Shark Attacks in France

Two coasts, one thin and elderly record

Read the French file from top to bottom and a shape appears. Nine of the thirteen entries are older than 1900, and they cluster on a single stretch of the Riviera between Marseille and the Italian border: Nice, Villefranche, Antibes, Saint-Tropez and Hyères. That is no accident. In the age of sail and oar, the Côte d'Azur was a fishing and naval coast, sharks followed tuna and sardine boats close to the harbours, and the incidents that got written down were as often about a shark being harpooned, dragged or hauled aboard as about a shark biting a swimmer. Two of the pre-1900 cases are explicitly marked as provoked, one is dismissed by the compilers as physically implausible, and the oldest, from around 1554, is a chronicle note about white sharks off Nice and Marseille with no victim attached.

After 1900 the record almost stops. The Mediterranean's large sharks, the white shark above all, declined steeply through the twentieth century as tuna traps closed and fishing intensified, and the crowded beaches of the modern Riviera see a handful of harmless species and the occasional passing blue shark. On the Atlantic side the water is cool, productive and full of small sharks, but the ones that could hurt a person, the porbeagle and the shortfin mako, hunt offshore and never mix with surfers in the Landes or bathers in Brittany. The result is four entries in more than a century, none of them a death, and two of them involving a shark that was already on a hook or in the company of a diver in the Pacific.

A note on scope. This is what the database holds under "France". It includes one case from Wallis and Futuna in the South Pacific but nothing from Réunion in the Indian Ocean, whose incidents are not filed under the mainland entry; French Polynesia has its own page. Anyone comparing France with its neighbours should compare the Riviera and the Bay of Biscay, not the tropics.

The places in the French file, coast by coast

Every location named in the record, grouped by coast. The Riviera dominates; the Atlantic contributes two entries, and one comes from the far side of the world.

• Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes)The most-repeated place name. In the 1700s a bather had a leg severed, attributed to a white shark; on 18 September 1864 a man dragging a shark was bitten on the knee, a provoked case involving a 1.5 m animal; and in 1972 a swimmer's shoulder was injured by what the record calls a white shark, the last bite on a bather in mainland France.
• Nice and Villefranche-sur-MerAround 1554 the chronicle entry for Nice and Marseille notes possible white sharks with no victim. An undated 1700s case at Nice is recorded as fatal with no other detail. On 8 December 1884, between Nice and Villefranche, a harpooned 10-foot shark severed a man's leg and he died: the last fatal entry, and a provoked one.
• Saint-Tropez and Hyères (Var)In 1767 a bather at Saint-Tropez suffered lacerations to an arm and a leg, but the compilers note that the description of the shark does not ring true. On 15 July 1894 a fisherman at La Badine, Hyères, met a 1.8 m shark and was not injured.
• Gruissan, Gulf of Lion (Aude)The only Languedoc entry: a case from August 1986 recorded simply as "survived", with no activity, injury or species noted. It is the sole Mediterranean entry between 1972 and today.
• Brest and the Bay of Biscay (Atlantic)On 24 June 1892 a fishing boat off Brest reported a shark encounter that the compilers mark as "no injury, no attack" and invalid. On 26 August 2013 a crewman longlining for sharks in the Bay of Biscay had his right arm lacerated by a hooked 5-foot mako, a provoked incident.
• Wallis Island (Wallis and Futuna, South Pacific)The most recent entry. On 23 May 2014 a scuba diver suffered lacerations to the left thigh and hip from a 3 m shark and survived. It is the only tropical case filed under France.
• Location not recordedA fishing entry from 23 July 1874 records a shark colliding with a boat, with no injury to those aboard and no place given.

The complete French record

Everything below is rendered from the SharkSider database, which combines the International Shark Attack File, the Global Shark Attack File and verified local reports and is refreshed weekly. The grid counts all 13 entries; the decade chart shows only the 4 that fall after 1900, one each in the 1970s and 1980s and two in the 2010s. Fatal rows are red.

• Recorded incidents13 (4 since 1900)
• Fatal2
• Years covered1554–2014
• Since 20002 incidents, 0 fatal
• Most common activityOther / not stated
• Most identified sharkWhite shark

The most recent incidents

• 23 May 2014 · Wallis Island, Wallis and FutunaScuba diving — Lacerations to left thigh and hipShark: 3m shark · not fatal
• 26 August 2013 · Bay of BiscayLongline fishing for sharks — Laceration to right arm from hooked shark provoked incidentShark: Mako shark, 5' · not fatal
• August 1986 · Gruissan, Gulf of LyonsActivity not stated — SurvivedShark not identified · not fatal
• 1972 · AntibesSwimming — Shoulder injuredShark: White shark · not fatal
• 15 July 1894 · La Badine, Hyères, ProvenceFishing — No injuryShark: 1.8 m shark · not fatal
• 24 June 1892 · Brest, BrittanyFishing boat — No injury, no attackShark: Invalid · not fatal

