Last Monday’s shark attack off Truro’s Ballston Beach – the first in 76 years on Cape Cod – set off a media furor and horrified beachgoers along the storied Massachusetts peninsula that attracts millions of vacationers every summer. 
 
 It may also force the hordes that crowd the Cape’s beaches to relearn a lesson lost for decades when seals had all but disappeared from the New England coasts – that swimming among shark’s prey is very dangerous. 
 
 Lifeguards were on high alert, hundreds of spurious dorsal fin sightings were reported and airborne spotters scanned the offshore swells for great white sharks, the prime suspect in the attack on Chris Myers, 50. 
 
 More than 300,000 grey seals, and their vulnerable pups, now live on the Cape – a population 30 times the nadir in the 1960s – and the return of the seals has attracted a return, inshore, of great white sharks. 
 
 “The reason the great white sharks are coming closer to shore in the Cape Cod area, specifically on the eastern shore, is because of the growing grey seal population,” said Greg Skomal, a Massachusetts marine biologist. 
 
 Mr. Myers and his 16-year-old son were swimming several hundred metres offshore, close to known seal colonies, when something bit his lower legs. 
 
 Meanwhile harried Massachusetts tourism officials were battling to prevent a single attack morphing into a nightmare marketing scenario of sinister fins slicing the waters off Cape Cod. 
 
 “Not to downplay the nasty experience the bitee has had but there are sharks in the ocean,” said Betsy Wall, executive director of the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism. “There’s a lot of signs and notices about where it is safe to swim and where it is not. People should stay away from seals.” 
 
 Mr. Myers, 50, who is expected to make a full recovery from deep gashes that required more than 40 stitches to close, apparently got the message. 
 
 “Maybe people need to be a little more careful than I was,” he told Good Morning America, his lower legs still heavily bandaged. “Don’t be an easy meal.” 
 
 “It’s the summer news doldrums and nothing tops a shark attack for media excitement,” said George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research who also maintains the International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida. “It’s a hot-button issue and not just because of the movie Jaws,” he said. 
 
 “When humans disregard the rules … such as going in the water with seals in the area,” there will be attacks, he said. 
 
 Great whites, while hardly the ferocious, man-eating terrors depicted in Steven Spielberg’s 1975 horror-thriller Jaws, are dangerous and have been sighted with greater frequency in recent years off Cape Cod as seal populations have re-established themselves. 
 
 Seals, along with sea birds, fish and dolphins are routinely eaten by the great white, which can exceed five metres in length and weigh more than two tonnes. 
 
 Seal-hunting sharks like to lurk just offshore to attack as the seals leave or return to the beach, especially where the bottom drops off suddenly, Mr. Burgess said. “It’s a bad idea to swim there.” 
 
 Shark attacks on humans are statistically rare; fatal attacks vanishingly so. In 2011, a typical year, just roughly 120 attacks were verified worldwide, of which only 17 were fatal. By comparison, an estimated 100 people die every year from jellyfish stings. The last, and unconfirmed, fatal shark attack in Canada was off Nova Scotia in August, 1891. 
 
 “But ultimately, the sharks are in their realm, … we are the intruders,” said Rob Mottice, a shark expert and marine biologist at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, Tenn. “There will always be a handful of attacks,” he said. “Sharks attack because they mistake humans for something else. Whatever we do won’t change that.” ||||| The seventh fatal shark attack in four years struck this past weekend at a surfer's paradise in the Indian Ocean. 
 
 Yet teaching people when and where to swim to avoid sharks, and improving the emergency response to shark bites, can significantly reduce the number of deaths due to shark attacks, according to shark-attack statistics. 
 
 The 13-year-old boy killed this past weekend was surfing in an off-limits area at La Reunion Island, located east of Madagascar, according to news reports. The shark tore off both of his legs and bit through his stomach. In an attempt to get rid of the deadly shark, officials caught and killed an 11.4-foot-long (3.5 meters) tiger shark later that day, but it turned out not to be the same shark, the reports said. 
 
 The La Reunion government has banned swimming, surfing and other water sports in the ocean there, except in protected areas, to prevent shark attacks. There have been 16 shark attacks and seven deaths since 2011 off La Reunion Island. The ban was enacted after a shark killed a 15-year-old girl in 2013. [See Stunning Photos of Great White Sharks] 
 
 Despite shrinking shark populations, the number of shark attacks on humans worldwide continues to grow each decade, according to the International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida (UF). More people are enjoying the beach every year, and globalization means formerly isolated islands — such as La Reunion — are welcoming new visitors who don't know where sharks congregate. The lush tropical island, an overseas department of France, has seen a sharp increase in shark attacks following a tourism boom that started in the 1990s. 
 
