Stephen Midway

As development increases along the coast and in beach communities, more residents and tourists frequent these waters, with more people in the water, the chance for a shark attack increases. However, I must stress the fact that not all places across the globe saw an increase. And even in the places where we saw an increase, the chances were still one in several million.

We ought to think of the risk of a shark attack like we would think of the risk of a car accident, for example, we don't assess our personal risk of getting into a car accident by the national statistics on car accidents year over year. We think about our specific car, the weather, the road conditions and other very local factors.

I was curious what the likelihood of shark attacks is in a certain number of years at different places around the world, while shark attacks are often reported in numbers we factored in the regional human populations to determine the rate of shark attacks worldwide. I think this information could contribute to a more scientifically grounded discussion about sharks in general and help with the management and conservation of them.