It must be the heat, or maybe it's just me, but this kayak forum with all these off the wall topics lately (non kayak related) is starting to look like the "Off Topic" section.

Maybe "Off Topic" is getting too boring lately.

Alligators have been a topic of discussion lately so having time I did a bit of research today to see how dangerous they are.

I will get out the one item I did not find a link on out of the way now. I forget which Outdoor Life, Field and Stream. NRA Hunter or American Hunter among others but I read an article months ago on managing gators. The author compared Florida and Louisiana. His claim was that Florida protects its gators while Louisiana aggressively seeks to remove animals over 8'. His claim was this size is the most likely to attack man and attributed management for the lack of a attack on humans in Louisiana. Everything else I present here will be information found on net searches this morning.

I read where the United States has had 44 fatal shark attacks since 1970 compared to 23 fatal alligator attacks. But I thought there is a lot more coastline without gators than there is with gators. Looking further I realized 2/3rds of all U.S. shark fatalities occurred in California and Hawaii, neither noted for their alligator attacks. There were a few also in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Oregon and elsewhere. To compare apples to apples I then checked shark attacks from the Carolinas to Texas to coincide with the ranges of alligators. Then I found only 13 fatal shark attacks compared to 23 fatal alligator attacks.

The decade of the 70s produced three alligator caused fatalities, the 80s produced four more followed by three more deaths in the 90s.The first decade of the new century set a record thirteen fatalities or more than the the previous 30 years. Twelve of those deaths were in Florida and one in Georgia. That would make them about twice as dangerous as sharks in the same range. The average size of the attacking alligators was 9'9" with the smallest being 5'7" and largest at 12'4".

My point is not to say we are all in imminent danger because I do not believe so. I do swim in the Gulf and rivers that I know to have small populations of gators. Instead my point is they are not the benign creatures some would have us believe, but simply another animal like sharks that do call for caution and common sense. I would not swim in waters where large specimen of either had recently been spotted or times that I know hunting activity increases such as sharks at dawn, dusk and night.

Also like the California cougar deaths start increasing when management is lacking. The difference is cougars killing humans are often young adults seeking new range having been crowded out. With alligators it would seem that the larger, mature animals are almost exclusively the perpetrators of such attacks and perhaps should be subject to management as well as overall numbers.