Comment by askvictor
2 months ago
Agree. Though I read that shark attacks are increasing. Possibly due to changing water temperatures, or humans over-fishing their natural prey, leading them to look elsewhere.
2 months ago
Agree. Though I read that shark attacks are increasing. Possibly due to changing water temperatures, or humans over-fishing their natural prey, leading them to look elsewhere.
I've read that they are down:
~ https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-12/shark-attack-bite-rep...
> 47 unprovoked attacks last year
What about provoked attacks? And who's going out there provoking sharks?
I also like the implication that the provoked attacks are understandable and don't count
Well, they don't count, really.
If people were honest, we'd likely discover that unprovoked snake bites are almost unheard-of.
Likewise, if every drowning victim were routinely checked for BAC, I think we'd discover that sober people are much more drown-resistant than the stats would indicate. Unfortunately, water + play correlates highly with beer/wine cooler/hard seltzer consumption, in the US at least.
People make a lot of bad decisions, and it has effects.
It's a good question, so good in fact that's it's addressed in the linked article.
Examples of "provoked" attacks that occured while interacting with sharks include bitten while spear fishing sharks, bitten while removing from nets or hooks, etc.
Unprovoked attacks are shark bites while swimming, surfing, generally minding ones own business.
It's explicit in the source that provoked attacks are understood.
Also, Great Whites were protected some time ago in Australia, 1996 if I recall correctly.
Fair chance there are more of them.