Jaws

An email from Katie reminded me to say something about sharks.

The Australian ran an article on February 17th declaring Australia the shark fatality capital of the world based upon 2004 statistics. This now looks to have been in very poor taste after a deck hand on a dive boat was bisected by a 20 foot shark while snorkelling off the coast of West Australia on March 19th. This prompted a three day search for both the body as well as the shark, but neither ever turned up. There was fierce debate in the media over the weekend as to the merits (or lack) of hunting down the shark and killing it. This follows on a couple of shark related deaths back in December, both involving teenagers.

Australia clearly as a reputation for this kind of thing, but I wanted to try and put it into perspective (being interested in risk and all that). Since 1990, Australia has experienced 63 shark attacks with 16 fatalities (actually, now I should probably add 1 to each of those numbers). In contrast, the United States has experienced 490 with 11 fatalities. At first glance, it may seem that one is more likely to get attacked in the United States, although the death rate is clearly much greater in Australia (25% vs. 2%). However, in the United States, the risk is spread over a huge populace. The United States has about 14 times as many people as Australia. If one looks at risk on a per capita basis, one's odds of becoming shark food in Australia are roughly twice what they are in the U.S., and if you are attacked you are 10 times more likely to not live through it.