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More shark bites than anywhere else: Why is NSB the \

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More shark bites than anywhere else: Why is NSB the \

Florida’s bright summer sun gives light and life to one of the state’s most paradisiac beach town settings: New Smyrna Beach, where families, tourists and surfers are a constant presence year-round.

But beneath the inviting blue glow of this stretch of the Atlantic Ocean lies a lurking, ominous danger. One that results in an incident reported much more frequently on this Volusia County beach than anywhere else in the world.

It is also an experience that most, including Chris Pospisil, do not want to relive.

“When it bit me, it didn’t hurt right away — I just felt pressure. I kicked it with my leg, and it let go.”

This is how Pospisil partly described the terrifying moment a shark bit him while surfing in New Smyrna Beach last summer.

Seven more people experienced a similar incident in Volusia County last year, making it the top place for shark bites worldwide.

And Volusia beaches’ infamy for shark bites or New Smyrna Beach’s nickname as the “Shark Bite Capital of the World” are not some exaggerated attributes based on recent numbers.

In fact, Volusia County has topped that list since 1992, according to the International Shark Attack File (or ISAF).

Part of the Florida Museum of Natural History, located at the University of Florida in Gainesville, the ISAF “is the world’s only scientifically documented, comprehensive database of all known shark attacks,” according to the museum’s website.

How does Volusia County’s shark bite numbers compare with worldwide numbers?

If it wasn’t for Florida, the United States would tighten the gap between the top two countries with the most shark bites every year.

Last year’s numbers can put that in perspective: Of the 36 unprovoked bites in the U.S., 16 were in Florida. Australia placed second with 15.

The 36 shark bites in the U.S. in 2023 also represent a little over 50% of bites seen worldwide last year: 69.

The numbers in Florida are even more impressive when the ISAF data shows, for instance, Brazil’s three reported shark bites last year — a country with an approximately 4,500-mile coastline in the Atlantic Ocean, with several popular tourist beach towns.

Florida’s coastline has approximately 825 miles, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

Almost half of the bites worldwide last year were related to “surfing/board sports,” according to ISAF.

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While surfing’s popularity in both New Smyrna Beach and Volusia County is part of the reason why so many shark bites happen in the area, other factors are at play.

Why does Volusia County see the most shark bites every year?

Gavin Naylor, director of the museum’s Florida Program for Shark Research, is an evolutionary biologist, whose work partly consists of collecting “genetic data to answer evolutionary data.”

He has been with the museum for five years but has focused his work on sharks and rays for 30 years.

“You find so many bites (in Volusia County) and not so many in other places, it tells you that something about that region is conducive toward shark bites, which is not in other places,” Naylor said in an interview last month.

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The reasons for that, he said, are due to a “confluence of factors.”

“You need a bunch of sharks, and they need to be in the mood to bite things, and you need a bunch of people in the same area at the same time,” Naylor said.

But while Volusia County is a popular beach destination, there are specific environmental factors that contribute to the many shark bites.

“And it turns out that the Ponce Inlet outflow has a dredge that’s about 40 feet deep, so water comes in and out with the tide, and it brings a lot of nutrients,” Naylor said. “As it curves down, it mixes with the other current, and there is a really great surf break.”

These factors make the beach around it “the perfect spot,” Naylor added: The surf break attracts many surfers, who usually spend hours in the water at a time, to a part of the ocean rich in nutrients that attracts different fish species, such as mullets and menhadens.

Where several mullets and menhadens are, their predators are due to follow. And that is when Naylor brings up how different shark species affect the number of bites locally.

What kind of sharks are behind the bites in Volusia?

Blacktip sharks are the species behind most of the bites in the area, Naylor said.

“So the blacktip sharks go to that little patch of water, because there are all sorts of food in there,” he said. “Also, because of the surf, it’s very turbid and the sharks can’t see very well. So now you’ve got these sharks that are all jingled up and trying to find their lunch, swimming all over the place chasing mullet and menhaden in low visibility water, plus 50 or 60 people with arms and legs dangling off the edge of their boards looking for their perfect wave.”

That is why, Naylor said, that it is only a matter of time before the lurking blacktips will mistake a human foot or hand for one of the fish they are preying on.

“Fortunately, most of the sharks in that area are highly piscivorous sharks, such as blacktips and spinners,” he said.

When that happens, these sharks get confused by the bitten person’s reaction and resistance, which makes them quickly swim away.

“If they were bull sharks or tiger sharks, they might stick around a little bit more and the injuries would be a lot worse,” Naylor added. “A blacktip is not the same as a white shark. A white shark preys on seals and the blacktip is preying on menhadens … It has a lot to do with the behavior of the individual species that are foraging in that particular area.”

That is also in part why so many shark bites are not fatal. According to ISAF’s report, four of the 15 bites in Australia last year were fatal — one involving a bull shark and the other three involving white sharks.

“High density of people, high density of baitfish, low visibility and a lot of sharks that are hungry and looking for their lunch,” he said. “So the confluence of all those factors makes (Volusia) sort of a shark attack capital of the world.”

What does a shark bite feel like

One of those surfers, Chris Pospisil of Palm Bay, was enjoying a day of surfing in New Smyrna Beach when a shark bit him a little over a year ago.

“It’s crazy that a year has already gone by,” Pospisil said in an interview.

He was sitting on his surfboard in about 4-6 feet of water when the shark “came up from the underneath the left side of my board and chomped down on my left foot and I was able to see my foot in its mouth as it bit down and pulled me under the water,” he told The News-Journal last year.

He started kicking the shark with his other leg and, after it let go, he was able to resurface and yell for help from his friend, who was surfing with him.

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“In that moment I wasn’t really in pain, and I didn’t look at my foot,” Pospisil said, adding that all he felt was a strong pressure on his foot. “It was just tunnel vision, flight or flight.”

It wasn’t until he left the water and saw the damage to his foot that the “adrenaline rush started to wear off,” and “that’s when it started to hurt.”

He went through surgery, which with required more than 40 stitches and during which pieces of shark tooth were found on his foot bones.

Pospisil’s recovery took a few months, but he said he has been back to normal — running and surfing — since January.

He said coming back to the water was “different.”

“I was very on edge, and it felt kind of weird, a little bit uncomfortable,” he said. “But after a while, it kind of got back to normal.”

He said he is taking some precautions now, like not surfing if there is no one else in the water or avoiding it in crowded areas.

“If my friend wasn’t in the water and if the lifeguards didn’t react quick enough, I probably would have died due to blood loss,” he said.

How to avoid a shark bite

Here are just a few precautions beachgoers, especially in Volusia County, can take to avoid finding themselves in Pospisil’s situation, according to Naylor:

  • “Don’t wear shiny jewelry, because it catches the light like scales and sharks might think you are a mullet or something.”
  • “You shouldn’t go in the water where you see lots of baitfish swimming around, especially if they are jumping out of the water, because that means something’s chasing them.”
  • Don’t swim on your own, which makes you an easier target for sharks.
  • Don’t go swimming at dawn or dusk.
  • Don’t go swimming where fishermen are fishing.

“These are really fascinating creatures,” Naylor said about sharks. “These animals have been around a lot longer than velociraptors, but they are still here. They predate the dinosaurs by hundreds of millions of years. They are magically intriguing animals.

“Most people seem to think of them as threats that occasionally bite people. I think of them as time capsules of a form on the planet which has persisted … for nearly half a billion years. They’re pretty cool.”

To learn more about shark bite statistics and data, visit the ISAF website at floridamuseum.ufl.edu/shark-attacks/.

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