6 US Beaches Where Sharks and Swimmers Meet Most Often
Shark bites are rare everywhere. But a handful of American coastlines account for a large share of them, and the reasons are written in the geography of each place.
First, some perspective. The whole United States records only a few dozen unprovoked shark bites in a typical year, and in most years the number of deaths can be counted on one hand, often on one finger. Hundreds of millions of beach visits take place over the same twelve months. You are far more likely to be hurt driving to the beach, and far more likely to get into trouble in a rip current once you arrive.
Still, bites are not spread evenly along the coast. They cluster in places where three things overlap: a great many people in the water, a great many sharks, and conditions that make it hard for the two to see each other. The International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History has tracked these incidents for decades, and the same stretches of shoreline appear in its records year after year.
The pattern differs from coast to coast. In the Southeast, the sharks are mostly small fish-eaters that nip a foot by mistake in cloudy surf. In Hawaii, New England and northern California, encounters are far fewer but involve much larger animals. Knowing which kind of place you are visiting tells you most of what you need to know.
None of these six areas is a place to avoid. Each is a place to swim with a little local knowledge.
Read all the way to the end. The last stretch of coast is home to the largest sharks of all.
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Florida
1. New Smyrna Beach
Have you swum here?Volusia County has logged more unprovoked shark bites than any other county in the United States, well over 300 since record keeping began in the 1880s, and New Smyrna Beach is its center. The reason is Ponce de Leon Inlet, just north of town. Every tide pushes a river of water in and out of the Halifax and Indian River lagoons, and with it come dense schools of mullet, menhaden and other baitfish. The same currents build sandbars that produce the most consistent surf break on Florida's east coast.
AdvertisementSo on any decent day, dozens of surfers sit in the water beside the south jetty with their hands and feet dangling, directly in the path of feeding fish. The sharks chasing those fish are mostly blacktips and spinners, quick, slender animals that are usually four to six feet long. Young bull sharks use the inlet as well.
The water here is green and sandy, and visibility is often only a foot or two. A blacktip hunting at speed sees a flash of pale skin, takes it for a fish and bites. It lets go at once. The typical New Smyrna bite is a single, shallow set of tooth marks on a foot, ankle or hand, and the shark is gone before the surfer sees it. Deaths are almost unknown here.
AdvertisementBites happen in every month but are most frequent from late spring through October, when the water is warm, the beach is busy and baitfish are thick. The fall mullet run in September and October is the peak. Volusia County lifeguards fly a purple flag when dangerous marine life has been reported, and they will clear the water for a while after a confirmed bite.
AdvertisementIt is often called the shark bite capital of the world, and most of the people who are bitten there drive themselves to get stitches.
Stay safeStay well clear of the inlet and the jetty when baitfish are jumping or birds are diving. Swim near a staffed lifeguard tower, and stay out of the water at dawn and dusk. -
Florida
2. Cocoa Beach and the Space Coast
Have you swum here?Brevard County, immediately south of Volusia, ranks second in Florida with more than 150 recorded bites. Its 70-odd miles of beach run from the Kennedy Space Center past Cocoa Beach and Melbourne to Sebastian Inlet, and the ingredients are the same as at New Smyrna: warm water, sandy surf with poor visibility, year-round surfing and bait running close to shore.
AdvertisementThree features concentrate sharks here. Port Canaveral and Sebastian Inlet, at either end of the county, are busy passes where fish move between the lagoon and the ocean. The Cocoa Beach Pier attracts anglers, bait and the predators that follow. And the shoals off Cape Canaveral are a winter gathering ground for young lemon sharks and a corridor for migrating blacktips.
AdvertisementThe species list is longer than most visitors expect. Blacktips and spinners are responsible for most bites. Bull sharks, which are heavier and more dangerous, patrol the inlets and the surf zone. Lemon, sandbar, nurse and bonnethead sharks are all common and are almost never a problem.
As at New Smyrna, nearly every bite is a case of mistaken identity in murky water, and nearly every injury is a minor wound to a lower leg or foot. Surfers and waders in waist-deep water are the usual victims. The risk rises sharply during the fall mullet run, when miles of bait move south along the beach in September and October and sharks, tarpon and pelicans all feed on it in the breakers. If you can see fish showering out of a wave, sharks are underneath them.
