Putting Shark Attacks In Perspective

Shark attacks are big news and hearing of them in the media can often prompt a moment’s hesitation when entering the water. But the chances of being killed by a shark are extremely small, and the odds will only improve further as we better understand the factors that motivate these tragic events.

- Blake Chapman

“IS IT SAFE to swim here?”

Fourteen-year-old lifesaver Damon Kendrick remembers being irritated at being asked this by a neighbour one Sunday in February 1974. “What do you mean, is it safe to swim here?” he replied, although he knew exactly what she meant. A man had been bitten by a shark here, at Amanzimtoti, 24km from Durban in South Africa, the previous month. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence,” Damon told his neighbour, explaining that not only were shark attacks extremely rare, but the beach was well protected by shark nets.

But just four days later, Damon, who is now 57, woke up in hospital with the memory of doctors telling him that they’d had to amputate. He lifted the sheets and saw that his lower right leg was gone. He’d been bitten during lifesaving drills at the beach he was so confident posed no danger. Over the next 13 months, another three people had run-ins with sharks there, highlighting the fact that mesh nets are much less effective than many people realise.

It would be great to think that in the many years since Damon was bitten, we’d learnt enough about shark attack mitigation that these sorts of encounters no longer occurred, but that’s unfortunately not the case. Paul Gaughan, a community paramedic in Esperance, Western Australia, has attended to two shark-bite victims since 2014, the most recent last April. “The 17-year-old girl had been dragged from the sea, pulseless, with her left leg missing,” he told me. “I still live in hope that I won’t have to attend anything like this again, but I know it’s a real possibility.”