That’s kinda of the theory of it doesn’t matter how long the odds are of getting eaten by a shark after you’ve been eaten by a shark …
I think it’s the horror factor. The idea of being attacked by a shark just scares the crap out of people so much they don’t care about anything else. It’s stamped into their brains as “avoid at all costs.”
I’ve thought about my own emotions on this subject and to be honest, the statistics don’t really play into it for me either. I’m not afraid of sharks because I’m just not. My dad taught me to swim when I was still a toddler and trips to the bay for swimming and fun on the beach were part of my life for many years before I learned about sharks. The ocean is where I go for fun, and I was taught to respect it, but I’m not afraid that unseen monsters are going to attack me. I had a seal swim up to me once and look me over, but he seemed more like a curious dog than something menacing.
As for the chances of being a crime victim in Long Beach, it’s funny you mention that because I have definitely been creeped out more by people on the beach than by what’s in the water.
Yeah, no one has ever made a horror movie about being killed by sunburn, or while watching a baseball game.
Except that the definition of “risk” is pretty much exactly the “conflation” of severity and probability, being the product of the two.
An nuclear strike is extremely improbable, but the severity is immense, so the risk is fairly high. Spilling a glass of water is highly probable, but the severity is (almost always) very low, making spilling water a low risk.
But I know what you were saying, I just wanted to nitpick. Thanks for the opportunity. 
Sure, there’s “risk”, the engineering discipline, which is precisely as you describe. (I’ve been the lucky “Risk and Opportunity Manager” for program teams, so I understand what you’re saying. Understand it well enough to shudder, frankly.)
And then there’s colloquial “risk”. This, while still has the dot product of “probability” and “severity”, tends to overstate probability in the face of high severity, when in practice they are both independent variables.
The mathematical study of risk is part of actuarial science.
Yeah, I agree that people are lousy at assessing risk - and not only physical. But one aspect of the swimming w/ sharks is that (absent a sharknado) you can reduce the risk to ZERO by not swimming in saltwater. The activity is entirely volitional, as opposed to “riskier” activities such as driving or showering, which most people consider less optional. Similarly, if I never fly in a plane, I’ll NEVER die in a plane crash (unless a plane crashes ON me).
I’m of a certain age such that I can assure you that the movie Jaws did a number on me. As a kid, I had no problem swimming out further than my parents were comfortable with. After Jaws, I still am somewhat uncomfortable in the ocean when I got out much beyond not being able to see my feet. Not proud of the fact that one thing I appreciate about swimming in Lake Michigan and smaller lakes, is that not even the smallest portion of my lizard mind thinks there is anything out there that might eat me.
I think the lack of vision and being out of your element is also significant. Similar to “adrenaline hiking” down game trails in heavy forest. Or hanggliding/skydiving. I’m more adept/experienced at handling anything unusual that occurs when I’m on dry ground, than when in the air or deep water.
Local knowledge/experience can also be useful. You swim often, probably talk with other swimmers, and have greater than average knowledge of various aspects of water safety. The masses lack that knowledge, which I suspect contributes to their magnifying their fears. I was recently in Daytona, where we enjoyed body surfing. Admit I was happy to overhear some surfers discussing (accurately or not) the local shark presence, how they were more prevalent in the channels and such. I also took some comfort in the fact that there were 10-20 of us out there jumping around. Even in the unlikely event that a hungry shark came upon us determined to feed, well, there was a pretty good chance it would munch on someone other than me. I’d feel more creeped out if I was swimming out alone.
The discussion above appears to say that there are objective scientific methods of evaluating risks but humans prefer gut instincts over rationale.
This in my experience is not so. In my experience, the mathematics/science fails (or gives inaccurate results) where the impact of an bad event is astronomically high but the probability is minuscule.
I have come across multiple situations like this in the course of engineering designs risk reviews (like FMEA, HAZOP) especially in the context of Chemical / Oil & Gas Plants.
Risk is traditionally defined as the product of a) Probability of a malfunction and b) Impact of the malfunction. As the probability becomes a very small number and Impact becomes a very large number, the math fails to make sense.
So events like Sept 11 attacks on the World Trade Center would be such an event that the building designer did not consider a credible risk. Or the Exxon Valdez or the BP Horizon.
The Australian Shark Attack File is probably the most comprehensive long-term compendium of stats, covering a period from 1791 to the present.
Australia had a long-term running average of ~1 fatality per annum, which is now pushing towards 2-3 per annum, but with an increase of the white population [because Black deaths didnt matter] over that time from 10,000 to 20 million, massive increase in recreational swimming etc. Sydney Harbour, in the centre of the most populous city has seen an increase in bull sharks, which are particularly unpleasant critters, which has been attributed to the return of good fish stocks as pollution gets cleaned up.
Yeah, because they are right. If you sleep with dogs, you may get fleas… If you swim with sharks, you may get bitten.
Your problem doesn’t seem to stem from the statistical likelihood of harm in your hobby, but rather, how you are adversely viewed in other people’s opinions about what you do. It is obvious that you’ve convinced yourself that you are not in harms’ way concerning a shark attack, so live with it and move on. No one here can statistically quantify what you choose to believe.
