Worldwide Patterns of White Shark Attacks on Humans

Burgess, George H.; Callahan, Matthew W.

doi:10.1016/b978-012415031-7/50043-4

Cited by 14 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…White sharks occur worldwide in temperate and subtropical regions, including all major ocean basins and the Mediterranean Sea (Compagno, 2001). The species has also been recorded at several tropical localities, such as the Coral Sea (Last and Stevens, 1994), Papua New Guinea (Burgess and Callahan, 1996), the central Pacifi c (Taylor, 1985;Compagno, 2001), northern Brazil (Gadig and Rosa, 1996), and the tropical southwest Indian Ocean (Cliff et al, 2000). White sharks primarily inhabit coastal and offshore waters of continental and insular shelves.…”

Section: Geographic Distributionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Biology and Ecology of the White Shark, Carcharodon Carcharias

Bruce

2008

Sharks of the Open Ocean

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White sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) occur worldwide, primarily in coastal temperate and subtropical regions, but are occasional visitors to tropical regions. They are known to make open ocean excursions, and some exchange across ocean basins has been documented by tagging and is supported by genetics data. However, global stock structure is still poorly known, and accurate population assessments are not yet possible for any region. Estimates of some biological parameters are available, but most are based on limited data that pool both sexes. White sharks are 120-150 cm total length (TL) at birth. Lengths and estimated ages at maturity are 4.5-5.0 m and 12-17 years for females and 3.6-3.8 m and 7-9 years for males. Females reach larger sizes than males. Maximum length for females is estimated to be at least 6.0 m and longevity estimates range up to 60 years, although the latter is unverifi ed and estimates of 40-50 years may be more reasonable. Estimated growth is 20-30 cm/year in sharks less than 3.0 m, but is poorly documented after maturity. Reported von Bertalanffy growth coeffi cients (0.058-0.071) are within the range of other lamnids and indicative of slow growth. The gestation period may be up to 18 months with a 3-year reproductive cycle. Reported litter sizes range from 2 to 17 with an embryonic sex ratio of 1:1. White sharks are naturally low in abundance, have low reproductive potential, are believed to have low natural mortality, and presumably have a low capacity for density-dependent compensation to rapid declines in population size. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that populations are vulnerable to recruitment overfi shing and all forms of nonnatural mortality.

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Section: Geographic Distributionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Biology and Ecology of the White Shark, Carcharodon Carcharias

Bruce

2008

Sharks of the Open Ocean

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“…If one or more of those locations has its own dynamic (and especially if two or more have effects in the opposite direction), such local-scale noise could eliminate any overall species effect. If lunar light indeed has a direct effect on shark behavior, the significant moon phase effect detected for white sharks may be explained by this species' habit of feeding mostly at or near the water surface, targeting meso-and epipelagic prey items (predominantly sea-mammals in much of its range), which is facilitated by prey silhouettes observed when attacking from below and behind (Burgess and Callahan, 1996). Humans, like pinnipeds and cetaceans, are, of course, water surface-oriented air-breathers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shark Side of the Moon: Are Shark Attacks Related to Lunar Phase?

et al. 2021

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Animals across taxa have shown behaviors linked to moon phase (or the proxy of lunar illumination), and marine organisms are well-documented to calibrate certain activities with the moon. Few studies have looked at a possible connection between moon phase and shark attacks on humans, and the results have been preliminary or lacking relationships. We used nearly 50 years of shark attack data from across the globe to test for a relationship between shark attacks and moon phase. We examined factors of geography, shark species, and outcome of attack. From 12 relationships that we tested (totaling 120 comparisons), we found 12 significant outcomes, of which five were positive (i.e., more attacks than expected) and seven were negative (i.e., fewer attacks than expected). Specifically, all the instances of more shark attacks than expected occurred at lunar illumination >50%, while all the instances of fewer shark attacks than expected occurred at lunar illumination of <50%. The findings presented here provide global evidence that shark attacks may be related to moon phase, and such information could be useful toward evaluating attack risk and developing recommendations for water-based recreational activities.

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“…Although the global number of white shark bites remains low, localized increases in such incidents as well as interactions have led to growing pressure from the general public for governments to initiate policies that can negatively affect white shark populations (Burgess and Callahan, 1996;Curtis et al, 2012;Kock et al, 2012;Meeuwig and Ferreira, 2014). For example, culling or targeted killing of large sharks considered to be an imminent threat have been used as a response to shark bites (e.g., in Egypt, La Reunion Island, Australia), but has not been demonstrated to significantly reduce risk of shark bites (e.g., Wetherbee et al, 1994;Holland et al, 1999).…”

Section: Can We Reliably Assess and Significantly Reduce Human-shark mentioning

confidence: 99%