[imagesource: YouTube/Leo Hermans]

The overwhelming majority of people who set foot in the water will never encounter a shark, and the list of things more deadly than sharks is lengthy.

Despite this, sharks continue to spark fear in many, with drone footage like this spreading far and wide across the globe.

Down Under, they can be forgiven for being a little wary, though, given that more Australians have been killed in unprovoked shark attacks this year than in any year since 1934.

Whilst the number of shark bites is actually in line with stats from the past decade or so, the increase in deaths has led scientists to ponder if the La Niña weather event may be changing where sharks are searching for prey.

The Guardian reporting below:

On Sunday, police in Western Australia called off their search for the body of Andrew Sharpe after pieces of the 52-year-old father’s wetsuit and surfboard had washed up on the beach near Esperance. Friends saw a shark bite him two days earlier.

His death was the seventh from a shark bite in Australia in 2020 and the sixth from an unprovoked attack.

Friends who were in the water with Sharpe at the time said he was attacked by a “monster shark” estimated to be close to four metres in size.

In 2020 so far, Australia has recorded 17 unprovoked shark bites, and marine biologist Dr Blake Chapman says repeated bites in the same attack show a shark that is treating a human as prey:

“In some of the cases this year it sounds like the shark hung around and bit more than once, which is unusual behaviour for great white sharks,” she said. “When they bite more than once it’s more likely to be fatal as there’s more blood loss.”

…She said great white sharks, which have killed several of this year’s victims, “tend to follow migrations of prey”, such as salmon, which can be influenced by a La Niña event.

Chapman did add that it’s tough to draw too many conclusions from a relatively small number of deaths, and that fatal attacks can still occur from single bites that strike key arteries or vital organs.

Prof Robert Harcourt, the director of Macquarie University’s marine mammal research group, was also of the belief that La Niña, which is associated with cooler sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific, could be a factor:

[He] said that in addition to cooler water temperatures being favourable to great white sharks, increased rains during a La Niña could reduce salinity and attract bull sharks to waters where more people swim.

He said currents and winds could also lead to salmon and other fish clustering closer to the shore than under other conditions.

“The sharks are responding to where their prey will most likely be,” Harcourt said.

Whatever the reasoning, residents of Esperance, which is southwest of Perth, are desperate for some sort of intervention from authorities.

There have been two fatalities in the town this past year, and there was another back in 2017, all of which involved great white sharks.

According to Surfline, shark towers have been put in place at one of the town’s most popular beaches (below), along with “smart” receiver buoys designed to pick up the presence of radio-tagged sharks, but the system is flawed:

The shark that took Andrew Sharpe wasn’t tagged and wasn’t picked up by the receiver, nor was it sighted by anyone prior to the attack.

People have been surfing around Esperance for many years, though surfing numbers have grown in recent years, Mitch says, “like anywhere in the world.” But he says the older surfers in the area never used to see sharks. And local fishermen “don’t want their kids going in the water any more.”

That’s Mitch Capelli, the founder of the Esperance Ocean Safety and Support Group, speaking above, and he believes there could be big trouble around the corner.

Not to bring up the most infamous shark movie of all time (no, not The Meg), but doesn’t this sound familiar?

He fears another fatality is inevitable and that the impact on the town will be huge — including on the tourist trade. “It’s about to unfold, I think. The whole town’s booked out right now for the next six months. But people are going to be shit scared. None of the local crew are surfing right now and the recreational dive industry is dead.”

You can read that full story here.

According to Shark Spotters, there have been a total of 248 unprovoked attacks in South Africa since records started in 1905.

The last official shark attack death occurred in 2017, when Sivuyile Xelela was attacked near Dyer Island.

[sources:guardian&surfline]