Shark Attacks In MA Are Rare, Even As Great White Population Grows

MARTHA'S VINEYARD, MA — Sharks, the apex predators at the pinnacle of the ocean’s food chain, get a bad rap — arguably rooted in the 1975 classic "Jaws," set on a Massachusetts vacation island.

Great white sharks were nonexistent in Massachusetts in 1975, but the species is now a reliable feature of beach life, especially in parts of Cape Cod where gray seals gather.

Discovery’s Shark Week programming, which starts Sunday, aims to change the perception that our new razor-toothed season residents are ready to attack.

Shark researchers say that’s a false perception fed by “Jaws” movies and other pop culture references that portray sharks as menacing killers intent on ruining beach days — and that shark attacks are actually decreasing along with an alarming decline in shark populations in the world’s oceans.

Shark populations have plummeted 70 percent since 1970, primarily due to overfishing, and are at an “unprecedented increase in the risk of extinction,” according to the authors of a 2021 study published in the journal Nature.

Protections for sharks have fed fears of shark attacks. It’s a numbers game, researchers say, with the number of people crowding coastal beaches to escape heat far exceeding the number of sharks. In fact, shark bites have been declining worldwide.

So far this year, there have been 22 shark attacks in U.S. waters, and zero in Massachusetts, according to a database maintained by Tracking Sharks, a news site that shares information on sharks.

The states where shark encounters have been reported this year are Florida with 13, Hawaii with three, New York with five and South Carolina with one. Two of the reported shark encounters were provoked, according to Tracking Sharks. None of the attacks were fatal.

Shark attacks remain rare. Of the 1,595 shark attacks since 1837 in U.S. waters, six were in Massachusetts, according to the International Shark Attack File maintained by the Florida Museum of Natural History’s Florida Program for Shark Research. Data shows Florida to be the U.S. shark attack capital with 912 attacks in the last 186 years, followed by Hawaii with 187 and California with 136.

Last year, there were 41 shark attacks in the United States, with one fatality. A Washington state woman was fatally attacked by a shark while vacationing in Hawaii late last year. Also last year, a Pennsylvania woman was killed in a shark attack while vacationing with her family in the Bahamas.

The last fatal attack in Massachusetts — and the only one in about the last century — happened in 2018 off Newcomb Hollow Beach in Wellfleet.

Statistically, the chance of dying in a fall are about 1 in 218, but 1 in 3.7 million of being killed by a shark. And worldwide, there are about 10 deaths a year attributed to shark attacks, compared to 150 deaths caused by falling coconuts.

And even in the rare instances when a shark does bite, survival rates are about 90 percent.

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 people. And if they did, they’d swim upward and scoop them up in a single bite, rather than nibble to see if they taste good.

“People have this fear of sharks,” shark researcher and tracker Chris Fischer told Patch’s Lisa Finn in June when a shark named Jekyll was spotted off the coast of Long Island. The 8-foot, 8-inch, 395-pound great white shark made its way from Jekyll Island, Georgia, in December to the coast off Quogue on Long Island in June.

“They look out and see a little 4- or 5-foot shark eating something the size of menhaden or a small squid or mackerel — it's not something you need to be too worried about,” said Fischer, the founder of Ocearch, a nonprofit organization that collects data for scientific studies of keystone marine species.

• Read more: Tracking Jekyll — Great White Shark Spotted Off Long Island

Still, sharks are swimming nearby 97 percent of the time, according to a study published last month by researchers with the Shark Lab at California State University, Long Beach. Despite the proximity, the probability of a bite remains highly unlikely.

White sharks have been protected in California since 1994, and in Atlantic waters since 1997, to help populations recover. That has led to some concern about the safety of beachgoers.

“Despite these rising trends, there is little evidence of increased frequency of shark bites on humans in southern California,” lead author Patrick Rex wrote in the study. “Over the 2-year survey period, only one minor potential unprovoked shark bite was reported across southern California at one of the aggregation sites.”

• Read more: On California Beaches, A Shark Swims Nearby 97% Of The Time, Study Finds

Shark Week programming begins at 8 p.m. ET/PT Sunday on Discovery. It’s also available to stream at 8 p.m. ET/PT Sunday, and is available for streaming on Max.

The 20 hours of programming aims to dispel some of the myths about sharks. Hosted by actor Jason Momoa, who uses his star power to advocate for oceanic conservation, the programming focuses on everything from the important role sharks play in marine ecosystems to how shark fishing funds human trafficking.