California Shark Attack Rates Plunge 90 Percent Since 1950s

It’s been estimated that anyone who swims comes within 10 feet of a shark. “We saw the news clip and we chose to come and check it out”.

Since sharks have been kings of the ocean for eons, Worm said, evolutionarily, they aren’t equipped to “sustain a lot of mortality”.

Local whale watching and fishing company Stagnaro’s made Seacliff a stop on charter boat tours last week at the request of visitors, says owner Ken Stagnaro.

Caisey Erwin Keehn: Being a lifesaver at Coolum Beach, shark nets do nothing unless they are along the entire coastline. The first Great White Shark has been tagged this week off the coast of Cape Cod in New England.

That’s what we asked Daily readers after an expert called for increased tracking of Great Whites to understand their behaviour.

Friday night there were around 20 people at the end of the pier looking for sharks. At various points over those years he held the state record for heaviest smooth hammerhead shark, scalloped hammerhead shark, and a 621 tiger shark.

Does that mean you never go outside? But most of the time it was just a dark shadow that swims by.

Walter Szulc Jr., in kayak at left, looks back at the dorsal fin of an approaching shark at Nauset Beach in Orleans, Mass.in Cape Cod on Saturday, July 7, 2012. As they grow, they head north to prey on elephant seals, so they’re more risky in Northern California. “For juvenile white sharks up here, that’s a new thing”.

CORRECTION: There were 23 total shark attacks reported in Australia in 2014.

Rhonda Joy Marge Hammer: Get rid of all shark nets. No, you learn about weather hazards and take the appropriate precautions. The Marine, who suffered relatively minor cuts to his right hand and forearm, became the eighth person attacked by a shark off North Carolina beaches in the last three weeks.

It may start with the fact that more of us are swimming in the ocean.

“Shark Planet”: This two-hour co-production from Discovery Channel and the BBC uses the latest high-speed camera technology to track 13 shark species around the world, including rarely seen sharks in the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean.

Swimmers and surfers today are about 90 percent less likely to be attacked by sharks off California’s coast than they were in the 1950s, even though there are hundreds of thousands more people in the water, according to a new study by Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station.

Van Sommeran says that people’s attitudes toward sharks vary. “It’s something in the middle that is not going to conform to any of the brochures or Shark Week specials and that kind of thing”.

“At certain times of the year the great white sharks move inshore and very close to the beaches and can be easily seen from the beach while you are suntanning”, says Andy Casagrande, Shark Week filmmaker.

Though there have also been many “shark sightings” that were later disproven and blamed on lookalike fish. From pictures he’s seen, the gam, frenzy or school of sharks (take your pick) are all small.

Are they still relevant to our beaches or are there better alternatives on the market? That happens quite a bit in Southern California, Malibu, all the way down to San Onofre, and then Baja, California.

Shark Week-themed products began taking off about four years ago.

“We are not under siege”, Burgess said. Since 1900, the number of attacks has increased every subsequent decade.

Just when you thought it was safe to go in the water again. But yeah, nothing out of the ordinary. “It’s a wild place and we’re just guests”.

One student saw the scare as an opportunity.

The flow of shark product includes everything from themed cupcakes and ice cream to undies and the Sharkini, a one-piece swimsuit with a huge, toothy bite out of one side that retails for $120 at Badabydesigns.com. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but it had perfectly severed off my leg”.