George Burgess will give talk on “The Man in the Gray Suit: The Truth About Shark Attacks” on May 28.
Frank Stephenson
Special to the Chronicle
It’s a statistic that boosters everywhere in the Sunshine State are loath to mention: When it comes to shark attacks, every year Florida consistently ranks as the shark-bite capital of the nation.
Last year, 28 people enjoying Florida’s warm surf were bitten, albeit none fatally. Since 2001, a total of 323 shark bites in the state have been recorded. Fortunately, over that 14-year span only three victims died from their injuries.
Keeping tabs on such grim statistics — not just for Florida but also for the entire world — is the mission of the International Shark Attack File based at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville. On May 28 at the IMAX Theater in Tallahassee the director of the program, George Burgess, will explain how the file operates and will discuss shark-attack myths, the latest findings and the surprising trends in shark attacks around the globe.
Burgess, who has been described as the nation’s topmost expert on the history of human interaction with the most feared predator on the planet, will present “The Man in the Gray Suit: The Truth About Shark Attacks.” The program begins at 7 p.m. with doors opening at 6 to the Challenger Learning Center, home of the IMAX, on Kleman Plaza. The presentation concludes the HORIZONS 2015 Spring Speaker Series run by the Tallahassee Scientific Society.
Burgess says that shark attacks around the world are generally on the rise, thanks to shark conservation efforts that began in the early 1990s combined with increasing numbers of people enjoying saltwater recreation. Shark populations particularly in U.S. waters, where conservation laws tend to be enforced more strictly than elsewhere, are steadily recovering from severe overfishing that had numerous shark species on the brink of collapse 25 years ago, he said.
“For marine conservationists, this is terrific news. But with more and more people spending time in the water each year, it’s no surprise we’re seeing a rise in bites,” Burgess said. “I think we can safely predict that we’ll continue seeing even more in the future.”
Recent headlinegrabbing news about the prevalence of white sharks — the scary star of the “Jaws” movie series — on the East Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico testifies to these animals’ ability to recover. So far, no white sharks have been proven to be involved in any of Florida’s shark-attack incidences. Burgess believes it’s only a matter of time before that changes. White shark sightings in Florida and near-Florida waters are on the rise. In March, an angler fishing from a Panama City beach caught, tagged and released a 10-foot white. Burgess thinks that may be the first time such a feat was ever accomplished by a shorebound angler in the U.S.
Tickets for Burgess’s talk are $8 for Society members and $15 for non-members and are available online at www.TallySci.org. Remaining tickets also will be sold at the door the evening of the event.
Beginning at 6, Burgess will be selling and signing copies of his most recent book, “Sharks: The Animal Answer Guide” Johns Hopkins, 2014) which he coauthored with Gene Helfman.