'Summer of the Shark' overblown, scientists say
'There's nothing unusual about this year,' expert says
09/05/2001
By WILLIAM J. BROAD / New York Times News Service
A boy in Florida has his arm torn off by a shark and reattached by surgeons after a dramatic rescue. Two months later, a boy is killed by a shark off Virginia Beach. And two days after that, a man and woman are mauled on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
The danger from sharks could easily be seen as rising dramatically. Time magazine declared this the "Summer of the Shark" in a July 30 cover story bristling with images of razor-sharp teeth.
But notwithstanding the bloody attacks, which included six people injured in two August days at New Smyrna Beach in Florida, scientists said new fears were overblown.
There is no rampage. If anything, they say, the recent global trend in shark attacks is down, even as news media attention soars.
"It's been crazy," said George Burgess, a biologist at the University of Florida who runs the International Shark Attack File of the Florida Museum of Natural History. "The basic perception that we're having an exceptionally sharky year is wrong."
Robert Hueter, director of the Center for Shark Research at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., agreed. "There's nothing unusual about this year" in terms of attack numbers, he said.
Last year, he pointed out, a bull shark attacked and killed a man in shallow water near St. Petersburg. But it made few headlines and was quickly forgotten.
"In past years, all these incidents – even the fatal ones – would have been a local or regional news story," Mr. Hueter said.
But not this year. The attack on Sergei Zaloukaev, 28, and Natalia Slobodskaya, 23, off the Outer Banks in Avon, N.C., on Monday drew national attention. Mr. Zaloukaev was killed, and Ms. Slobodskaya was in critical but stable condition at a Norfolk, Va., hospital Tuesday after losing her left foot and suffering a deep wound to her hip. Mr. Zaloukaev is the first person killed by a shark in North Carolina since 1957.
Statistics from the shark-attack file based at the University of Florida depict the global number of shark attacks as down this year, with 52 reported so far. The overall number was 84 for 2000, 58 for 1999, and 54 for 1998. For the 1990s, the yearly average was 54.
But the number of unprovoked attacks grew throughout the 20th century and reached the high of 84 last year, the museum says. The 1990s had the highest number of attacks of any previous decade.
The perception of this year as a particularly bad one does have some backing in the statistics for the United States. During the Labor Day weekend two people died, while there were 51 attacks and one death in all of 2000. Only in 1994 were there two fatalities, and there were no deaths in six of the 11 years since 1990.
Scientists attribute the increase over the decades to millions more people going to the beach and the increasing popularity of water sports. The big attacks this year, they said, came on holiday weekends when beaches were crowded.
Another possible factor behind the rise, scientists said, is simply more reporting of assaults. The same occurs periodically when "outbreaks" of some types of cancer disappear. After careful study, they turn out not to have increased.
John Allen Paulos, a math professor at Temple University and the author of Innumeracy, said vivid television images were overpowering statistics to produce a false nightmare.
"Over the last decade, there's been a very small increase, attributable to more people in the water," he said. "But nothing really significant is going on."
As attackers of humans, sharks rank fairly low on the list of animals. In New York City alone – where the reporting of creature attacks has been thorough and voluminous – people reported 12,656 dog bites, 826 cat bites, 81 squirrel bites, 18 raccoon bites, 11 monkey bites, eight snake bites and seven bat bites in 1981.
Despite the relatively low number of shark attacks, a debate is stirring in scientific circles over whether human activity may be provoking some strikes. Some experts argue that tourist boats that feed sharks may be leading the killers to search for food in unfamiliar places.
Other experts say federal fishing limits set on sharks might be selectively encouraging the proliferation of vicious, unwanted species.
Sean Paige, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, argued recently in the National Review Online that the federal government was behind what he called the "shocking return of the shark." Attacks rose rapidly after 1993, he said, when the government started requiring deep cuts in the number of sharks that could be caught for sport or profit.
But Sonja Fordham, a shark fisheries expert at the Ocean Conservancy, a private group in Washington, said Mr. Paige had exaggerated the rise in attacks.
"This is an irresponsible argument" made to foster the shark-fishing industry, she said. "There's no basis for it in fact."
Moreover, scientists said, the shark population is dwindling dangerously. Atlantic shark populations are down about 75 percent compared with 25 years ago.
But Mr. Paige said those concerns are overblown and researchers don't know how many sharks are in the oceans.
The Associated Press and Cox News Service contributed to this report.
