If the shark appears to be coming closer to you, get out of the water! But remember those magic words: Stay calm. You’ll want to move quickly, but calmly and smoothly. Do your best to keep the shark in sight.

Tides help us in the following ways: High tides help in navigation. This helps the ships to arrive at the harbour more easily. Tides are also helpful in generating electricity.

Tides affect coastal regions in different ways. High tides push large amounts of water far up onto beaches and leave the sand and sediment mixed with the water behind when the tide goes out. Therefore, tides transport sand and sediment and shape shorelines. Tides feed estuaries.

Remember that at an estuary or river mouth the current will be carrying you inshore as the tide comes in (relatively safe) but offshore when the tide goes out (potentially very dangerous). If in doubt avoid the fastest flow in the middle hours of the tide.

Most attacks world-wide happen between 8.00 am and 6.00 pm and mostly on weekend during the warmer seasons of the year. This has not so much to do with shark behaviour though but everything with human behaviour since these are the times when most people are spending time in the water.

The 2020 worldwide total of 57 confirmed unprovoked cases was lower than the most recent five-year (2015-2019) average of 80 incidents annually. There were 13 shark related fatalities this year, 10 of which were confirmed to be unprovoked.

The great white is the most dangerous shark with a recorded 314 unprovoked attacks on humans. This is followed by the striped tiger shark with 111 attacks, bull sharks with 100 attacks and blacktip shark with 29 attacks.

Out of more than 489 shark species, only three are responsible for a double-digit number of fatal, unprovoked attacks on humans: the great white, tiger, and bull….Statistics.

Humans are not the preferred prey of the great white shark, but the great white is nevertheless responsible for the largest number of reported and identified fatal unprovoked shark attacks on humans although this happens very rarely (typically less than 10 times a year globally).

white shark