Shark Attacks
Divides by 8 billion people. Most never swim in shark-populated waters.
Calculate Your Risk
The misleading stat
~10 deaths per year worldwide
(global average, including people never exposed)
vs
Your actual annual risk
1 in 666,667
(0.0001% chance per year)
For comparison
- Drowning (US annual, whole population): 1 in 82,000
- Car crash (US annual): 1 in 8,000
- Lightning strike (US annual): 1 in 16,000,000
Methodology & sources
This calculator multiplies chained probabilities:
- Shark encounter: 0.00001 — Site estimate: ~70 unprovoked bites/year (ISAF ten-year average) against an estimated ~300M ocean swim-hours/year worldwide, with a 3% bite-given-encounter assumption
- Hours in water
- Days per year
- Attack given encounter: 0.03 — Site assumption; ISAF reports most encounters do not result in bites
- Fatal outcome: 0.1 — ISAF ten-year average: ~6 fatalities per ~70 unprovoked bites per year