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Once again, Florida has lead the nation in shark attacks. What? Did you think Utah or Nevada were going to pull out a surprise victory?
The Sunshine State saw 28 shark attacks in 2014, which made up more than half of the nation’s total 54 shark attacks, according to the University of Florida International Shark Attack File. Luckily, none of them were fatal, and indeed only three people died from shark attacks anywhere in the world last year.
As it turns out, though, most of Florida’s shark attacks are relatively minor.
“Most of them are better called bites than attacks,” George Burgess, curator of the data, said in a statement. “They’re the equivalent of dog bites.”
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And not even bad dog bites apparently.
Still, there sure are a lot that happen here. Florida was home to about 52 percent of America’s shark attacks and 38 percent of the entire world’s. Yes, there were only 72 shark attacks across the globe in 2014. In fact, Florida has more shark attacks than the entirety of Australia.
Hawaii came in second place with seven attacks while South Carolina was third with five.
The good news is Miami-Dade County had no recorded shark attacks in 2014. Broward and Palm Beach each had two. Maybe we can work that into a tourism campaign.
As a note, the study only included unprovoked shark attacks. Meaning if you heard about your uncle Jimmy losing his finger after trying to drunkenly bait a shark with a squirrel corpse up in the Panhandle, that did not count.
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