THE INTERNATIONAL SHARK ATTACK FILE EXPLAINED

Each year, a list of all known global shark attacks are released showing all the shark attacks that have happened and been reported during the last 12 months, this is known as the International Shark Attack File.

Their release is often a cause for great media debate and generates countless attention grabbing headlines about whether shark attacks or the number of deaths are up, or indeed down: Shark Attack File Results In The Media: Feeding Frenzy or Measured Response?

The International Shark Attack File (ISAF) is a compilation of all known shark attacks that is looked after by the Florida Museum of Natural History and the American Elasmobranch Society, which is made up of international workers studying sharks, skates and rays.

Shark attack data has now been collected for over 60 years, which has seen 6,000 cases become part of the File, which covers attacks from the mid-16th century to present day.

Although we get to see the headline data around the number of fatalities, where the shark attacks have happened in the world and whether they are considered as provoked attacks or unprovoked attacks, we don’t see all the information on individual encounters or attacks.

That’s because the File includes such items as medical reports, autopsies and personal interviews. Access to this sensitive data is only afforded to scientists.

For some, the term shark attack is problematic in itself, and already in some parts of Australia authorities have reclassified what they would once term attacks as now being shark encounters, taking the sensationalism away from when a shark swimming in the ocean takes a test bite out of a surfer it has mistaken for a seal: SHARK ATTACK DATABASE REBRANDS SELF TO HELP STOP SHARK STIGMA

Perhaps at some point the title of the group may change to better reflect that, but for now the evocative ISAF remains.

The latest ISAF report is released on January 24th, 2022, and as it has done over the last couple of years, The Daily Jaws will be giving its own verdict on the reading of the main headlines of the report, and what that could mean for sharks.

Here’s what we said about the International Shark Attack File report released last January, which chartered shark attacks in 2020: International Shark Attack File 2020 Shows Encounters Down But Fatalities Up

Words by Dean Newman

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