 "One of the problems at places like La Reunion, and any number of insular places that are opening to tourism, is that tourists are not getting the information that the locals have about where the dangerous places are," said shark biologist George Burgess, curator of the world shark attack data at UF's Florida Museum of Natural History. "Either they're not asking, or they're not being told." 
 
 For example, an investment in outreach and medical infrastructure has paid off in the United States, home to two-thirds of all shark attacks every year. On average, just one person dies from a shark bite every year in the United States, compared with the worldwide average of six shark-attack deaths each year. And there were no shark-related fatalities in the United States during 2014, though there were 52 shark attacks in the country, according to the International Shark Attack File. Worldwide, there were 72 unprovoked shark attacks on humans, three of which ended in human deaths. (This includes the U.S. numbers.) Examples of provoked attacks include a fisherman wearing his bloody catch or someone harassing a shark. 
 
 In the United States, lifeguards stop swimmers and surfers from entering the water when sharks are present. Lifeguards also receive medical training to help stop bleeding linked to shark bites, and people who are injured can be quickly transported to a nearby hospital. 
 
 "We [in the United States] do seem to do a better job of keeping people alive and keeping people away from where sharks are known to be present," Burgess said. 
 
 But the same techniques may be hard to recreate in a remote tropical paradise. So here's how to avoid sharks. 
 
 Watch out for sharks 
 
 The most important tip is to use your common sense, Burgess said. Avoid swimming near fish. "Where there are fish, there are predators," he told Live Science. Stay away from fishing boats and areas with diving seabirds; both indicate fish are in the water. 
 
 Avoid deep channels, troughs between sandbars and underwater drop-offs. Fish also congregate in these areas, attracting sharks. 
 
 Stay out of murky water that makes it hard for you to see sharks, and for sharks to see you're a human, not a fish or a seal. 
 
 Don't swim alone. Sharks are less likely to go after groups of swimmers or divers. 
 
 Don't swim at dawn or dusk, when sharks are more likely to be actively feeding close to shore. "A nighttime swim may be very romantic, but it's certainly not the smartest thing to do," Burgess said. 
 
 Avoid wearing shiny jewelry or watches in the water. They gleam like fish scales. 
 
 Two male bull sharks traveling together. Nose-to-tail swimming is common among sharks — with males and juveniles, as well as females. Credit: Ila France Porcher 
 
 Power respects power 
 
 The species that tend to attack humans are the same worldwide: tiger sharks, bull sharks and great white sharks. [On the Brink: A Gallery of Wild Sharks] 
 
 Their attacks come in three forms: 
 
 The hit and run: In shallow water, a shark grabs a human like it grabs for fish. This often happens in rough surf, strong currents or murky water. The shark grabs, realizes its mistake, lets go and leaves. People are usually bitten only once, on the legs or feet, but even one bite can inflict terrible blood loss. 
 
 The bump and bite: A shark bumps a swimmer or surfer with its head or body before biting. This kind of attack often involves more than one bite, causing serious injuries or death. 
 
 The sneak attack: Sharks hunt by stealth and surprise because seals and fish are fast and nimble, able to outswim a shark. They rush toward their prey, grab hold and injure the creature before it can escape. If the prey is human, this grab-and-smash attack can be deadly. 
 
 If a shark actually bites you, hit it on the nose, or claw at its eyes or gills, Burgess advises. This is one predator that respects a powerful counterattack. For more on what to do during a shark attack, visit the Florida Museum of Natural History. 
 
 And remember, every year, jellyfish kill more people than sharks. So does lightning. And humans kill many, many more sharks than the other way around. About 100 million sharks die at human hands each year, about 70 percent of them for their fins, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization. More than 180 species of sharks and rays are listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as threatened with extinction. 
 
 "Sharks have had 400 million years of practice in becoming good predators, but the real story isn't shark bites man. It's man bites shark," Burgess said. 
 
 Follow Becky Oskin @beckyoskin. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science. ||||| "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...." 
 
 A full 37 years after this movie-ad line helped make “Jaws” the biggest cinematic hit of its time, it still makes beachgoers pause. Along with the pulsing music and images of a fin slicing the ocean surface – from kid pranksters or a real shark – the line is once again being trotted out by officials on both the East and West Coasts at the height of beachgoing season because of real-life shark visitations. 
 
 An 18-foot great white shark buzzsawed through the front end of a kayak about 400 yards from Pleasure Point off Santa Cruz July 7. And the town of Chatham, a Cape Cod resort, has barred swimming within 300 feet of seals, known to be a key delectation for hungry sharks. The Cape Cod Shark Hunters, which conducts research with scientists from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, reported two shark sightings July 3, and three other great whites the week before. 
 
