My brother has done big wave surfing at Mavericks in No. Calif and Pt. Concepcion in Central Calif. Undoubtedly has seen his share of sharks. Still possible that he unintentionally exaggerated. However, whatever he saw was big.
On a separate note today, my 19-year-old son came back from a white water rafting trip in W. Va and had a nasty spill in high rapids where he was about 20 yards away from being sucked into an underwater cave which would have been really bad.
There are risks to very many things.
Shark Attacks In Orange County: How Likely Are They To Happen?
Ashley Ludwig 2 hrs ago
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ORANGE COUNTY, CA — It's beach season in California, and fairly or not (hint: not), some people imagine they’ll be bitten and killed by a shark.
© Muhammed Bin Zakaria/Shutterstock Fewer than 10 people are killed annually by sharks, apex predators that are important to the health of the ocean. There have been shark attacks in California, dating back to 1924, but researchers suggest fear of sharks is misplaced.
Oh, it does happen.
But not very often. In fact, in Orange County and Laguna Beach, it hardly ever happens.
David Angotti, the founder of
floridapanhandle.com, has the statistics to back that up. He’s in the business of booking vacation rentals in the Florida Panhandle and by extension, chasing away travelers' fears about being attacked by sharks while kayaking, snorkeling or just enjoying the surf.
“Hey,” Angotti says, his voice thick with a Tennessee drawl, “a coconut falling and hitting me on my head is more likely to cause my death at the beach than a shark attack.”
Sharks gained a nasty reputation in box office blockbusters such as “Jaws” and others casting the apex predators as villains. With their serrated, dagger-like teeth, they do look menacing — and that image alone can fuel galeophobia or the fear of sharks.
As phobias go, the likelihood of this one playing out is fairly unreasonable. The sharks don’t really want to eat you. And if they did, they’d swim upward and scoop you up in a single bite, rather than nibble to see if you taste good.
For the record, you don’t. There literally are far tastier fish in the ocean.
Read:
Shark Sighting Off Capo Beach Sparks More Curiosity Than Concern
But don’t rely on hyperbole. Statistically speaking, the chances you’ll be attacked by a shark are practically zero, Angotti says. And even if you are, your chances of surviving are about 90 percent, according to Angotti’s data.
In the past 30 years, there have been
2,711 shark attacks around the world, with a fatality rate of 10.7 percent, according to data assembled by Angotti and his team.
Angotti’s
interactive global map visually depicts when and where each of the 3,000 attacks occurred, along with other interesting facts.
The white fins on the map represent attacks that were survived, and the red fins represent fatal attacks. Each fin can be clicked to view detailed information about the attack and shark species.
Finally, the interactive data section allows users to quickly select custom or pre-filled date ranges and surface interesting data including the most dangerous sharks, where the attacks occurred, and the worst time of day for the attacks.
© Provided by Patch
In
Orange County ...
There have been a handful of shark attacks off the coast of Orange County recorded since the 1920s. As a whole, the county has seen a total of 6 non-fatal shark attacks and one fatal, offshore attack.
- Huntington Beach, Tower 16, 2004 - Non-fatal: A surfer suffered a shark attack under unknown conditions.
- Huntington Beach, 2015 - Non-fatal: A victim was bitten by a Great White shark while surfing.
- Newport Beach, 1924 - Non-fatal: A victim was bitten by an unidentified shark while fishing.
- Corona Del Mar, 2016 - Non-fatal: A victim was bitten by an unidentified shark while swimming.
- Dana Point, 1938 - Non-fatal: A victim was bitten by an unidentified shark while fishing.
- San Onofre, 2009 - A victim was bitten by an unidentified shark while surfing.
Since the data has been recorded, only one person has died of a shark attack in Orange County, offshore of Newport Beach in 1962 in what was called a sea disaster.
Read:
Surfer Killed By Shark Was Former Orange County Student
By comparison, let's look to our north, off the coast of Malibu where a fatal shark attack did take place in the late 1980s ...
There have been a handful of shark attacks off the coast of Malibu recorded since the 1950s. As a whole, the county has seen a total of 7 non-fatal shark attacks and one fatal shark attack.
- Point Mugu, 1960 - Non-fatal: off the coast, a victim was bitten in a “sea disaster” by an unidentified shark.
- Deer Creek Beach, 2015 - Non-fatal: a victim was bitten while kayak fishing by a hammerhead shark.
- El Pescador Beach, 2015 - Non-fatal: a victim was bitten while kayaking by a Great White shark.
- Broad Beach, 2006 - Non-fatal: a victim was bitten while bodyboarding by a Mako shark.
- Latigo Point/ Paradise Cove, 1989 - Fatal: A victim died after being attacked by a Great White shark while kayaking.
- Malibu Beach, 2007 - Non-fatal: A victim was bitten by a Great White shark while body surfing.
- Topanga Beach, 2012 - Non-fatal: A victim was bitten by an unidentified shark while surfing.
- Zuma Beach, 1955 - Non-fatal: A victim was bitten by a Thresher shark while surfing.
Since the data has been recorded, only one person has died of a shark attack in Malibu, off Latigo Point / Paradise Cove, when a Great White shark fatally attacked a kayaker.
Sharks Should Fear Us
If Angotti’s name seems familiar, it’s because he is the creator of the
fall foliage peak map, an interactive tool that lets people plan their fall vacations when leaves will be at their most glorious.
Just as that tool helps monetize the smokymountains.com vacation rental business, Angotti hopes the shark attack interactive tool will bring vacationers to the Florida Panhandle.
But it includes data from most coastal states — and a couple of inland locations, too — because for Angotti, the goal is for people to have great vacations whether they book through his company or a competitor’s.
The fatality rate, Angotti says, “is so astronomically low” that he has trouble reconciling it with another statistic: More than
1 million sharks are killed every year, according to a study published in the journal Marine Policy.
In large part, the sharks are dying due to a practice called “
shark finning” wherein the fins are removed for fin soup, considered a delicacy, and the shark, profusely bleeding, is thrown back into the ocean, where it is unable to properly swim and either suffocates or dies of blood loss, according to the Smithsonian Institution.
The issue goes beyond cruelty.
Sharks On The Brink Of Extinction
Shark populations are down 71 percent since the 1970s, putting three-fourths of
shark species at risk of extinction, according to a study that looked at 31 species of sharks and rays that live in the open ocean and was published earlier this year in the journal Nature.
Nuno Queiroz, a marine ecologist from the Research Center in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources, told Science the study, which he wasn’t involved in, offers “the first big picture” of the rate of declines of sharp population and “gives you an idea how pervasive the fishing as been.”
In fact, more than three-fourths of oceanic shark and ray species are now
threatened with extinction under the Red List criteria of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The study and the IUCN’s grave predictions about shark survival underscore that humans are greater predators of sharks than sharks are of humans.
As a practical matter, the risk of a shark attack is nearly zero, Angotti says. His data shows people are about 50 times more likely to die from a lightning strike than from a shark attack, and about 10 times more likely to die from a fireworks accident than from a shark attack.
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