks, 58 percent of them involved board sports such as surfing or paddle boarding. Only four of those attacks proved fatal — two off the Australia and two in the French South Pacific.
The U.S. had the most verified instances of a shark biting a human in the world with 53 total attacks.
When broken down by state, Hawaii had 10, California had four, North Carolina had three, South Carolina had two and Texas and Oregon each had one reported attack in 2016.