Millions of People Fear Sharks, But Here’s Why They Shouldn’t

The ocean provides a welcome beach vacation and heavily supports the global economy. Over 3 billion people worldwide rely on ocean-based food for their diets, and over 100 million full-time jobs, especially in areas centered around tourism, are also developed from the ocean. Yet despite the benefits the ocean brings, many people also find themselves scared of what’s lurking beneath the surface: sharks.

Chapman University’s 2024 Fear Survey found that 34.6% of respondents were afraid of sharks, significantly higher than insects and arachnids (26.3%) or reptiles (25.2%). A prior study suggests the number could be higher, with 51% of Americans admitting a fear of sharks and 38% saying fear kept them from going into the water. This intense fear is known as galeophobia. But considering that the risk of being bitten, much less killed, by a shark is incredibly rare, what makes this phobia so common? Let’s dive in and explore the details behind galeophobia.

What Is Galeophobia?

Derived from the Greek words galeos (sharks) and phobos (fear), galeophobia is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: an extreme and debilitating fear of sharks. It is also known as selachophobia, and the terms are usually interchangeable.

Galeophobia affects people of all ages, backgrounds, and situations. However, Dr. Justin D’Arienzo, a forensic and board-certified clinical psychologist, former U.S. Navy psychologist, and founder of D’Arienzo Psychology, shares that it may be more prevalent in certain groups. According to Dr. D’Arienzo, research into galeophobia suggests that women and teenagers may be more prone to this specific phobia.

“This has been my experience as well,” Dr. D’Arienzo explains. “Teenagers are the most vulnerable, probably due to a combination of media exposure and their immature neurological development. They are still being wired, more so than adults, so they are especially sensitive. Moreover, women are twice as likely to experience animal phobias, possibly due to evolutionary and cultural factors.”

Galeophobia Is a “Specific” Phobia

There are two types of phobias: specific and complex. Galeophobia sufferers often experience intense anxiety around even the thought of seeing a shark, leading them to avoid situations involving bodies of water, even if those bodies of water (like a pool) have no chance of having sharks. Some sufferers may also be so phobic that they cannot hear or speak the word “shark.” Still, galeophobia is considered a specific (or simple) phobia rather than a complex phobia.

As Dr. D’Arienzo explains, “A specific phobia is defined as an intense and disproportionate fear of a particular object or situation (like sharks, spiders, or heights), which almost always provokes immediate anxiety and is actively avoided. The phobia must persist for at least six months and cause significant distress or functional impairment. An individual with a specific phobia generally functions well in life if not thinking about or being exposed to their triggering object.”

The fear response around sharks is usually:

• Immediate and severe
• It occurs when people logically know there is no chance they’ll see or encounter a shark
• Due to an overactive fear response based on “an overactive amygdala causing the panic attacks and phobic avoidance and an overactive cortico-striatal-thalamo-cortical circuit that causes the phobic person to be locked in a worry loop of anticipatory anxiety and rumination”

Dr. D’Arienzo adds that specific phobias, like galeophobia, usually begin in childhood and “are anchored to a distinct stimulus or trigger,” whereas complex phobias like agoraphobia “often begin later in life and are tied to more generalized anxiety and multiple triggers.”

How Does Galeophobia Manifest?

People with galeophobia may show a wide range of physical, mental, and emotional symptoms. But these symptoms do vary from person to person, so what manifests in one individual may not occur in another. Symptoms may also vary based on how severe the person’s phobia is. Dr. D’Arienzo, through his practice, has worked with “swimmers afraid to wade in ocean water, novice divers panicked about interacting with sea-life, and scubadivers anxious about specific shark feeding dives.”

Scuba divers, who are more comfortable immersing themselves in the ocean, may have less severe fears than swimmers who are simply afraid of the ocean in general.

“While not all had formal diagnoses of galeophobia (or selachophobia), many presented with clear avoidance patterns and physiological panic responses related to sharks and open water,” Dr. D’Arienzo shares.

Anticipatory Anxiety

One of the biggest symptoms of shark phobia is anticipatory anxiety. This type of anxiety makes people worried about an event or situation that’s coming up in the future. For example, someone might be afraid of sharks, but they agreed to go on a shark dive with friends on an upcoming vacation.

Says Dr. D’Arienzo, “That person might ruminate about their fear for the week leading up to the dive to the point that, by the day of the dive, they are so worked up that they often panic and avoid the dive altogether.”

Avoidance

“It is normal to be cautious and even nervous if you see a shark in the ocean, so you calmly exit,” says Dr. D’Arienzo. “After some time, you scan the water to ensure the shark is no longer present, and you reenter. Someone with galeophobia would panic just thinking about sharks, even if in ankle-to-knee deep water.”

For people with galeophobia, the sheer terror over the idea of sharks often leads to them avoiding situations where they may see sharks or even just hear the word shark. This can appear as:

• No swimming in oceans
• Avoiding boats, especially in large areas of open water
• Not going to the beaches because sharks might be present
• Using word choices like “sha-hack” instead of saying “shark”

The last point with the word choice is what Dr. D’Arienzo calls “semantic avoidance,” or changing language to create distance and reduce the perceived threat.

