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By any statistical measure, the chances of being injured or killed by a shark while surfing are infinitesimally small. During the entire 20th century, along the whole of America's western seaboard, there were just 41 confirmed shark attacks on surfers, only one of which was fatal. Worldwide, less than 500 shark-related deaths, total, surfers and non-surfers, were confirmed between between 1600 and 2013. Despite these kinds of low numbers, however, sharks have always cruised freely and luridly through the surfing world's collective imagination. "No matter how gruff and grim," San Francisco writer Daniel Duane noted in his 1996 surfing memoir 

, nearly every surfer "is scared witless at the thought of being torn apart while conscious, of watching a spreading slick of one's own blood."

A holdover from the predinosaur Paleozoic era, sharks first appeared 400 million years ago (395 million years before man), and have evolved into roughly 480 species, ranging in size from six inches to 60 feet. Some eat plankton or other plant life, but most are predatory; all have cartilage-formed skeletal systems, with skin made up of a thin crosshatched layer of teethlike denticles. A nose-to-tail system of electric-current-measuring sensors gives sharks what amounts to a panoramic view of their immediate surroundings, and allows them to navigate by the earth's magnetic fields. A predatory shark's teeth are triangular and serrated along the edges, and line both the upper and lower jaws in multiple rows; the jaws of a great white can exert up to 2,000 pounds of pressure per square inch. Sharks are thought to be the world's only prebirth predators; shark eggs hatch in utero, with offspring attacking and eating each other until just one or two are left. The average life span of a white shark remains a mystery; estimates range from 25 to 100 years.

Surfers are thought to be more vulnerable than anyone else in the water, in part because his below-surface silhouette, while sitting on his board, resembles that of an idling seal. A Surfrider Foundation report in 2000 stated that one shark attack can be expected for every one million individual surfing days. Attacks are rare enough that scientists believe they occur only when the shark mistakes a human for its normal prey (seals, sea lions, sea turtles, or fish), when it feels territorially threatened, or when it's engaging in "exploratory" behavior. While attacks on humans are rising (roughly 100 worldwide in the 1940s; 220 in the 1980s; 650 in the 2000s), the increase is attributed to a dramatic rise in the number of surfers, bodyboarders, divers, and ocean swimmers. The number changes from region to region, but worldwide about 10 percent of attacks are fatal. Shark-related surfing bans (some temporary, some open-ended) have been issued along parts of the coast in Brazil and Reunion Island.

Glorified and demonized in the 1975 movie 

, the great white has since been regarded by surfers and nonsurfers alike as the overlord of the shark world. Great whites can exceed 20 feet in length and weigh more than 4,000 pounds. They prefer cooler water, account for more than half of all confirmed attacks on humans, and are the most lethal of the species. Great whites are concentrated in what is called the Red Triangle, a heavily surfed 150-mile-long region in central California that includes the beginning of Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco. In 1981, Monterey kneeboarder Lew Boren was killed by a 20-foot great white. (Boren remained the only surfer killed by a shark in California waters until 2010, when a UC Santa Barbara student was killed by a great white at nearby Surf Beach.)

Great white attacks on humans almost all follow the same pattern: an initial lunging strike from below, then a quick retreat as the shark realizes the targeted animal isn't in fact a blubber-rich sea mammal. The shark is particularly likely to vanish if it gets a taste of surfboard. In most great white-caused fatalities, the victim isn't devoured, but instead bleeds to death from the first hit.

Tiger sharks (usually 10 to 15 feet long) and bull sharks (around 10 feet; also known as the Zambezi) can also be deadly. Both prefer warm water. Tiger sharks generally hunt at night, live in tropical climates, and are responsible for virtually all attacks on surfers in Hawaii, including the 1992 death of a bodyboarder on the North Shore of Oahu. Unlike great whites, the tiger shark will bite and return, and is an indiscriminate eater; tiger shark stomach contents have included driftwood, coiled wire, coal, boat cushions, beer bottles, unopened cans, birds, dogs, smaller sharks, and dolphins.

The bull shark has the highest testosterone of any animal, will attack prey as large as itself, and lives in freshwater as well as saltwater. Bull sharks born in the Mississippi delta eventually migrate to the Gulf of Mexico, then the Florida Keys, and are responsible for many of the surfer-related attacks in Florida. An eight-foot bull is thought to have been responsible for killing a 10-year-old surfer at Virginia Beach, Virginia, in September 2001. (The East Coast of America, by a good margin, annually outpaces the West Coast for total shark attacks.)

Surfers and nonsurfers have for decades tried to guard against shark attacks. Popular swimming and surfing beaches in Australia have been lined with mesh nets as a deterrent since the early '30s; in South Africa, researchers developed an electric barrier designed to keep sharks outside the surf zone without killing marine life the way nets do. The surf press suggested in 1982 that an antishark wetsuit made of Kevlar might be a possibility, but the idea was never pursued. In 1993, two South African scientists developed a one-pound electromagnetic pulsing device that, in tests, caused sharks to veer away; two years later the $300 plastic-encased, battery-powered POD (Protective Ocean Device) was marketed—but to divers, not surfers. (A two-pound, ankle-strapped, Australian-made electromagnetic Shark Shield was marketed to surfers in early 2002, but a diver was killed in South Australia a few months later while wearing a similar device.)

Surfers were left with few options to reduce the chances of attack, beyond the normal set of recommendations: stay away from rivermouths and muddy water, don't surf at dawn or dusk, don't surf at breaks near seal colonies, don't surf alone. More than 100 million sharks are killed each year, primarily by fishing nets, and great whites have been protected by federal laws in America and Australia since 1997. A 

 magazine article in 2002 noted that from 1986 to 2000 the white shark population may have been reduced by more than 75 percent. The surf world has responded to sharks in almost every conceivable way, including brute conquest (a shark is speargunned in the head and left to flop to its death in the 1967 surf movie 

), humor (the satirical 1982-released "Shark Attack" single by the Surf Punks), animal-to-animal curiosity (big-wave surfer Mark Healey began swimming with full-size great white sharks in 2011) gore fetishism (surf magazines regularly publish photos of surfers' open or just-sutured shark wounds), creative lying (in 2010, Aussie pro surfer Clint Kimmins posted on Facebook that he'd just witnessed an attack at Burleigh Heads; he made the story up in hopes that the Burleigh crowd would disperse), and solid reportage (with "Sharks: Myth or Menace," "Sharks: Why Not to Worry," and other well-researched surf press articles). 

 magazine alone published more than 100 features, columns and short items on sharks from 1960 to 2012.

By far the best-known shark attack on a surfer took place on Halloween morning, 2003, when 13-year-old Bethany Hamilton lost her left art to a tiger shark while surfing near her home in Kauai. She returned to the surf after a remarkably swift recovery, and became an worldwide inspiration; her story was told in 

, her best-selling 2004 autobiogray, and a like-titled movie released in 2011.

Byron Bay, the easternmost point in Australia, is one of the most notoriously sharky surf zones in the world. Jeffreys Bay in South Africa is another. In 2003, a 16-year-old was knocked into the water by a great white while warming up for a contest, and watched as the animal bit his board into three pieces. The contest went on. That same year, during a world tour event, pro surfer Taj Burrow left the water during his semifinal heat after seeing an enormous fin break the surface. Contest directors refused to halt the event, and Burrow lost. In 2015, during the J-Bay Open, three-time world champion Mick Fanning was knocked from his board before catching a wave in the final heat. Fanning was unhurt, but the event was called off. The incident was seen live, on webcast, by thousands of surf fans, and by millions more over the next few days as the story went viral.

sharks and surfing

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