If you’re reading the newspaper, scrolling your various socail media feeds, or watching the news, it seems like shark attacks are a common occurrence during the summer months – no matter the hemisphere you are in! But University of Florida’s International Shark Attack File (ISAF) report has come out for 2022… and it couldn’t paint a more different picture if it tried. Turns out the number of unprovoked shark attacks worldwide decreased last year, tying 2020’s global numbers (that were most likely influenced by COVID-19’s lockdowns)! Not only that, but 2020 and 2022 saw the fewest number of reported incidents in the last decade.
As reported by the ISAF, in 2022 there were 57 unprovoked shark bites, mostly in the United States and Australia. There were five fatal attacks, down from nine in 2021 and ten the year before. In line with long-term trends, the USA had the highest number of bites (41 confirmed cases, lower than the 47 recorded in 2021). Within the USA, Florida had the most bites, with none of them being fatal. Florida was also the location leader in shark bites globally with 16 bites. The single unprovoked USA fatality, occurred late in the year when a snorkeler went missing along Keawakapu Beach in Maui, Hawaii.
“Generally speaking, the number of sharks in the world’s oceans has decreased, which may have contributed to recent lulls,” Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Museum of Natural History’s Florida Program for Shark Research told The Gainseville Sun. “It’s likely that fatalities are down because some areas have recently implemented rigorous beach safety protocols, especially in Australia.”
Of the 108 alleged shark-human interactions in 2022, it confirmed 32 provoked bites (when a human initiates interaction with a shark in some way) compared to the 57 unprovoked bites (no human provocation of the shark). But why the distinction between provoked and unprovoked bites? Isn’t a bite… well, just a bite? Not quite, says Naylor: “Unprovoked bites give us significantly more insight into the biology and behavior of sharks. Changing the environment such that sharks are drawn to the area in search of their natural food source might prompt them to bite humans when they otherwise wouldn’t.”
While the numbers seem daunting to some, they pale in comparison to other threats. Beachgoers are more likely to be injured or killed by coastal features like rip tides and strong currents than sharks, according to the World Health Organization. And the 2022 confirmed unprovoked case number is lower than the most recent five-year (2017-2021) average of 70 incidents annually. But these annual number fluctuations can vary and are common, based in the variability in oceanographic, socioeconomic and meteorological conditions.
Florida Museum of Natural History researchers suggest that unprovoked bites are declining because shark populations are declining globally, but Australian Marine Conservation Society shark scientist Dr. Leonardo Guida isn’t too sure. “There’s no evidence to suggest shark numbers are necessarily correlated with the number of sharks bites,” he told 9news.com.au, saying several factors could explain this drop. “There are a lot of things that can influence how much time we spend in the water, and where. Heavy rainfall, storms, La Niña events, heatwaves, and COVID-19 – how that may have restricted access to the beach – depending on where they live; there are a range of factors. If we’re going to look at the patterns of shark bites, and fatal bites, we should really be looking at 10-year scales to capture that high variability.”
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