Australians now four times more likely to be killed by shark attack than lightning strike 

Dance outside in thunderstorms! Safer than surfing!

It’s the hoariest of cliches, wheeled out whenever someone, surfer, swimmer, fisherman, realist, points out that, oowee, sure has been a lot of shark attacks these past couple of decades. 

There’ll be that superior smirk, a shake of the head and you’ll be told that shark attacks are that most abstract of concepts and that you’re more likely to be shifted off this mortal coil by bee sting, lightning strike or by donkey kick. 

All this noise about shark attacks? A media beat-up or some sorta right-wing conspiracy linked to racism etc.

Well, now, one news outlet has done a little mathing and has revealed A\a review of figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Shark-Incident Database shows fatal shark attacks have outnumbered lightning deaths by four to one over the last ten years.

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Between 2015 and 2024, lightning killed six people nationally. Sharks killed 24.

The gap has only widened since. ABS figures for 2025 and 2026 aren’t finalised yet, but early counts show two lightning deaths against eight fatal shark attacks in that stretch.

Bond University environmental scientist Dr Daryl McPhee has tracked the long-term curve: fewer than one fatal shark bite every two years across the 1980s and 90s, rising to just over two a year through the 2000s and 2010s, then more than five a year between 2020 and 2025.

Lightning hasn’t moved much by comparison. The national average is one to two fatalities a year since the mid-1990s.

The toll has pushed policy change elsewhere too. On Sunday, the NSW government announced drone surveillance across 70 beaches from December to April, backed by an extra $34 million for shark mitigation, a response to the mauling of Sydney mother Leah Stewart by a great white off Coogee.

The effect of that is to show just how many sharks are kicking around and, hence, expect regular evacuations, beach closures etc.

As I wrote one year ago, whenever I’m with the it’s-their-ocean crowd, I tell ’em: you gotta understand. This is only the beginning. In a generation nobody will want their kids paddling out into the blue when fatal attacks by Great Whites become a weekly sideshow and not, as in the case recently, every two or three months.