 The danger, however, is very slight, say a host of researchers, who are using the incidents to remind the public of its fascination with the ocean predator – and to shift the spotlight to mankind’s global abuse of the species. 
 
 “The public loves to fear the idea of sharks and so the media play it up big time because they know it sells newspapers and can be used by broadcasters to tease news features endlessly,” says George Burgess, head ichthyologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, who has studied sharks for over 30 years. The facts are that sharks almost never attack humans. From 1953 to 2011 there were only 103 verified great white shark attacks in California, with 12 fatalities. Worldwide, last year, there were only five fatalities, says Mr. Burgess, who publishes statistics about sharks. 
 
 But Burgess and others say that the opportunity is perfect to harness the attention to man’s treatment of sharks, which is to kill 40 million to 70 million annually. A huge percentage of that is unintentional, as sharks are caught in the nets of tuna and swordfish operations. But a significant portion is also the result of huge demand – especially in Asian countries – for the health food supplements made from shark oil and fins. Using his calculator, Burgess quickly comes up with the ratio of 14 million to 1 – sharks killed by man vs. men killed by sharks. 
 
 His conclusion: “We don’t want to sound callous at all to those who have died, because our hearts do very much go out to the families of victims – but statistically, sharks are a nonproblem, especially if you consider their hundreds of millions of hours in the sea.” 
 
 All this said, there are several reasons why the human/shark interface is making the news more in recent weeks than in previous beachgoing seasons: 
 
 More and more people are visiting beaches and venturing further from shore than in the past, using kayaks, surfboards, and windboards. 
 
 Shark encounters are much more easily and commonly captured as images and videos on cell phones, which make their way to the Internet via YouTube and to local broadcast news shows hungry for summer features. 
 
 And the summer season is precisely when migrating sharks come to land after months at sea, so sightings are much more common. 
 
 “There is most definitely a seasonal pattern to this,” says Sal Jorgensen, senior researcher at the Monterrey Bay Aquarium. “This increased concern could be an uptick in sightings because more people are there to see them.” He says the sharks stay about 1,000 miles offshore in an area dubbed, affectionately, the “white shark café” for about six months a year and then beeline straight for the Baja Peninsula. The annual migration takes about three weeks of swimming at the high speed of about 50 miles per day. 
 
 “We know because they swim that fast and in a straight line, that they haven’t had time to hunt to eat a lot and thus are very hungry when they arrive,” he says. 
 
 But he adds that the recent incident at Pleasure Point was mischaracterized as an attack: A man fishing from his kayak in about 40 feet of water just outside a kelp bed was knocked from the kayak by the shark's bump to the vessel’s backside. 
 
 “I looked at the pictures of bite marks on the kayak and it was merely what a dog might do to some object when curious about it – nip at it with the only means it has,” says Mr. Jorgensen. 
 
 He says probably too much was made in the press about the teeth left in the kayak. 
 
 “Kayaks are not edible and so the shark just toyed with it and left,” he says. 
 
 He urges beachgoers and swimmers on both coasts to simply remember to just not do something stupid. 
 
 “Common sense should prevail when swimming in waters known to be frequented by dangerous sharks,” says George Benz, professor of Marine Biology at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tenn. “In the case of the Cape Cod situation ... people should avoid swimming nearby seals. This type of common sense is really no different from a person not getting on an airplane with a broken wing.” 
 
 Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy 
 
 Chris Lowe, a professor of Marine Biology at California State University, Long Beach, says that while recent fatal shark attacks in Southern California and Mexico have many people concerned about going to the beach again, beachgoers need to put things in perspective. 
 
 “These are really, really rare events. While it’s truly unfortunate, I don’t really think people have much to worry about. The chances of someone being bitten by a shark in Southern California are so small that in many ways, it’s an unrealistic worry."
– After a kayaker's close call was followed by Massachusetts' first great white shark attack since 1936, authorities have some advice for Cape Cod swimmers: Stay away from seals. More than 300,000 grey seals now live in the area—30 times more than in the '60s—and their presence has attracted plenty of great whites, notes the Globe and Mail. The seal-hunting sharks lurk offshore as seals leave or return to beaches, making the area where the bottom drops off a very bad place to swim if you don't want to be mistaken for a seal by a hungry shark, experts say. Tourism officials hope the attack won't be too bad for business. "Not to downplay the nasty experience the bitee has had, but there are sharks in the ocean," the director of the state's tourism office says. "There’s a lot of signs and notices about where it is safe to swim and where it is not. People should stay away from seals." The bitee himself, a 50-year-old man from Denver, suffered serious leg injuries but was released from the hospital yesterday—and he isn't holding a grudge against the shark. "I’ll be biting into a nice steak tonight and probably not thinking too hard about it," he told the Boston Herald. "So I can’t get too mad at the shark either."