Statistics
Bites per year
Volusia County has led the world in unprovoked shark bites for most of the last three decades, and the overwhelming majority of those bites happen in the two miles of surf around Ponce Inlet at New Smyrna Beach.
165
Volusia County — all years
5
New Smyrna Beach — all years
Town-level figures only exist for some years
9.7
County average per year
17
Peak county year — 2021
Unprovoked bites by year
The bar is the Volusia County count of record. The darker segment is the portion we can place at New Smyrna Beach itself.
- 20260 / 5
- 20252 / 6
- 20242 / 8
- 20231 / 8
- 20220 / 9
- 20210 / 17
- 20200 / 8
- 20190 / 9
- 20180 / 6
- 20170 / 9
- 20160 / 15
- 20150 / 9
- 20140 / 8
- 20130 / 8
- 20120 / 16
- 20110 / 11
- 20100 / 13
New Smyrna Beach and Volusia County are not the same number. Volusia County Beach Safety and the International Shark Attack File publish at county level — a figure that also includes Ponce Inlet, Daytona Beach Shores, Daytona Beach and Ormond Beach. Most of those bites do happen in the surf beside Ponce Inlet at New Smyrna Beach, but "most" is not "all", and we do not pretend otherwise.
The New Smyrna Beach column is a town-level figure when an authority has published one, and otherwise counts the bites in our incident log that we can place in this town. Because most bites here are minor and treated locally, the town column is a floor, not a complete count, and the current year stays provisional until the annual ISAF report lands.
How to read these numbers
A high count here does not mean the water is dangerous — it means it is crowded. Volusia County counts millions of beachgoer-days per year against roughly ten bites, nearly all of them minor lacerations to a hand or foot. There has never been a recorded fatality at New Smyrna Beach.
Bites cluster hard in late summer and early fall, when water temperatures peak, bait fish run the beach, and surf crowds are at their largest.