July 8, 2014 — "People have to put this stuff in perspective," a marine biology professor said. "You're far more likely to be injured or killed driving to the beach than potentially encountering a shark, even with the bigger population."
Despite a growing population of great white sharks in U.S. waters and heightened awareness following Saturday's incident in California, shark attacks remain rare, researchers say.
"It's extremely uncommon," said Tobey Curtis, a shark researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in an interview with USA TODAY Network.
In the United States, there were 106 confirmed, unprovoked great white shark attacks, including 13 fatalities, from 1916 to 2011, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History's Shark Attack File. Of those, 78 attacks and eight fatalities were in California, according to the shark file.
Attacks by great whites represent a small proportion of overall shark attacks, said George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research. For example, in 2013, there were 47 shark attacks in the USA, according to the shark file. On average, there is only about one great white attack per year.
In the attack last weekend at Manhattan Beach in Southern California, the juvenile shark was caught on a fishing line when long-distance swimmers happened to be passing by.
Juvenile sharks in particular will feed closer to shore because they tend to go after stingrays, fish and smaller animals that are more abundant and easier to catch, says Chris Lowe, a marine biology professor at California State University at Long Beach.
Typically, sharks will simply "mind their own business," Lowe said.
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