Surge in fatal shark attacks blamed on global warming?

You knew this was coming. Global Warming is to blame for everything these days, including Global Cooling. From The Guardian:

Two deaths in the waters off California and Mexico last week and a spate of shark-inflicted injuries to surfers off Florida’s Atlantic coast have left beachgoers seeking an explanation for a sudden surge in the number of strikes.

In the first four months of this year, there were four fatal shark attacks worldwide, compared with one in the whole of 2007, according to the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

Of course, these deaths began with an unprecedented number of Great White sightings in southerly west coast waters beginning on March first. West Coast whites are migratory - they work a circuit across the Pacific that appears to be determined by fish runs, seal populations, time of year and breeding/birthing instincts. The fact that they all showed up at once in these waters suggests something along those lines - think Salmon in the fall.

‘The one thing that’s affecting shark attacks more than anything else is human activity,’ said Dr George Burgess of Florida University, a shark expert who maintains the database. ‘As the population continues to rise, so does the number of people in the water for recreation. And as long as we have an increase in human hours in the water, we will have an increase in shark bites.’

Some experts suggest that an abundance of seals has attracted high numbers of sharks, while others believe that overfishing has hit their food chain. ‘I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but it’s a convenient excuse,’ Burgess said.

So sharks don’t eat people but with more people in the water sharks are starting to eat people? And changes in their food chain (more seals off beaches and overfishing) are just an excuse? The question that should be asked (and isn’t) is how does Mr. Burgess know that? The belief that rising shark attacks is caused by more people in the water has become dogma with the Shark Commentariat, but where are the real numbers?

And there’s this silliness:

Another contributory factor to the location of shark attacks could be global warming and rising sea temperatures. ‘You’ll find that some species will begin to appear in places they didn’t in the past with some regularity,’ he said.

This is just wrong. The Argo system - a series of 3,000 underwater buoys placed all around the world’s oceans to measure temperatures have shown ZERO increase in water temps - and actually a slight cooling. So how can warming sea temps be a factor when they are cooling?

it sounds like spin to this Beast - Mr. Burgess and his ilk appear to be casting the wide net for excuses. We can’t be certain what caused this recent spate of attacks, but one thing we can definitely be sure of is that it wasn’t global warming.