Shark attacks — particularly deadly ones — dropped substantially last year around the world, a new report shows.
The latest iteration of the International Shark Attack File, a database run by the Florida Museum of Natural History and the University of Florida, showed that shark attacks decreased dramatically in 2024 and was far below the annual average.
“Unprovoked shark bites plummeted in 2024,” reads the headline of the report, which characterized the year as “exceptionally calm” for shark bites.
Of 88 alleged shark-human interactions that researchers say they investigated last year, 71 bites were confirmed. The report segmented those incidents into unprovoked and provokes bites, of which there were 47 and 24, respectively. Seven of the attacks were fatal, including four unprovoked attacks, according to the research.
Those figures did not account for instances where sharks attacked a boat or bit a human who was already dead. Several additional incidents where a person’s injuries could not be indisputably attributed to a shark, over another predatory marine creature, were categorized as “unconfirmed” in the report.
Confirmed attacks in 2024 dwarfed numbers reported in the previous year’s International Shark Attack File, which recognized 91 global incidents, including 69 unprovoked bites and 22 provoked bites. Ten people died in shark attacks in 2023, with six killed in unprovoked attacks, researchers said at the time.
The number of attacks last year was “well below” the 10-year average, of about 70 unprovoked shark bites recorded annually, the new report notes. It also calls the four unprovoked attacks a “significant reduction” compared with previous years.
The International Shark Attack File considers attacks on a living human in the shark’s natural habitat, who did not bother the animal prior to being bitten, “unprovoked.” It considers attacks that occur after a human has initiated some sort of contact with the shark “provoked.”
Divers suffering bites after trying to touch or otherwise harass sharks, attacks on spearfishermen, bites on people who attempted to feed sharks, and bites that happen while a shark is being unhooked or removed from a fishing net, are some examples of scenarios that would meet criteria for a “provoked” attack.
Unprovoked bites are of particular interest to the researchers studying shark attack patterns.
“We’re interested in the natural patterns of shark behavior so that we can understand why people occasionally get bitten by these animals,” said Gavin Naylor, the director of the Florida Program for Shark Research, in a statement. “Any cue or attribute that modifies an animal’s natural behavior is something that, we as scientists, want to exclude.”
Places with the most unprovoked shark attacks
Most of 2024’s unprovoked shark attacks happened in the United States, which follows a longstanding pattern, the new report notes. Last year, there were 28 confirmed shark bites in U.S. waters, accounting for 60% of the worldwide total despite being lower than the 36 unprovoked incidents confirmed in 2023.
Half of U.S. attacks took place in Florida in 2024, which is also common for the state often known to experience the highest concentrations of shark bites of anywhere in the world. Like the national total, unprovoked shark bites were down in Florida, where the five-year average is 19 unprovoked attacks.
Australia trailed the U.S. total with nine unprovoked bites, a sizable decrease from the country’s five-year average of 15. Egypt, the Maldives, Western Sahara, the Turks and Caicos Islands, French Polynesia, Mozambique, India, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, and Belize each reported one unprovoked shark attack.
The fatal attacks occurred in the U.S., Egypt, the Maldives and Western Sahara, with one death confirmed in each place, according to the Shark Attack File. Despite Florida’s tally of unprovoked bites, the only U.S. death in a shark attack last year happened in Hawaii when surfer Tamayo Perry was killed off the island of Oahu. The species of shark involved in that attack is unknown, researchers said.
