When Mick Fanning was attacked by a shark during 2015’s J-Bay Open in South Africa, he became the most famous Australian who also surfs to ever fight off a shark attack on live television.
The attack served as a stark and very public reminder to us all that, one day, a shark may or may not come along and kick our heads in. “Poor Mick,” we all thought. But really, we thought, “I hope that never happens to me.”
Statistically speaking, Australian sharks are the most efficient killers in the world. Over the last three decades, more Aussies have died at the teeth of sharks than in anywhere else in the world. But what does that mean, really? And just how concerned should you be about sharks next time you take a dip?
First things first: we love our sharks. They help keep our ocean ecosystems in harmony; they are the apex predator we cherish the most. Without them, our oceans would be fucked. There would be algae everywhere and the scallops would probably go extinct. That’s a fact, and we do not want that for our sharks. We do not want that for our oceans. We do not want that for you.
We are not here to sully the shark’s name. We are here to talk about facts, figures and several statistics. We are here to analyse and probe, to ask tough questions, and to take quotes and research from other publications and package them up into a brand-new piece of digital online content.
We are here to do the science and the maths, not the unnecessary conjecture and fear-mongering you may find in other media publication outlets of mainstream inclination and increasingly questionable repute.
We are here to do some god damned modern internet journalism.
Avoid these bad boys.
The news. If you tolerate it, you’ll hear a lot about shark attacks. Especially during the Australian summer. They fucking love it. Shark attacks sell papers, and the news knows this, so they’ll package that sucker up and retell the same story a hundred different ways. The headlines will read:
SATANIC KILLER SHARK PLAGUE GRIPS AUSTRALIA, DEATH GUARANTEED
…and…
MAN ANNILHIATED BY NAZI ISIS SHARK IN BYRON BLOODBATH
…and…
24 WAYS CREATIVE WAYS TO DEFINITELY BE KILLED BY A SHARK THIS SUMMER
And we’ll lap it up, every time. Because it’s what we do, because we are poor and stupid, and they are rich and smart and control our every thought.
Statistics. Since 1580, according to the Global Shark Attack File, 621 shark attacks occurred in Australia. Of those 621 attacks, 155 were fatal. And according to Finder.com.au, Australia has the highest recorded number of shark fatalities over the last 30 years in the world, with 47 deaths resulting from 501 attacks – an average of just 1.5 deaths per year.
According to the same research, the top three attack spots were New South Wales (146), Queensland (86) and Western Australia (81). Lennox Head, in northern New South Wales, can lay claim to the most shark-inflicted deaths over the past 30 years with five on the scoreboard, while the beaches around Byron Bay have endured the most attacks, at 27.
Over the same time period, the US saw 37 deaths and a whopping 1407 reported attacks. Which means Australian sharks are, statistically speaking, pretty efficient killers.
Scared? Get a grip. The good news is that your chance of being killed by a shark in Australia is less than 1 in 264.1 million. The bad news is that calculation includes everyone in Australia, even people who spend 100% of time on land, where there is approximately 0% chance of being attacked by a shark.
Discounting all those people who don’t get in the ocean, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, anyone engaging in ‘surf sports’ has a 4.47 in 100,000 chance of experiencing a shark attack, while scuba divers and snorkelers are more than twice as likely as surfers to be attacked.
But, as the old saying goes, “Perspective is the enemy of dumbassness”, and it may or may not ease your troubled mind to know that you are far more likely to drown than you are be attacked – or killed by a shark. While sharks have accounted for 501 attacks and 47 deaths in Australia in the last 30 years, 891 people drowned in Australia in the last three years alone.
An Adelaide man by the name of Rodney Fox was bitten by a shark in 1963. The brutal attack is still regarded as the most severe, ever, to be survived. Those rescuing Rodney had to keep his wetsuit on him because the shark had opened him up like a can of beans. He required 461 stitches in his chest, and 92 in his right hand and arm.
Even through all of that, Rodney, who embarked on an incredible journey of shark conservation after the attack, never lost his perspective. “We had over 250 people that drowned last year,” he told McSweeny’s in 2002. “We had three deaths by sharks only. People don’t say, ‘Oh, don’t go to Australia and get drowned.’ They say, ‘Go to Australia and watch out for the sharks.’”
It’s worth mentioning that humans kill 100 million sharks every single year, too. All told, they’re letting us off pretty lightly.
Anyone for a dip?