Sharks have always struck at the heart of people’s most primal fears of the ocean. Cue: JAWS theme song. However, a new study led by LSU Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences Assistant Professor Stephen Midway shows that although the number of shark attacks has increased over time, the rate of attack is low and the risk of being attacked by a shark is highly variable across the globe. Midway and his collaborators conducted the first statistical analysis of shark attacks worldwide using data collected over a 55-year period from 1960 to 2015 from the International Shark Attack File housed in the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida.