Shark Caught on Kismet Beach, New York, After Two Children Attacked at Fire Island

Shark Caught on Kismet Beach, New York, After Two Children Attacked at Fire Island

THE odds are in — statistically Australians have a higher chance of being attacked by a shark here than in any other country in the world.

Detailed maps reveal the chance of being taken by the ocean predator, based on reports dating back to 1900.

Australia comes in at number one, with the odds of being attacked one in 2,704,600.

But even still, humans are more at risk of dying from the flu at one in 63.

And for every human killed by a shark, humans kill about two million of the animals.

A team at Casino.org have compiled attack data from 1900 in Australia, South Africa, Brazil, New Zealand and the United States and compared these stats to the population of each location.

Trailing behind Australia is New Zealand, South Africa, the US and then Brazil.

When Australia gets broken down by area, the Torres Strait comes in at number one, followed by the Northern Territory.

That’s before Queensland, which has had 221 attacks since 1900, and New South Wales with 331.

There have been several shark attacks in recent years in Far North waters, despite cases in the Torres Strait being particularly rare and bull sharks generally not being an aggressive species.

Teenager Daniel Smith was fatally attacked by a tiger shark while spear fishing at Rudder Reef off Port Douglas in December 2014, while a shark was also blamed for the death of Mission Beach tourism operator Steven “Fozzy” Foster in February 2016.

The Casino data also showed that 93 per cent of all shark attacks worldwide have been on males.

Overall during their lifetime people have a one in 3.7 million chance of being killed by a shark. The team highlighted out of the 460 species of shark, only 30 have been reported to attack humans

People can even take out insurance against shark attacks, which costs about $130 a year.

The stats show 42 per cent of attacks are on legs, although only 7 per cent of recorded attacks have resulted in actual limb loss.

A recent study showed shark repellent bands might actually work in deterring sharks.

A dummy armed with shark repellents but stuffed with bait spent 14 minutes in the water and had 226 shark interactions but wasn’t attacked once.

Sydney shark keeper Aaron Hay recently told news.com.au on average 24 people died a year being hit in the head by a flying cork, compared to six or seven being killed by sharks around the world.

He said the biggest misconception about sharks was that they were out to eat humans.

People are statistically more likely to die taking a dangerous selfie.

“The biggest misconception would be that sharks are actually out there just to hunt and eat humans,” Mr Hay said.

“They actually find us incredibly unpalatable. They don’t like the taste of us at all.

“It’s one of those things that’s been around a long time thanks to a lot of different movies, and that word-of-mouth viral video stuff.”