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You may be asking about the image to the right here. As one would expect there's at least one person on this planet who maps out all "recorded" shark attacks on the planet.
One of the better looks at this entirely sad event on Solana Beach this morning comes from the Daily Green Blog.What is believed to be a great white shark attacked and killed a 66-year-old swimmer off Solana Beach, San Diego Friday, leading to a beach closure, mourning among friends and relatives, and rampant media attention.
Such fatal attacks have been relatively rare.
A single swimmer in the South Pacific was the only person to die from a shark attack in 2007, but total shark attacks rose nearly 13% over 2006, according to statistics released in February by Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida.
The number of fatal shark attacks hit a 20-year low. In 1987, there were no fatalities. (There were four deaths each in 2005 and 2006, and seven in 2004.)
“It’s quite spectacular that for the hundreds of millions of people worldwide spending hundreds of millions of hours in the water in activities that are often very provocative to sharks, such as surfing, there is only one incident resulting in a fatality,” the lead author, George Burgess, said at the time. “The danger of a shark attack stays in the forefront of our psyches because of it being drilled into our brain for the last 30 years by the popular media, movies, books and television, but in reality the chances of dying from one are infinitesimal.”
The number of shark attacks overall increased from 63 in 2006 to 71 in 2007, a nearly 13% increase, continuing a gradual upswing during the past four years.
“One would expect there to be more shark attacks each year than the previous year simply because there are more people entering the water,” Burgess said. “For baby boomers and earlier generations, going to the beach was basically an exercise in working on your suntan where a swim often meant a quick dunking. Today people are engaged in surfing, diving, boogie boarding and other aquatic activities that put them much closer to sharks.”
Often, about half of the world’s attacks occur in United States mainland and Hawaiian waters, but the proportion was greater in 2007, Burgess said. Last year’s total of 50 attacks returned to 2000 and 2001 levels of 53 and 50, respectively, after dropping from 30 to 40 for each year between 2003 and 2006, he said.
There also was an upswing in attacks along the Florida coast, jumping from 23 in 2006 to 32 in 2007. There has been a gradual increase in human-shark skirmishes in the Sunshine State since they dropped from 37 in 2000 to an 11-year-low of 12 in 2004, he said.
Within Florida, Volusia County continued its dubious distinction as the world’s shark bite capital with 17 incidents, its highest yearly total since 2002, Burgess said. Attractive waves off New Smyrna Beach on the central Atlantic coast are popular with surfers, he said.
Additional U.S. attacks were recorded in Hawaii – seven — marking a five-year-high, along with South Carolina, five; California, three; North Carolina, two; and Texas, one.
Elsewhere, there were 12 attacks in Australia, up from seven in 2006 and 10 in 2005, but down slightly from the 13 attacks recorded in 2004. There were two attacks each last year in South Africa and New Caledonia, with single incidents reported in Fiji, Ecuador, Mexico and New Zealand.
Most of those attacked (56%) were surfers and windsurfers, followed by swimmers and waders (38%) and divers and snorkelers (6%). The one 2007 fatality was a snorkeler from France visiting the Loyalty Islands archipelago in French New Caledonia.
“We advise not getting yourself isolated because there is safety in numbers,” Burgess said. “Sharks, like all predators, tend to go after solitary individuals, the weak and the infirm, and are less likely to attack people or fish in groups.”
To get an idea of the public's response to this tragedy we pulled some comments from the L.A Times site who seem to have the best coverage and are thus far staying away from the Fox News style hype which is permeating the other 365 articles and news reports out there at this time.
At 8.00am this morning we started getting calls from the media for comment. Expect an unfortunate result for the sharks coming from this as the media spins this entirely sad event up.SOLANA BEACH, Calif. (AP) — A shark on Friday attacked and killed a swimmer who was training in the ocean off San Diego County with a group of triathletes, authorities said.
A man between 55 and 60 years old was swimming at Tide Beach around 7 a.m. when he was attacked, according to a statement on the Solana Beach city Web site.
The man, whose identity was not immediately released, was taken to a lifeguard station for emergency treatment but was pronounced dead at the scene, the statement said.
Swimmers were ordered out of the water for a 17-mile stretch around the attack site and county authorities sent up helicopters to scan the waters for the shark.
"The shark is still in the area. We're sure of that," Mayor Joe Kellejian said.
It was unknown what kind of shark was involved.
Solana Beach is 14 miles northwest of San Diego.
Shark attacks are extremely rare. There were 71 confirmed unprovoked cases worldwide last year, up from 63 in 2006, according to the University of Florida. Only one 2007 attack, in the South Pacific, was fatal.
The last fatal shark attack in California, according to data from the state Department of Fish and Game, took place in 2004, when a man skin diving for abalone was attacked by a great white shark off the coast of Mendocino County.
Sometimes there's good news for sharks. This would be one of those days.The new rule, put forward last week, aims to prevent fishermen from slicing fins off vulnerable species and discarding the rest at sea.
"Finning", as the practice is known, is illegal in the US and elsewhere, but the ban is difficult to enforce. Right now, fishermen may land piles of fins separate from shark bodies, so long as the fins weigh less than 5% of the total catch.
Shark meat fetches much lower prices than do fins, which are the main ingredient in the prized Asian soup. The discrepancy encourages cheating as it is hard to identify the species of a shark based solely on its fins.
A quick word about the Shark Shield. Recently a nasty lawsuit and media storm over the Shark Shields ability to deter sharks and effectiveness has surfaced.
What is it with Floridians anyway?LOWER MATECUMBE KEY -- All the Miami fisherman wanted to do was measure the lemon shark he had caught and then release it back into the open sea.
Instead, James Fuqua caused a traffic mess on the Overseas Highway when about 50 people parked their cars haphazardly on the road and waded into shallow waters to take pictures, touch the shark or simply get a closer look.
To make matters worse, the gawkers trampled hundreds of native plants -- sea oats, sea-oxeye daisies and sea grapes -- that had been planted in a volunteer beach restoration project over the weekend.
All this for a lemon shark?
