Stay out of the Ocean, sharks live there

Hey Ya'll!

It's summer time, it's almost 4th of July and Shark Week is starting in a couple days.  It doesn't get much better than that does it?  I actually could get better, because if you've been paying attention, in the past few weeks, there has been a lot of news coverage of some recent shark attacks.  These attacks hit pretty close to home, literally, as most of these attacks have occurred in our back yard, just up the coast in North Carolina.  As of today, July 2, 2015, there have been 7 separate shark attacks, which seems like a lot, and it got me thinking.  How many is normal?

I cruised the interwebs for a little bit and came across some data maintained by the Shark Research Institute, which documents all reported shark attacks world wide.  This is what I was looking for.  I pulled the data off the website for U.S. only, removed all the data prior to January 2000 (it seemed excessive to go back that far), and build a dashboard around it. Now, all that data is easy to understand.  We can quickly determine which state has the most attacks by the colored maps, and we can see the trend over time (as long as you have more than one year selected).

In looking at all the data at a National level, from 2000 to 20014, there is a bit of an upward trend in Shark attacks, but if we take a closer look.

Zooming into a smaller date range, like the last 4 years (2010 - 2014), we see a huge shark attacks are really going up Nationally.   Why?  You got me, I'm just a Data Artist, not an oceanographer :-)

It is really interesting to change the filters, and see the numbers for the various states.  What I really thought was funny was there is one shark attack reported in Kentucky in 2006.  I couldn't imagine how anyone could have been attacked in Kentucky, until I clicked to read the details.  It was at the Newport Aquarium, imagine that.

So, what did I learn?  Something that I always new and that I love sharks!  I love Shark Week!  I also learned that you don't have to be in the ocean to get attacked by a shark.  This means, I'll continue to respect the sharks and stay out of their house, and won't be touching any sharks at the aquarium.

I hope you enjoy my dashboard, and I'll work on updating the data periodically.

Todd