Last year saw 69 confirmed unprovoked shark attacks globally, 10 of which were fatal, according to The International Shark Attack File, housed at the Florida Museum
(From left) A Bull Shark, A Great Hammerhead Shark (Centre) and a Great White Shark (Right). Photos by iStock. Collage: Chaitanya Chandan / CSE From 1580, when much of the Indian Subcontinent was under the control of the third Mughal Emperor Akbar, till now, just 21 ‘confirmed unprovoked’ shark attacks have taken place in the region, a Down To Earth analysis of data from the Florida Museum of Natural History has found.
Today’s Republic of India, the largest country in the region, recorded the highest number of attacks at 14. Sri Lanka, or Ceylon as it was known earlier, was second with four attacks. The Indian Ocean archipelago of atolls, the Maldives, recorded two attacks. Today’s Pakistan recorded one attack.
The numbers for the rest of Asia were:
These numbers are quite low when compared to other areas. For instance, the United States, formed in 1783, has recorded 1,640 such attacks from 1580 till now.
Australia, where the British First Fleet first landed on Dharawal Aboriginal land in Sydney Harbour in 1788, has recorded 706 attacks.
South Africa, where Dutchman Jan Van Riebeeck landed on the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, is the next, with 262 attacks.
Brazil, first ‘discovered’ by Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral in 1500, has 114 attacks, while New Zealand, first visited by Abel Tasman in 1642, has recorded 58 such attacks till date.
The data are part of The International Shark Attack File (ISAF). “The ISAF is the world’s only scientifically documented, comprehensive database of all known shark attacks. Initiated in 1958, there are now more than 6,800 individual investigations covering the period from the early 1500s to the present,” a note on the Florida Museum website says.
The ISAF is housed at the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, United States.
According to the website, “while most attack investigations are performed by ISAF staff as parts on ongoing research, the File benefits from a globally-distributed network of collaborating regional scientists who investigate attacks in their own regions (and in some cases maintain regionally-oriented databases) and cooperatively forward reports to the ISAF.”
On February 5, ISAF released figures for 2023. According to these, “there was an increase in the number of unprovoked shark attacks worldwide and an uptick in fatalities in 2023 compared to the previous year.”
The ISAF confirmed 69 unprovoked bites in 2023. “Although this is higher than the previous five-year average of 63 attacks, the data remain consistent with long-term trends,” a statement by the Florida Museum said.
Ten of 2023’s unprovoked attacks were fatal. This is an increase from five the year before.
Australia accounted for 22 per cent of all attacks. But, with four deaths, it made up a whopping 40 per cent of fatalities.
The United States came in next. It recorded 36 unprovoked attacks, accounting for 52 per cent of incidents worldwide. Of these, two — one in California and another in Hawaii — were fatal. Florida had more shark bites than any other state, with 16 attacks.
The Bahamas, Egypt, Mexico and New Caledonia recorded one death each.
Other confirmed, non-fatal bites occurred in Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, New Zealand, Seychelles, Turks and Caicos, Ecuador (in The Galápagos Islands) and South Africa, according to the statement.
ISAF defines an ‘unprovoked attack’ as “any instance in which a shark is in its natural habitat and attacks without any human provocation, which includes intentionally approaching a shark or swimming in an area where bait is being used to lure fish”. Unprovoked bites are the most useful for studying how sharks behave, according to ISAF.
It also noted that “the total number of unprovoked shark bites worldwide remains extremely low”.
Great White Sharks were the species associated with the most fatalities — four out of 10. Three of these took place in Australia and one in California.
“The vast majority of unprovoked attacks are test bites, which occur when a shark misidentifies a human as their preferred prey. When this happens, the shark will typically swim away after a single bite. Some species like white sharks and tiger sharks, however, are large enough that even a single bite can be fatal,” the ISAF statement noted.
It also pointed out that the increase in Great White attacks is not due to increased aggression “but rather a combination of more of people being in the ocean each year and a stronger emphasis placed on reporting bites and fatalities”.
February 2024 also marks 50 years since Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws was published and later became a hugely successful Hollywood movie series.
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