By Brian Carnell

Thursday, February 21, 2002

Last summer the media was consumed with reports about shark attacks after a young boy was mauled by a shark off the coast of Florida. Recently released statistics prove what many observers suspected all along, however -- the number of total shark attacks and fatalities from shark attacks worldwide in 2001 was actually lower than in 2000. Attacks in the United States were slightly up, but attacks by sharks in Florida were actually down.

In 2000 -- when shark attacks received little national media attention in the Uinted States -- there were a total of 85 unprovoked shark attacks worldwide and 12 fatalities. In 2001, however, there were only 76 unprovoked attacks and 5 fatalities.

In the United States, the total number of shark attacks did increase slightly from 54 in 2000 to 55 in 2001, but in Florida, which was the source of much of the media handwringing, the number of shark attacks actually fell from 38 in 2000 to 37 in 2001.

Despite this, Time magazine dubbed the summer of 2001 as the Summer of the Shark and media outlets in the United States were rife with speculation about what was casuing the increase in shark attacks. Some people, for example, argued that restrictions on hunting sharks adopted in 1993 had boosted the shark population.

In fact, this was just another scare campaign from media more interested in selling papers and advertising spots than anything else.

Source:

'Summer of the Shark' Revisited. Reuters, February 19, 2002.

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