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I was fortuitously reading about sharks in the Mediterranean Sea on a small Italian online news site. As a side note the article claims that an average of seven people are injured or killed (not clear) by sharks, yearly and worldwide - while dozens of peoples are victims of coconuts. I suppose falling coconuts.

ABC News makes a similar claim:

Burgess pointed to recent data that suggested people were 15 times more likely to be killed by falling coconuts than by a shark.

Is this true, or at least are coconuts accidents a thing?

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  • Is this threat per coconut/shark, or threat per person? Are we asking whether walking under a coconut tree is more dangerous than swimming with sharks, or are we just asking which one a randomly selected person is more likely to die from?
    – Stack Exchange Supports Israel
    Commented Jul 28, 2020 at 17:06
  • @user253751: I think the claims makes it clear it is latter.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Commented Jul 28, 2020 at 18:32
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    Basically " are there more deaths by sharks attack or by falling nurs?".
    – Alchimista
    Commented Jul 28, 2020 at 22:54
  • Either, the beachgoers are under trees then sharks will have a hard time getting them, or they are in the water, then sharks will still have a hard time because they need open water to breathe. Wading/swimming persons will not be hit by a nut. It would be nice to have the statistics the claim is based on.
    – user56776
    Commented Jul 31, 2020 at 20:34
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    There is actually a Snopes article on this matter, concluding, amazingly enough, that there's just not enough research on lethal coconuts. Also, I was shocked - shocked! - to learn that there is a Wikipedia article "Death by coconut"...
    – P_S
    Commented Aug 2, 2020 at 19:06

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