Every recorded incident

How to read this table for France. First, the dates: the two 1700s cases carry no year and appear simply as 1700, and the oldest entry is marked as circa 1554; the Gruissan case has only a month and a year. Second, the outcome column shows both deaths in the nineteenth century or earlier, so the "last fatal" figure in the sidebar, 1884, is not a typo. Third, several rows are not attacks at all. The 1892 Brest entry is flagged invalid, the 1874 and 1894 rows record a collision and a sighting with no injury, and the 1767 Saint-Tropez description is doubted by the compilers. Fourth, the provoked label on the 1864, 1884 and 2013 rows means the shark had been harpooned, dragged or hooked before it bit; those cases say more about handling sharks than about swimming near them. Strip out the invalid, no-injury, doubted and provoked rows and the file is left with five cases in nearly five centuries: the undetailed 1700s death at Nice, the 1700s Antibes bather, the 1972 Antibes swimmer, the 1986 Gruissan entry, which records only that the person survived, and the 2014 Wallis Island diver.

Which sharks are named, and which ones live here

White shark. Named in 3 French entries, every one of them on the Riviera: the 1554 chronicle note, the 1700s Antibes case and the 1972 Antibes swimmer. The great white is a native Mediterranean species with a historical stronghold in the Sicilian Channel and a long list of captures along the Ligurian and Provençal coasts, but it has become rare across the basin and sightings off France today are years apart. Its presence in the old record and absence from the modern one is the single clearest trend in the file.

Shortfin mako. Named once, in the 2013 Bay of Biscay longlining case. The mako is a fast offshore hunter that follows tuna and is a regular catch for French longliners on both coasts; the only time it comes into contact with people is on the end of a line.

Everything else in the water. The commonest large shark in French seas is the blue shark, which is seen by boats off the Riviera in summer and in numbers in the Bay of Biscay; it does not appear in the record. The porbeagle patrols the Channel and Atlantic, the basking shark feeds on plankton off Brittany each spring and alarms swimmers who mistake its size for menace, and the tope, the smooth-hounds and the small-spotted catshark make up the bulk of what French anglers and trawlers actually catch. None of these has ever bitten a person in France. The 3 m shark at Wallis Island in 2014 belongs to a different fauna altogether, the tropical reef and lagoon species of the Pacific, and its identity is not recorded. The species guide for France covers each shark, where to find it and how much of a threat it really poses.

What the record means for swimmers, surfers and divers in France

There is no shark-safety regime on French beaches because there is no need for one: no nets, no drum lines, no spotters, and no bather killed since the nineteenth century. What the file does teach is narrow and practical.

• The risk on the beach is effectively nil. Five unprovoked rows in more than four and a half centuries, the last bite on a bather in 1972, against tens of millions of bathers each summer. Rip currents on the Atlantic surf beaches and jellyfish on the Riviera are the real hazards.
• Handling sharks is where French injuries come from. The 1864, 1884 and 2013 cases all involve a shark that had been harpooned, dragged or hooked. Anglers who catch a tope, a smooth-hound or a small blue should unhook it in the water or cut the line, not bring it aboard alive.
• Surfers have nothing in the record. Not one entry from Biarritz, Hossegor, Lacanau or the Breton reefs. The old page's suggestion that surfing raises the risk in France has no support in the data.
• Divers in the overseas territories face a different sea. The 2014 Wallis Island bite is a tropical reef case; anyone diving in France's Pacific or Indian Ocean territories should follow the local briefing, dive in groups and keep speared fish off the body.
• Big fish off the Riviera are usually harmless. Summer sightings near Nice and Antibes are almost always blue sharks or basking sharks, both of which can be watched from a boat without concern.

If a shark does show interest, our guide on how to survive a shark attack sets out the standard response: keep it in view, stay upright, move steadily to the shore or the boat, and defend the eyes and gills if it makes contact.

France against its neighbours and the world

The International Shark Attack File confirms in the region of 60 to 80 unprovoked bites worldwide in a typical year, and mainland France contributes none of them in almost every year. Along the Mediterranean the French file is smaller and older than Italy's, which carries the tuna-trap history of Sicily and Liguria, and far smaller than Spain's, whose Atlantic and Canary Island waters produce a steady trickle of modern cases. Along the Atlantic, Portugal and Ireland show the same picture as Brittany and the Basque coast: cold, rich water, plenty of small sharks, and almost nothing to report. The contrast with France's own tropical territories is the real lesson: the same flag covers some of the quietest water in the world and some of the busiest, and this page describes the quiet part.

Records from the countries next door

Across the Ligurian Sea, Italy holds the Mediterranean's richest white shark history; across the Pyrenees, Spain shares the Bay of Biscay and the Gulf of Lion; further down the Atlantic seaboard, Portugal and, to the north-west, Ireland complete the picture of European Atlantic waters. For the French Pacific, see French Polynesia. Every country we cover is listed on the shark attacks overview.

Written and reviewed by

SharkSider Editorial Team

A small team focused on researching sharks and making marine biology easy to understand. Every page is reviewed against current species records and the SharkSider attack database, and updated when new incidents or research appear.

Published August 20, 2023 · Last updated September 22, 2026 · 13 records for France in the SharkSider attack database (2 fatal), updated weekly.