Scared of a shark attack? Here's what experts want you to know.

There seems to be a new story of a shark attack every month, a frequency that paints a picture of menacing creatures beneath the sea hunting for humans. But experts say that's simply not the case: Shark attacks are actually a minuscule problem worldwide.

The Florida Museum of Natural History's International Shark Attack Files investigated 137 alleged shark-human interactions in 2021. Of those, just 73 across the entire world were deemed unprovoked shark bites, most of which occurred in the U.S., while 39 of the incidents were considered provoked, meaning that the human purposefully interacted with the shark in some way. 

But as Yannis Papastamatiou, a professor at Florida International University who studies shark behavior, explained, that's still a very small number.