A statistical analysis of shark attacks worldwide using data collected over a 55-year period found that although the number of shark attacks has increased over time, the rate of attack is low.
Using data from the International Shark Attack File housed in the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida, LSU Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences Assistant Professor Stephen Midway and his associates also found that the risk of being attacked by a shark is highly variable across the globe.
“I was curious what the likelihood of shark attacks is in a certain number of years at different places around the world,” Midway said. “While shark attacks are often reported in numbers, we factored in the regional human populations to determine the rate of shark attacks worldwide. I think this information could contribute to a more scientifically grounded discussion about sharks in general and help with the management and conservation of them.”
The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, applied time series models to shark attacks that occurred in 14 countries and further investigated specific regions within three countries that had the highest number of shark attacks—the U.S., Australia and South Africa. They found that shark attack rates, although extremely low, have doubled over the past 20 years in highly populated regions including the East Coast of the U.S. and Southern Australia.
“As development increases along the coast and in beach communities, more residents and tourists frequent these waters,” Midway said. “With more people in the water, the chance for a shark attack increases. However, I must stress the fact that not all places across the globe saw an increase. And even in the places where we saw an increase, the chances were still one in several million.”
Year-over-year variation in the number of shark attacks is often the result of a combination of several factors, including the number of people in the water and the type of water activity conducted at specific locations.
“We ought to think of the risk of a shark attack like we would think of the risk of a car accident. For example, we don’t assess our personal risk of getting into a car accident by the national statistics on car accidents year over year. We think about our specific car, the weather, the road conditions and other very local factors,” Midway said.
https://www.sharkophile.com/2019/01/30/florida-leads-country-shark-bites/