A summer that began with a series of high-profile shark attacks in the U.S. has turned into a relatively average season for shark bites. But heading into Labor Day weekend, some risk remains.
So far this year, there have been 61 confirmed unprovoked shark attacks around the world, six of them fatal, according to the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History. That’s compared to 72 unprovoked shark attacks last year, 76 in 2013, and 83 in 2012.
Thirty-three of this year’s attacks (one of them fatal) were in the U.S. Eight of them occurred in a span of about six weeks in early summer off the coast of North Carolina, a state that