The Florida Museum of Natural History, the most boss, beer-shotgunning, alligator-throwing museum in the country, has some news that might interest #TeamDryLandForever. In 2015, there were 98 incidents of unprovoked shark attacks on humans worldwide. That’s a record-breaking number (previous high: 88), with the Yearly Worldwide Shark Attack Summary describing an “unprovoked attack” as “incidents where an attack on a live human occurs in the shark’s natural habitat with no human provocation of the shark.”
Following long-term trends, North American waters had the most [75: 76.5%] unprovoked attacks in 2015… There were no fatalities in North American waters and the single U.S. fatality occurred in Hawaii. Elsewhere, multiple unprovoked attacks occurred in Australia [18], South Africa [8], and Reunion [4], the Canary [2] and Galapagos [2] islands, with single incidents reported from the Bahama Islands, Brazil, Egypt, New Caledonia, and Thailand. (Via)
Nearly one-third of the world’s shark attacks occurred in America’s wang, Florida, with the largest numbers coming from Brevard County and Volusia County. This should surprise literally no one. Anyway, all this shark carnage sounds terrifying, and I don’t blame you for never wanting to step foot in the ocean again (you really should stay away). Except 98 attacks is nothing compared to the estimated 100 million sharks humans kill every year.
Sharks are terrifying, but we’re the real monsters.
(Via Mashable)
