On June 29th 2024, there was another reported shark attack incident in Florida. Solidifying Florida’s hold on the shark attack capital of the US, but this doesn’t mean that Florida is the Shark Attack Death capitol. Since 2020, there have only been 8 reported deaths. Three happened in both California and Hawaii. Maine and Florida both had one fatality. All of these deaths came from unprovoked instances of humans interacting with sharks.
But have sharks really gotten any more or less aggressive? Since 2000, shark attacks has not significantly grown in frequency. I personally feel like I’ve noticed or at least been pushed more shark attack news articles from Google News / Social Media. But maybe that’s more of an indication that I need to delete Reddit from my phone.
Your chances of being killed or even attacked by a shark is incomparably low, but human sentiment towards shark is generally negative. As the FWS put it, “Sharks Should Be Respected Not Feared”. From the FWS article (which you should really read), we can summarize shark’s problems into the below paragraph.
Sharks play a vital part in the underwater ecosystem by keeping prey populations under control. However, sharks are facing extreme overfishing (usually in Asian markets) where their fin is removed (often when the shark is still alive) and used in Shark Fin soup.
Want To Do Good?
PADI (yes, the SCUBA certification) has a charity called PADI AWARE that seeks to secure international protections for endangered Sharks. Check it out if you care.
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Sources
https://www.fws.gov/story/2020-08/sharks-should-be-respected-not-feared
https://www.padi.com/aware
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw0y928z268o
https://www.sharkattackfile.net/index.htm