According to Wikipedia: “Around 38% of recorded great white shark attacks on humans in the United States have occurred within the Red Triangle— 11% of the worldwide total.”

The Red Triangle in Northern California includes the counties of Sonoma, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, and Monterey. There is an abundance of folklore about sharks in this area, and the increased risk surfers face vs other areas.

I wanted to look into the data further and find out more broadly how the Red Triangle compares to the rest of the state. This plot shows that incidents in the Red Triangle have been fairly steady over the past 60 years, with only a slight uptick recently. However, counties outside of the Red Triangle not only have more incidents, but the increase in the last 15 years is much more pronounced.

According to the data used for this project, between 1959- 2018 there were 245 recorded shark incidents in California, 96 of which occurred in the Red Triangle. This percentage comes to 39% of the total for the state.