I don’t often cover shark attacks here at Southern Fried
Science. They get plenty of news coverage on their own, they’re
usually not that relevant from a science and conservation
perspective, and they are outside of my expertise and interests.
However, some shark attack stories, such as this one, transcend
“if it bleeds, it leads” fearmongering journalism and are
interesting in their own right. I’d like to preface this story
by saying that shark attacks are extremely rare to begin with
(you have a 1 in 5 chance of dying from heart disease and a 1 in
3.8 million chance of being killed by a shark in the United
States). If you want to further minimize your chance of being
attacked by a shark, most of the few attacks that occur can be
prevented by simply swimming close to shore with lots of other
people nearby during the day. Even though shark attacks are
rare, I still don’t want to minimize the suffering of the few
attack victims and their families. With these caveats out of the
way, presented below is the fasci