SARASOTA COUNTY (WSNN) – UF’s Florida Museum lists 17 other things more likely to kill you than a shark bite. Still, the fataliaties are up, and as we’ve all seen “Jaws, common sense goes out the window. Suncoast Fishermen share their encounters with sharks.
The University of Florida’s annual report counts 57 unprovoked shark attacks last year. Florida recorded 16.
Fishing Captain William Thompson makes his living in the Gulf waters and often encounters the majestic, and yes, scary creatures.
“We encounter sharks more often than we don’t, I’ve never seen anyone be attacked,” Thompson said.
Trey Dietz is a Sarasota fishing guide, and he says he catches sharks all the time.
“We see sharks year-round,” Dietz said. “I wouldn’t say anything is out of the ordinary from the year before or any years before.”
Gavin Naylor is the Florida Program for Shark Research director. He says it’s not surprising Florida is a hotspot for shark bites.
“Florida is a peninsula, it’s warm weather, people go swimming in the water all year round,” Naylor said. “There are lots of surfers and we have a very long coastline.”
Naylor says there is a connection between surfing and sharks.
“In the Florida coast, it’s almost exclusively surfers,” Naylor said. “When there are baitfish and surfers, they get confused. They’re chasing baitfish and they accidentally bite somebody’s foot and then they come in a get some stitches, but it’s usually not that bad.”
There were zero reported bites off the Suncoast last year. But half of Florida’s shark bites happened off Volusia County. UF reports 10 fatalities worldwide with three of them in the U.S.
But, really, Naylor says shark bites are almost always an accident. It’s not the way Hollywood portrays them.
“If sharks really liked to target humans, there’d be tens to thousands of people getting bitten by sharks every year,” Naylor said. “The fact that there are so few is testament to the fact that they’re trying to avoid people.”
To avoid a shark bite, Naylor says don’t splash around or wear shiny jewelry that may confuse a shark with a fish, swim in groups to not be singled out, and avoid going out at dawn or dusk when sharks may be feeding.