Unpacking the Symptoms

Other symptoms associated with galeophobia may include:

• Rapid heartbeat
• Nausea and/or vomiting
• Panic attacks
• Shaking or trembling
• Dizziness
• Difficulty breathing
• Derealization (dissociating from the moment or feeling like the world is distorted)
• Feeling like you’ve lost control
• Dry mouth
• Chest pain and tightness

These Symptoms Happen Because of Your Amygdala

Your amygdala is the part of your brain responsible for processing emotions. As you might expect, the amygdala is also closely associated with fear and anxiety. It classifies your surroundings and tells you, via symptoms and signals, what might be a threat.

Galeophobia manifestation, says Dr. D’Arienzo, is “what occurs when the amygdala gets triggered. It talks to many circuits in the brain, giving you all these uncomfortable sensations. These sensations are the result of our natural strategies to survive a dangerous situation. We fight, flight, or freeze depending on who we are and what the situation is.”

The hard part for people with galeophobia is that their amygdala may trigger a fear response even if they never see a shark. This fear may occur:

• When you’re swimming
• If you’re thinking about sharks
• When you see the word “shark” or an image of a shark in the media

What Causes Galeophobia?

When you think about why people are afraid of sharks, it’s easy to come back to one distinct video: Jaws (1975). This film made people see sharks as bloodthirsty killers that deliberately try to hurt humans.

“Jaws has probably caused more irrational fears of sharks than any other cultural phenomenon. I watched it as a kid, and suddenly couldn’t swim at night in the deep end of pools. I eventually grew out of this fear, realizing sharks can’t survive in chlorinated pools even in the dark,” says Dr. D’Arienzo. He reinforces that you don’t have to experience a scary event with sharks to develop this phobia, especially if you learn the fear through movies or by seeing other people react fearfully.

Outside of Jaws, one of the most understandable reasons why someone might develop a shark phobia is prior frightening encounters with sharks. But that is not the only reason why someone may have galeophobia:

The Media

Images of sharks as dangerous, deadly, and eager to bite humans are repeated in popular television shows and movies. The news often also heightens coverage of shark attacks over summer months, sensationalizing these attacks rather than providing accurate information.

The reality: There were only 47 unprovoked shark attacks worldwide in 2024, while humans killed an estimated 80 million sharks in that same time period.

The odds of being killed by a shark in the U.S. are estimated at about 1 in 4.3 million per year, and globally the risk is even lower, far less than the risk from causes like heart disease, car accidents, or drowning.

Evolutionary Psychology

Some research proposes that humans may fear sharks as a survival method. Our ancestors were more likely to survive and reproduce if they stayed safe and, more importantly, alive.

“Those with the greatest threat sensitivity were more likely to survive and pass those threat-sensitive genes onto the next generation, with each following generation becoming even more sensitive,” Dr. D’Arienzo explains.

He goes on to say that animal phobias come from fear of animals like spiders or sharks that could potentially harm us, whereas fears of animals like giraffes or zebras don’t typically reach the same level because we don’t see those animals as capable of causing us extreme harm. This also may be why we see tropical fish as beautiful and diverse, rather than scary, but are “wired to be phobic of sharks.”

Treating Shark Phobia Requires a Unique Therapeutic Approach

If you have galeophobia, there is good news. Shark phobias are treatable and respond well to professional care. You should find a psychologist or psychiatrist who is well-versed in phobias. They may take several different therapeutic approaches to help reduce your fear of sharks.

Dr. D’Arienzo says that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which includes Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), is the “gold standard” for treating phobias. “They experience their trigger over and over until it stops causing the same reaction. This may include imaginal exposure, systematic desensitization, or full in vivo (real-life) exposure,” says Dr. D’Arienzo.

What does this look like? Depending on the level of the phobia and what point of therapy someone has reached, CBT and ERP may include:

• Exposing people to the word “shark” until they understand that the word cannot hurt them, or become less panicked about it
• Showing images of sharks
• Walking into the ocean or diving with a psychologist or dive instructor

You Have to Learn to Face Your Fears

When you let fear of sharks take over your life, you prevent yourself from having as much fun or enjoying as much relaxation as you could. Learning to control your fears through avenues like mindfulness and controlling your breath can be helpful in staying calm. More than that, you should practice cognitive reframing. Dr. D’Arienzo explains this principle simply: “You change thinking ‘I’m going to die’ to ‘I’m having anxiety, but I’m not in danger.'” While psychologists can teach people to remain grounded in facts and to effectively face their phobias, it’s also important that the person affected is motivated to make a change.

“Many people never seek treatment because avoiding entering the ocean altogether is much easier than seeking treatment,” says Dr. D’Arienzo. The problem here is that avoiding the fear never resolves it; it just reinforces it. This makes the fear become stronger. By being motivated to get over the fear, people have already taken the first step towards fixing their phobia.

As an example, he cites Paul de Gelder, a special forces diver who was attacked by a bull shark in Sydney Harbor. Dr. D’Arienzo describes de Gelder as “the epitome of someone facing and overcoming their fears. He never stopped entering the ocean, which is what it takes to extinguish your natural or learned fear of sharks.”

Stay Jaws-itive

Phobias can be really challenging to manage. But if you have galeophobia, just know that you’re not alone and things can get better. Sharks are naturally curious. But for the most part, sharks do not want to attack humans without provocation and are not interested in hurting you. By engaging in psychological care and therapy, you can lower your fear. You may even find yourself excited to go to the ocean.

If you want to start exposing yourself to shark photos or facts, you can learn more about sharks.