Shark attacks in perspective

Last friday morning a 66-year-old swimmer was attacked and killed by a shark off Solana Beach in San Diego county. It was the first fatal shark attack in San Diego since 1994.

While the attack has received widespread media attention, fatal shark attacks are increasingly rare relative to the number of people participating in ocean activities. In 2007 human deaths from shark attacks hit a 20-year low, according to statistics released by the University of Florida.

The single death of a swimmer in the South Pacific in 2007 represented the fewest casualties from shark attacks since 1987, when no one was killed by sharks.

“It’s quite spectacular that for the hundreds of millions of people worldwide spending hundreds of millions of hours in the water in activities that are often very provocative to sharks, such as surfing, there is only one incident resulting in a fatality,” said George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File housed at UF’s Florida Museum of Natural History. “The danger of a shark attack stays in the forefront of our psyches because of it being drilled into our brain for the last 30 years by the popular media, movies, books and television, but in reality the chances of dying from one are infinitesimal.”

From Mongabay.com: Read more