On Monday, a shark was spotted swimming in the swallows at a marina in Glyfada, just south of Athens, Greece.
Videos uploaded on social media show people trying to push the fish away into deeper waters. After a few agonizing minutes, the shark moved away.
This is the second incident in Greece in the last few days. A shark that was swimming near the port of Volos over the weekend was eventually moved away by the Coast Guard.
Shark attacks in Greece
When holidaying in Greece, few pause and think of the dangers that could be lurking below the idyllic Aegean waters, but an academic paper published recently has revealed new insights about the frequency of shark attacks in Greece.
The paper, authored by Christos Taklis, provides a detailed statistical breakdown of shark attacks occurring in Greece over the past 180 years.
Thankfully, swimmers in Greece can rest assured that such incidents are mostly relegated to the Jaws movies and incidents are very rare. Nevertheless, an appropriate degree of caution and care should be taken when enjoying time spent in the water.
According to the study, the deadliest decade for recorded shark attacks in Greek waters was the 1950s. Over this ten-year period, there were a total of six incidents, five of which proved fatal.
During many of the incidents, the species of shark involved in the attack could not be identified. In cases where identification could be established, great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias Linnaeus) were the species most commonly involved.
The overall picture though, is that shark attacks in Greece are rare. Over the 180-year period examined in the paper, there were only 15 total recorded incidents.
Shark attacks globally
In 2023, there were more unprovoked shark attacks globally, leading to more deaths compared to the year before.
Based on the International Shark Attack File (ISAF) at the University of Florida, there were 69 unprovoked shark bites in 2023. This number is higher than the average of 63 attacks over the past five years but still follows the overall trend.
Last year, ten unprovoked attacks turned deadly, which is twice as many as the previous year. Most of these tragic incidents happened in Australia, making up 40 percent of all fatalities, even though Australia only had 22 percent of the total attacks.
In addition to Australia, there were confirmed deaths from shark attacks in the United States (2), the Bahamas, Egypt, Mexico, and New Caledonia.
Non-fatal bites also occurred in Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, New Zealand, the Seychelles, Turks and Caicos, Ecuador on the Galápagos Islands, and South Africa, according to ISAF.