AdvertisementBrevard County Ocean Rescue staffs towers at the main beaches and uses the standard flag system. A purple flag means stinging or biting marine life is present. It is flown for jellyfish far more often than for sharks.
Stay safeLeave shiny jewelry on the towel, since a flash of metal looks like a fish scale. Do not swim near the pier, the inlets or anyone fishing from the beach, and get out when you see bait schools in the surf.Advertisement -
South Carolina
3. Myrtle Beach
Have you swum here?The Grand Strand is 60 miles of nearly unbroken sand, and Myrtle Beach sits in the middle of it. Horry County receives many millions of visitors a year, most of them between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and along with Charleston County it has recorded more shark bites than anywhere else in South Carolina. The numbers are still small: the whole state typically sees only a handful of bites in a year.
AdvertisementThe sharks are there for good reason. The shallow, nutrient-rich water off the Carolinas is a summer nursery for several species. Blacktip, spinner, sandbar and Atlantic sharpnose sharks all move inshore from May onward to feed and to give birth, and bull sharks follow the same warm water north. Most are under five feet long.
What brings them within reach of swimmers is fishing. The Grand Strand has a string of long public piers, and on a summer day each one holds dozens of anglers dropping cut bait, cleaning their catch and reeling in struggling fish. That is a steady dinner bell. Sharks learn to work the pilings, and families wade and swim a few yards away.
AdvertisementBites here follow the Southeastern pattern. They happen in waist-deep or chest-deep water, usually in the afternoon when the beach is most crowded, and the injury is typically a quick bite to a foot or calf that needs stitches and nothing more. Serious injuries are rare.
Lifeguards in Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach fly colored flags at each stand. Yellow and red refer to surf conditions, and a purple or blue flag warns of dangerous marine life, which on this coast usually means jellyfish. Local rules also restrict shark fishing from the beach during swimming hours in the main resort areas.
AdvertisementStay safeSwim at least a couple of hundred yards from any pier and well away from surf anglers. Stay out of the water if you are bleeding, and leave when you see schools of small fish breaking the surface. -
Hawaii
4. South and west Maui
Have you swum here?Hawaii records only a small number of shark bites in an average year, usually fewer than ten across the whole state. Maui consistently accounts for more of them than any other island, even though Oahu has far more people in the water.
AdvertisementThe explanation lies underwater. Maui, Molokai, Lanai and Kahoolawe were once a single island, and the drowned land between them forms the largest area of shallow shelf in the main Hawaiian Islands. Tiger sharks favor exactly that kind of habitat. Tagging work has shown that tigers from around the state visit the Maui shelf, and that the island's most popular beaches, from Makena and Wailea through Kihei and up to Kaanapali, sit right beside it.
AdvertisementTiger sharks are a different animal from a Florida blacktip. Adults are commonly 10 to 14 feet long and weigh well over 1,000 pounds, and they eat almost anything, including sea turtles, which are abundant along the same reefs where visitors snorkel. Bites on Maui are therefore more serious, and although most victims survive, the island has seen several deaths this century.
Encounters happen in every month but peak in fall, with October the highest. That is when large females move in from across the island chain to give birth. Hawaiian tradition marked the same season: when the wiliwili tree bloomed, sharks were said to bite.
AdvertisementThe people most often involved are swimmers, snorkelers and paddleboarders well offshore, often alone, and often in cloudy water. When a shark is sighted or a bite occurs, state and county crews post warning signs for about a mile on either side and keep them up until the area has been checked the following day.
On Maui the question is never whether tiger sharks are nearby. They are. The question is whether you have made yourself easy to mistake for a turtle.
Stay safeStay out of murky water, especially near stream mouths after heavy rain. Swim and snorkel with a partner, stay close to shore, and take extra care from September through November. -
Massachusetts
5. Outer Cape Cod
Have you swum here?The great white shark has returned to Cape Cod, and the cause is a conservation success. Gray seals were nearly wiped out in New England by bounty hunting. After the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 they recovered, and tens of thousands now haul out on Monomoy and along the outer beaches from Chatham to Provincetown. White sharks followed their prey.
