This chart confirms that in fact shark encounters are on the rise in the U.S.

However, there are a lot of other factors that can complicate this picture. Taking into consideration population change over the same period and producing a per capita rate gets a little muddy, as population records do not directly correlate to how many people are going into the water.

Difficult questions I encountered on this one:

• Is it fair to count the entire population when only a fraction are actively going into the ocean?

• How can we calculate how much of the population participates in any of the activities included in the data? (Swimming, kayaking, body surfing, boogey boarding, surfing, diving, etc.)

• How would we account for the changes each of these activities has experienced by bringing more (or less) people into the water over the years?

Because this focus can get diluted so quickly I chose to keep it simple and only look at the numbers of recorded incidents over a given period.