Do you think SUPs are safer than prone boards when there are sharks?

[hbsteve]

At Catalina Island a few years ago, a GW bit into a SUP.  A young girl was paddling with a group, not very far from shore.  She was not injured.

[chucktheskiffie]

It's like asking if it's safer to have a coke machine fall on you or a pepsi.

What a dumb thing to say.

Clearly its Pepsi.

[Zooport]

It's like asking if it's safer to have a coke machine fall on you or a pepsi. I certainly feel like it's safer, but the incidence of attacks is so small that there's no way to say.

Well, yeah, but Pepsi tastes better.   




.

[Bean]

Coke, it's the real thing, it's the way it should be...

[PonoBill]

We just had a sighting here in our Harbor--just add it to all the reports from Orange County.  I just wish they would all end with what I think should be a major takeaway when sharks are sighted:  "...and it didn't really appear all that interested in any humans nearby and none were injured."

Where's the story in that? The news media loves sharks stories. Roughly five million people in the USA are bitten by dogs each year, about twenty of them fatally. I haven't seen any news reports about dog sightings.

[headmount]

We just had a sighting here in our Harbor--just add it to all the reports from Orange County.  I just wish they would all end with what I think should be a major takeaway when sharks are sighted:  "...and it didn't really appear all that interested in any humans nearby and none were injured."

Where's the story in that? The news media loves sharks stories. Roughly five million people in the USA are bitten by dogs each year, about twenty of them fatally. I haven't seen any news reports about dog sightings.

Hey buddy, no sharks here.  Think we can keep up?

[Weasels wake]

There is currently a debate going on right now in Morro Bay, Ca., a town I live very near.  They have been in the practice of putting up shark sighting signs up along the beaches that it has occurred at, then after about 5 days they take the signs down, basically signaling an all clear.
The debate that the city started, "should we just keep the signs up, or take them down like we currently do?".
Very active, and very interesting debate, and it doesn't take much of an imagination to understand either side of the debate.

My opinion, the signs always go up after the fact, so they prevent nothing, so maybe a permanent sign that says something to the effect of "We share the ocean with many marine animals, including sharks, so be kind to them, and they might be kind to you".   

As far as I know, no decision has yet been made.

[OUTSIDEWAVE]

how many  surfers d you think surf? I heard it was like 600,000  but it is probably more.  so if the stat that Bulky  read ( no offense bulky)  says 1 in 17,000,000  how can that be?  how  would you compute the odds any way. Count he number of attacks and divide by the number of surfer + people  entering the water  in year.   so if you surfed swam or boogie or standup each time you went would count as 1 time. maybe that would work....  But then it is  overly broad.    for example  the number of attacks in the red triangle  is probably  a lot  higher and there fore the odds a lot  more that  you will be a stat. Take Jalama  I think 2 -4 people there last year were attacked.     vs say  La Jolla  where there 1 attack in  1942 that I know of . 

[Bulky]

FWIW here's the article from a study at Stanford I recall getting the 1 in 17M figure from--just reread it quickly and think this is the chances of being bitten. 

http://news.stanford.edu/2015/07/08/shark-attack-risk-070815/


Other places cite the chance of attach at 1 in 11.5M worldwide. http://www.lifeinsurancequotes.org/additional-resources/deadly-statistics/  Not sure what their exact method of computation is but don't really need to know.  My take away is the same:  The chances are unbelievably rare.  I'm gonna paddle out.

[SUPcheat]

I think in there you are more likely to get bitten by a cougar.

Is that a shred of Pono's shorts I see in that one lady's teeth?

[Zooport]

I think in there you are more likely to get bitten by a cougar.

Is that a shred of Pono's shorts I see in that one lady's teeth?

LOL, good one, Carl.

[PonoBill]

Outside, you're off by a lot, depending on what study you believe. The NOAA survey counted 3.3 million surfers in the USA. There are supposedly 23 million surfers in the world, though that numbers reported vary substantially.

More importantly, it appears you may be misunderstanding statistical probability of the occurrence of a rare event. I'm trying to think of a simple way to explain this, and I'm failing, which means my own understanding is not complete. The simplest way I can think of is to say it's not a function of how many surfers there are vs. how many are bitten, but rather a calculation of exposure to risk vs. actual incidents. Exposure being based both on how many people surf and how long they spend in the water yearly. From those values you can calculate a Poisson distribution for shark bite incidents and determine individual risk for average exposure. I'm scratching my head as I write this, thinking I have to head back to Kahn Academy for a refresher on Statistics.

[Josh]

I don't know if there is any statistical information on it but I definitely feel safer when on my SUP surfboard or race board vs. my probe surfboard. My home spot and other local surf spots have been invaded by juvenile great whites the past few months. It hasn't kept me out of the water but I have stuck to the sup boards because I don't want my legs and arms in the water when the investigation bite happens.
Was out yesterday for some fun swell at SanO and had a 6-8ft great white jump out of the water about 20-30 yards from a few of us. I didn't see anyone paddle in because of it...

[PonoBill]

Good on you. I like seeing the juveniles at SanO. Getting to see one breaching would be very cool. The story used to be that they were there because the outflow of warm water from the condensers at the nuke plant bloomed plant life and increased the number of fish. More fish, more predators. But since the plant has been shut down since 2013, I'm not sure the story still holds. I had one of them in a wave with me a few years ago, and I've several in the lineup--or at least one of them several times. Maybe even Chuch P.'s very famous "fluffy".