AdvertisementThe geography of the Outer Cape brings those sharks unusually close to people. Seals travel in the trough between the beach and the first sandbar, so the sharks hunt there too, often in water less than 15 feet deep and sometimes within a stone's throw of the sand. These are big animals, commonly 8 to 15 feet long.
Sharks are present from June into November, and numbers peak from August through October, when the water is warmest and beaches are still busy. Bites remain very rare. In 2018 a swimmer was badly injured off Truro, and a few weeks later a bodyboarder was killed at Newcomb Hollow Beach in Wellfleet, the first fatal shark bite in Massachusetts since 1936. Unlike the nips of the Southeast, a white shark bite is a single powerful strike, and the danger is blood loss.
AdvertisementThe Cape has responded with one of the best warning systems in the country. Lifeguards fly a purple flag bearing a white shark silhouette whenever the season is under way. Acoustic receivers moored off the beaches detect tagged sharks, and the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy's Sharktivity app reports detections and confirmed sightings. Bleeding-control kits and emergency call boxes are posted at beach entrances, because cell coverage on the outer beaches is poor.
AdvertisementStay safeStay in waist-deep water or shallower, and never swim near seals or schools of fish. Check the flags and the Sharktivity app before you go in, and learn where the bleeding-control kit is on your beach. -
California
6. The Red Triangle
Have you swum here?The Red Triangle is the stretch of northern California coast that runs from Bodega Bay south to the Big Sur coast below Monterey, with its third corner at the Farallon Islands, 27 miles west of the Golden Gate. A large share of all the white shark incidents ever recorded in California have taken place inside it.
AdvertisementSeals and sea lions are the draw. Northern elephant seals breed at Año Nuevo, Point Reyes and the Farallones, and California sea lions and harbor seals haul out on rocks and beaches all along this coast. Adult white sharks, some of them 15 feet or more, arrive in late summer to feed on them, peak from September through November, and then head for the open Pacific in winter.
AdvertisementThe water is cold, usually in the 50s, and few people swim without a wetsuit. Those at risk are surfers, divers, kayakers and open-water swimmers. Seen from below, a surfer on a board has much the same outline as a seal. The classic encounter is a single ambush from underneath, after which the shark usually backs off. Most victims survive, largely because companions get them ashore and control the bleeding quickly. California as a whole sees only a few shark incidents a year, and fatalities are rare.
AdvertisementPlaces that come up repeatedly include the waters off Tomales Point and Point Reyes, Stinson Beach, the San Mateo County coast near Año Nuevo, and Monterey Bay. In recent years young white sharks, five to nine feet long and interested in fish and rays, have also gathered in the warm shallows of northern Monterey Bay in summer.
After a confirmed sighting or bite, lifeguards and park rangers post warning signs and may close the water for several days.
AdvertisementA surfer lying on a board and a seal resting at the surface make nearly the same shape from below.
Stay safeAvoid river mouths, steep drop-offs and anywhere seals or sea lions are hauled out, above all in fall. Surf and dive with a partner, and leave the water if seals suddenly do.
The short version
Sharks gather where their food is, and almost every bite on record happened because a person was in the same place as that food. In the Southeast that means baitfish, inlets and fishing piers. In Hawaii it means turtles and murky water. In Massachusetts and northern California it means seals.
The rules that follow are the same on every coast. Swim in daylight, with other people, close to shore and near a lifeguard. Stay out of cloudy water and away from anyone fishing. Leave jewelry behind, do not go in if you are bleeding, and get out calmly if you see bait schools, diving birds or seals. Read the flags and signs at the beach entrance, because the people who post them know the local water.
Do those things and your chance of ever meeting a shark stays where it has always been: extremely small. Sharks have far more to fear from people than people have from sharks, and a healthy shark population is a sign of a healthy coast.
Last updated . This article is for general information. Wild animals are unpredictable, so follow local wildlife and park guidance.
