Halloween is peak season for scary stories, and sharks get more than their share. This guide takes eight common shark myths, from rising attacks and nonstop swimming to seal mix-ups and lone rogue sharks, and checks each one against data from the International Shark Attack File (ISAF) and published research. The goal is to show what is actually worth knowing before your next trip to the beach.
If your picture of sharks was shaped by decades of Shark Week on Discovery Channel, some of these will be familiar. Consider this a seasonal follow-up to our broader guide on debunking common shark myths, built around the newest bite numbers.
Are shark attacks rising? What the ISAF numbers show
Myth 1: Shark attacks keep going up. The record shows big swings from one year to the next, not a steady climb. The ISAF, maintained by the Florida Museum of Natural History, logged just 47 unprovoked bites worldwide in 2024, four of them fatal, against a 10-year average of 70, according to the Florida Museum’s 2024 report. London’s Natural History Museum called it the lowest total in almost 30 years.
The count bounced back in 2025. The ISAF’s 2025 worldwide summary confirmed 65 unprovoked bites out of 105 alleged shark-human interactions it investigated, in line with the 2020–2024 average of 61 a year. Nine of the 2025 unprovoked bites were fatal, close to the five-year average of eight. Most of those deaths involved white sharks, three in Australia and one in California.
The ISAF says yearly fluctuations are expected. Ocean conditions affect how many sharks are near shore, while weather and the economy affect how many people are in the water. The file also suggests the 2025 rise in white shark deaths may be random variation or may reflect more white sharks gathering near beaches popular with surfers, particularly in Australia.
Definitions matter here. An unprovoked bite happens in the shark’s natural habitat with no human provocation. Bites during spearfishing, hand-feeding or unhooking a shark count as provoked and are tallied separately; the ISAF confirmed 29 of those in 2025. A case like the kayaker bitten by a shark he had hooked off Malibu shows why the two categories are kept apart.
Myth 2: Sharks are the big danger at the beach. In the United States, the lifetime chance of being killed by a shark is about 1 in 4 million, the Natural History Museum reported. The odds of a fatal sting from hornets, bees or wasps are about 1 in 41,000, and fatal dog attacks run about 1 in 45,000. Worldwide, the risk of a fatal shark bite is about 1 in 28 million. The Florida Museum notes that the World Health Organization ranks drowning as the third leading cause of accidental death globally, and that rip currents pose a greater risk to beachgoers than sharks.
Do sharks mistake people for seals?
Myth 3: Sharks bite people because they think we’re seals. This one is partly supported and still debated. In 2021, Macquarie University researchers modeled the vision of juvenile white sharks in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. They found that from below, surfers, swimmers and seals look much alike, because the sharks cannot pick out fine detail or color.
The paper itself adds caveats. Forensic comparisons suggest white sharks bite seals and sea lions harder than they bite people, so bites on humans may be exploratory. Sharks may also commit to a bite based on early cues, then ease off once closer-range cues don’t match. The fair summary: mistaken identity may explain some bites, but it is not settled. For more on where these animals travel, see our explainer on great white shark migration in the Northwest Atlantic.
Other cases point the same way. Many bites in Volusia County, Florida, were likely from young blacktip sharks that have not fully learned to tell people from their usual prey of fish, stingrays and other sharks, the Florida Museum said, though species were unconfirmed. Surfers made up a third of unprovoked bites in 2024, and Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research, has linked that to murky, wave-churned water that draws bait fish and cuts visibility.
Myth 4: A string of bites means one rogue shark is on the hunt. When several people were bitten near Florida’s Panhandle and on South Padre Island, Texas, in 2024, early reports floated the idea of a single culprit. The Florida Museum said there is little evidence that this happens. ISAF manager Joe Miguez said it was much more plausible that multiple sharks were responding to the same environmental cues.
We can’t preclude that it was the same animal, but what’s often overlooked is that the same climatic conditions that bring people into the water are the same conditions that bring sharks closer to shore.
Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research
Shark myths about how sharks breathe, live and bite
Myth 5: All sharks must keep swimming or they die. True for some, false for many. The Save Our Seas Foundation explains that ram ventilators breathe by swimming, which pushes water across their gills. Buccal pumpers can draw water over their gills while sitting still. Wobbegongs and Port Jackson sharks rely on that pumping method, so they can rest motionless and keep breathing. Tiger sharks and bull sharks are able to alternate between the two techniques, and grey reef sharks may do the same when they rest.
Myth 6: Sharks only live in salt water. Bull sharks break that rule. They tolerate fresh water and have turned up far inland, hundreds of miles up river systems, according to the Florida Museum. Pregnant females often head upstream, where fewer predators threaten their young. In 2024, a man wading in the Vaitarna River in western India was bitten by a medium-sized bull shark.
Myth 7: Every shark is dangerous. The world has upward of 500 shark species, yet just 13 have a record of biting people frequently, a bar the ISAF sets at 10 or more bites, the Natural History Museum reported. White, bull and tiger sharks account for most bites. Dr. Diego Vaz, the museum’s senior curator of fishes, said size is a big reason, since larger sharks are more likely to stand their ground than flee.
Who should really be afraid of whom?
Myth 8: Sharks are a bigger threat to us than we are to them. The math runs the other way. People kill sharks by the tens of millions in a typical year, while sharks injure roughly 70 people, according to the Natural History Museum. Fisheries alone kill an estimated 80 million sharks a year, and many more are caught as bycatch in gillnets and longlines set for other fish.
Vaz put the bite numbers in perspective. “Sharks have been on Earth for over 400 million years, much longer than humans, so we’re the ones who are invading their space,” he said. That long history is covered in our look at the evolution of sharks.
How to lower your shark bite risk even further
The odds are already tiny, but the ISAF recommends a few habits that shrink them further:
- Swim with other people, since sharks tend to approach individuals who are alone.
- Stay close to shore and away from drop-offs where sharks gather.
- Skip swimming at night, dawn and dusk, when sharks are more likely to feed and are harder to spot.
- Leave reflective jewelry and bright clothing on the beach, because sharks see light-dark contrast well.
- Avoid areas where people are fishing, and never try to feed or provoke a shark.
The rest of the season’s scares are best left to costumes. Bite totals will keep rising and falling from one year to the next, which the ISAF says is expected, but its data show the risk to any one swimmer remains extremely low.
Source: Florida Museum of Natural History, International Shark Attack File, EurekAlert! (Florida Museum of Natural History), ScienceDaily / Study: Journal of the Royal Society Interface (via PubMed Central)
