At the same time Jaws fans around the world were celebrating the movie’s 50th anniversary, three young girls were trying to recover from shark wounds they endured in the past week. Two occurred at Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, with another in Boca Grande, Florida. The Hilton Head injuries were encountered in waist-deep water, while the Boca Grande bite occurred while a nine-year-old girl was snorkeling. None were life-threatening after the victims were rushed to the hospital. The timing and proximity are ironic and bring up the age-old question about swimming in the ocean: Is it still safe to go in?
One of the most experienced shark researchers in the world says yes. He also says the fear of sharks was there long before Steven Spielberg’s classic.
Gregory Skomal, a senior fisheries scientist at the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and a familiar face for Shark Week fans, says Peter Benchley’s novel and Spielberg’s film did not invent the fear of sharks; early twentieth-century newspapers and even Jacques Cousteau’s documentaries had already primed the public with tales of menace.
“What the movie did,” Skomal told ZME Science, “was tap into an existing fear and push it onto a fifty-foot screen. It didn’t create the perception; it deepened it.”
Half a century later, the International Shark Attack File (ISAF), the go-to for shark encounters, counts forty-seven unprovoked bites worldwide in 2024, the lowest tally in nearly three decades.
For perspective, beachgoers logged well over a billion ocean visits during the same year. In the United States the lifetime odds of being killed by a shark remain roughly one in 4.3 million; worldwide the figure stretches to one in 28 million. Electrocution from toasters, lightning, bee stings, lawn mowers, and even death by falling coconuts all rank higher on the actuarial chart.
Provoked vs. unprovoked
Why, then, do some people find themselves on the wrong end of teeth? Skomal’s answer relies on simple overlap. When baitfish, a staple on the menu for sharks, push close to shore, small coastal sharks follow. Put dozens of eager swimmers in the same waist-deep trough and the ingredients for a bite settle into place.
“It’s usually blacktips or spinners in water you can stand in,” he said. “They’re not hunting people. They’re feeding in murky water and bump into a leg that feels like a fish.”
To researchers, the animals are hardly predatory villains; most are juveniles figuring out how to hunt. Encounters such as this fall into the unprovoked category. Beachgoers aren’t seeking to harm or even occupy territory.
Provoked bites occupy a different box in the Shark Attack File: Anglers hauling a hooked shark over the gunwale, divers grabbing a tail for a photo, researchers drawing blood in rough seas, and a skindiver harpooning fish (after all, they are carrying “lunch”).
“A direct physical interaction is a provoked bite,” Skomal said.
There are some things that live in a fuzzier zone, such as ignoring a gray reef shark’s threat posture.
“The gray reef sharks giving you warnings that you should leave the area because it feels that it’s, it’s territory, and beat is being invaded. Some would call that a provoked attack while others see it as unprovoked.”
What can be done?
Cape Cod, a white shark hotspot, has experienced its resurgence of white sharks over the past decade thanks to a recovering seal population which has attracted hundreds of white sharks. However, since 2012 the Cape has logged only three bites, one fatal, all involving juvenile white sharks.
Most of this comes from more public education and better emergency preparedness and policy reshaping.
The Cape now displays more signage of the risks associated with white sharks in the region and stocks “Stop the Bleed” kits beside lifeguard stands. Quick tourniquets and better ambulance coordination convert what once might have been catastrophic blood loss into treatable lacerations. Similar preparations dot beaches in Florida, California and parts of Australia. Survival hinges less on distance from shore than on the minutes it takes to control bleeding.
“The quicker you can stem bleeding and get someone to an ambulance, the better the outcome,” Skomal said.
Shark bite hotspots
Numbers tell another part of the story. Florida’s Atlantic counties still record the greatest volume of shark bites on Earth, a reflection of warm water, year-round tourism, and a menagerie of coastal species. Australia comes next, with fewer incidents but a higher share of fatalities, largely because great whites and tiger sharks patrol popular surf breaks. Hawaii, South Africa and Brazil round out the short list. Those rankings mirror the places where people and large predators share sandbars, estuaries, and reef passes stuffed with bait.
Yet even in hotspot states, the geometry of risk remains wildly lopsided. Consider the Florida beach New Smyrna Beach, often dubbed the “shark-bite capital.” Since the late nineteenth century its waters have seen just over three hundred recorded incidents —worrisome until one remembers that the same slice of coast hosts several million surf sessions every year. Injuries tend to involve toes or calf muscles. Lives are rarely lost; weekends seldom cancelled.
What activities leave those who like to enjoy the water most exposed? Statistics vary, but generally surfers and body-boarders usually sit at the top, followed by swimmers and waders. Divers, snorkelers and kayakers occupy the margins.
The reasons are straightforward: a board silhouetted against the surface resembles a seal while kicking legs flash like distressed fish and sandbars churn bait into cloudy water where a shark’s visibility drops. Even then, most investigating bites end after one quick clamp and release, the animal abandoning a meal that doesn’t match its preferred menu.
Sharks in perspective
Diving into the data on shark attacks points to a clear conclusion: While sharks are apex predators, their threat to humans is infinitesimal and often overstated. Our collective fear – stoked by decades of sensationalist media and Hollywood thrillers – is largely disproportionate to reality.
Yes, shark attacks do happen, and for those rare individuals who experience one, it’s undeniably traumatic. But the actual probability of being bitten, let alone killed, by a shark is so low that it verges on the surreal. You’d have to swim every day for thousands of years before statistically likely encountering a shark that bites you. Even at beaches teeming with both people and sharks – say, the Surf Coast of Australia or Florida’s Space Coast – millions of ocean outings occur without incident.
None of this is to say we should throw caution to the wind. Wise water habits further cut down the already tiny risk.
Sharks, in fact, are essential to ocean ecosystems, keeping prey populations in check and oceans healthy. They’ve patrolled the seas for over 400 million years – long before humans ever dipped a toe in the water. In fact, sharks are older than trees.
The bottom line is that when a shark occasionally bites a person, it’s often a case of curiosity or confusion, not predation.
Finally, consider how the narrative flips when viewed from the shark’s perspective: Humans kill on the order of 100 million sharks each year, whether for fins, meat, or by accident in nets. Entire shark populations have plummeted, and some species face endangerment. The practice is tightly regulated in U.S. waters, but gaps on the high seas mean fleets from several nations still set hundreds of miles of baited hooks that exact a heavy toll on pelagic species. Population declines of seventy percent or more have been documented for oceanic whitetips, hammerheads and several reef sharks. Meanwhile, around 70 people a year are injured by sharks, and perhaps 5–10 people worldwide lose their lives – tragic, but a microscopic number relative to other everyday risks.
The takeaway for ocean lovers is reassuring: stick to common-sense precautions – don’t swim at dawn or dusk, use caution when between sandbars and steep drop-offs, avoid murky water, don’t swim alone or far offshore, avoid areas commonly used by sport fishermen, and remove shiny jewelry that mimics fish scales – and your already-tiny risk of a shark bite drops even closer to zero.
“Just respect the ocean and use common sense,” Skomal said. “The odds are you’ll step back onto the sand the same way you went in — just a little saltier.”
