Gruesome Shark Attack!

[Maeve_Mari]

Just how scary is it to go to the beach for a swim and a tan out there in Australia?????

I'm wondering how much thought needs to be put into deciding to venture out into the waters, float around, splash on a raft, and paddle back into the shore. Is it something you think about before going in the water? Or, is this story not very common at the "regular" beach areas?


Search ends days after deadly shark attack
Australian authorties say its unlikely remains of man will be found

Australian police called off a search on Monday for the remains of a man and for the shark that bit him in half in a horrifying attack witnessed by tourists on a luxury boat off Australia's remote west coast. Boat captain Geoffrey Brazier, 26, died when a shark described as up to 20 feet long attacked him while he was snorkelling on Saturday near the Abrolhos Islands, 250 miles north of the Western Australia state capital Perth.

Brazier was attacked by either a great white shark or a tiger shark, both of which are common in the area, authorities said.

'Bit him in half'
Twelve other passengers and crew from the catamaran Matrix watched the attack in horror, with some saying the shark went straight for Brazier. Several other divers who were in the water with him were unhurt.

"It came in, bit him in half, went away for five or 10 minutes then came back for the other half," said Steve Thorne, a manager for the company that operated the boat charter.

In December, an 18-year-old surfer was killed off a beach in South Australia by what witnesses described as a great white shark measuring up to 16 feet.

"The reason why it has been called off is that the currents up there are such that anything would have been taken out to sea," police spokesman Graham Clifford told reporters.

"Also, the Abrolhos is a lot of islands and (has) a big volume of fish and many, many sharks ... we don't think there's anything left," he said.

Australia has a reputation for shark attacks, with Brazier's death the fourth fatal shark attack in the past nine months. International Shark File figures show most attacks occur in North American waters.

The first documented shark attack in Australia was in 1791 and there have been more than 625 attacks in the past 200 years, about 190 of them fatal.

[keith]

I'm wondering how much thought needs to be put into deciding to venture out into the waters, float around, splash on a raft, and paddle back into the shore. Is it something you think about before going in the water? Or, is this story not very common at the "regular" beach areas?

the nervy just make sure they are not the farthest out.

[darius]

Australia has a reputation for shark attacks, with Brazier's death the fourth fatal shark attack in the past nine months.

It happens. Nature isn't particularly forgiving to humans when we put ourselves in positions where our main assets (high eyes, opposable digits, developed brain) aren't of particularly good use.

Fortunately, we're not very tasty -- that's why the majority of attacks are non-fatal, involving a single bite.

If I'm not mistaken, most of the popular beaches in Australia have nets. If you're diving outside those areas, the risk is higher, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was almost statistically negligible. Four attacks in nine months? I'll take those odds over my daily commute!

darius

[Dan H]

To put some numbers to Darius's assertion:

The chance you'll get eaten by a shark while spending an afternoon swimming off the coast of Australia is very roughly 1 in 1,700,000.

The chance you'll get killed by a single one-hour drive in the U.S. is roughly 1 in 1,500,000. If you drive 12,000 miles per year, your death risk is about 1 in 5000.

The death rate per minute for driving is therefore roughly comparable to the shark-gobbled rate per minute in Australia - but people on the average tend to spend much more time in their cars than swimming offshore, thus the higher death rate.
What's inarguably riskier than shark attacks for swimmers off Australia is drowning. I don't have numbers for Australia, but consider that about 3,700 people drown every year in the U.S. I'm certain that more swimmers and boaters drown every year in Australia than get killed by sharks. That points to a much greater death risk per minute in the water due to drowning than due to getting munched by some peckish lamniforme.

How I got the numbers:
- Over 1.5 million international visitors to Australia go swimming, surfing, snorkeling, or diving each year (Google to find this fact). That's not even counting the Australians who do it.
- There have been 4 fatal shark attacks in the past 9 months, according to the article posted. That's about 5.3 per year.
- Making the very rough approximations that about half the people playing in the water in Australia are tourists, and the average tourist or native spends an average of three sunny afternoons per year in the water, we can calculate the number above.

- There are approximately 41000 traffic deaths per year in the U.S. (google for this stat, or consult your almanac).
- Over 2 trillion (U.S.) vehicle miles are driven in the U.S. every year, which corresponds to a death rate of 1.7 per hundred million vehicle miles.
- In a one-hour drive at 40 mph, you cover 40 miles, which corresponds to a death risk of 1 in 1.5 million.
- 12,000 miles per year corresponds to a death risk of about 1 in 5000.

[Gav]

Just to add to the Hysteria; there is a [controversial] theory that Great Whites hunt in packs. There have been sightings of groups of Whites herding and attacking seals. One explanation is that's it's females showing their pups how to kill ... It's controversial because Great Whites were thought to be [mostly] loners.