Good luck.
I live a couple of minutes walk away from a beach where sharks are regularly found - in Fish Hoek, Cape Town. There are an average of about 40 shark sightings a year in the bay. I have no problem swimming there almost every day in the summer.
There were fatal shark attacks at my local beach in 2004 and 2010, and a man (who ignored multiple warnings) lost a leg to a shark in 2011. Last summer I watched a pair of large great white sharks literally metres from beach, in the surf, swimming leisurely along the shore.
However, there is a good system of shark spotting and temporary shark exclusion nets are put out every day in the summer. It’s a matter of understanding the risks and the systems in place, and not over-reacting.
It’s like any kind of animal risk. People who live in the mountains in the US and understand grizzy bears run very little risk from them because they use common sense and reasonable caution. Tourists who don’t are at risk. There are people who are terrified of snakes or alligators or lions, and there are people who routinely work with them every day for decades. It’s a matter of understanding and respecting what you are dealing with. Hell, hundreds of people get bitten by dogs every day!
With reasonable caution the shark risks are minimal. Humans are not a natural prey for sharks.
The beach here is often packed with people, and there are many hundreds of swimmers in the sea on hot days. One day last summer, for example, the shark siren sounded, everyone got out of the water - with no particular panic or fuss - and we could see some fins far out in the bay. An hour or two later the ‘all clear’ was given and people were back in the water as normal.
But if the sea was rough and shark-spotting conditions were not good, you would be more cautious, and you would be careful to stay within the part of the beach protected by the shark exclusion net, where the risks are very small.
Here’s a great pic taken on Fish Hoek beach in 2014 - a quiet day, a shark swimming very close to the beach, unconcerned beachgoers, kids playing at the edge of the sea, a lifeguard (in yellow shirt and red shorts at the right) walking along the edge of the water to ensure that people stay out.
The pic was probably taken from a lifeguard boat.
It’s a case of sensible coexistence!
**Worldwide statistics:
Deer kill 130 people annually
Cows kill 22 people annually
Jellyfish kill 40 people annually
Ants kill 30 people annually
Hippos kill 2900 people annually
Horses kill 20 people annually
Sharks kill 5 people annually
**
There’s a lot of excellent information about sharks around Cape Town, and shark safety advice, at
Shark Spotters
There’s a recent paper “Forecasts or Fortune telling” that makes this same point. For rare events even experts aren’t actually that good at estimating risk. Shark attacks are rare enough to fall into this category - they are so unlikely that small variations in time and place invalidate what little data we have. We don’t know what the risk is, we just know it is small.
(Somehow that logic is reassuring for shark attacks, and rather troubling for nuclear meltdown or extinction-level asteroid strike).
There’s no rule that says that people should be worried in proportion to the likelihood, or that they aren’t allowed to consider “death by shark” to be worse than “death by collapsing sand-castle”. It’s a case where the experts are more methodical, but they have no special claim to objectivity.
One of the fun things we’ve noticed in our own research is how many safety experts have dangerous hobbies. They tend to be very good at explaining why what they are doing is “not really dangerous” or “an informed, calculated risk”.
One option you’ve not explored yet is to come and swim in Australia, where we scoff at the potential dangers of sharks, what with so many things on land that can kill you as well.
When an injured Great White shark got washedup on a major Sydney beach a few days ago, we just threw it into the local public pool to give it a rest and play with the kiddies. In fact, we are so dismissive of shark threat, it was named 'Fluffy’.
Statistically speaking, how do you like them odds?
You raise a valid point as far as it goes.
Probability times impact gives a * valid metric of risk. But that’s not the only *relevant metric. If any given impact is simply flat intolerable, then the probability must be held to zero. If the probability is above zero, you’re saying you’re willing to eat the impact at least occasionally.
The problems come in when a decisionmaker, facing a budget, says in effect “One failure per century is close enough to zero that we’ll pretend it’s actually zero.” Mother Nature and her sidekick Fate have a way of exposing any pretending in human works.
The other main source for problems is the unanticipated risk. The WTC was believed to be airplane-proof enough, given the assumption all the big airplanes were flown by professionals trying to avoid buildings. Once that assumption was proven invalid a new calculation is in order.
IMO the reason we have all the monster anti-takeover procedures on board and have USAF at the ready to kill rogue airliners is that it’s simply cheaper to kill an airliner every couple decades than it would be to rebuild every large building in America to withstand deliberate runaway Boeings.
IOW: We have now incorporated that risk into the calcs and have developed and installed our chosen remediation. So the risk “books” are now “balanced” again. At least until the next unanticipated risk appears. Fate remains very creative.
Ocean swimming is not going to the beach so knowing the risk of the latter tells you nothing about the risk of the former. Almost all California shark bites are suffered by surfers, paddleboarders, or spearfishermen. I have heard that sharks are less likely to attack people who don’t have boards since they mistake the silhouettes of the boards for seals. So the risk is probably very small but is likely much higher than 1 in 738 million. If you are concerned, there are wetsuits that will make you invisible to sharks.