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I used to enjoy doing really light/amateur snorkel/free-diving (mostly surface) as a teenager, and I plan on going back at it (and perhaps going a bit farther with it). I have been years without visiting the sea too much (and I live close to it...). I'm mid-20s now.
I think I understand the dangers regarding strong sea currents, environment (rocks...), loss of buoyancy (if I get to the point of using weights and diving deep, in particular), pushing apneas for too long...
However I have a strange concern: animals.
What are my chances of being attacked by a shark or any other dangerous fish?
I am on the Mediterranean. It's always been a fairly tame sea, usually people is stung by jellyfish, and more rarely by aggresive weevers and things of the sort.
It's probably an irrational fear, since never happened to me as a child/teenager (in fact I've only seen one shark in my entire life and it was a passive benthic species, and not even where I live), but it's going around my head.
And since the pandemic thing has emptied the beaches quite a lot, I have been wondering if these animals have begun to approach the coast more often, and in fact some reports suggest this:
For example, last year a paralympic swimmer training around this region of the sea was chased by two sharks, very close to the shore.
Most of the coast here does not have an unusually good visibility (opposite of pic related), or can have a significant depth, so most often one can't tell what's there at all until you have it significantly close.