IT’S safe to go back in the water—and that’s official. People aren’t at the top of a shark’s list of favourite summer snacks.
Last July, Time magazine headlined 2001 as “The Summer of the Shark”. But George Burgess of the University of Florida, who collates the International Shark Attack File (www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Sharks/ISAF/ISAF.htm) recorded only 76 unprovoked attacks around the world last year, down from 85 in 2000, and listed only five deaths. Fifteen times as many people are killed by falling coconuts, he says.
