GAINESVILLE, Florida, February 18, 2002 (ENS) - Despite the prevailing perception that 2001 was a banner year for shark attacks, actual numbers were slightly down, a new University of Florida study shows.

The annual total of 76 unprovoked attacks worldwide was less than the 85 recorded in 2000, and fatalities declined from 12 to five in the same period, said George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File, which is housed at the University of Florida.

The file is a record of all known shark attacks. Burgess, a biological scientist and operations coordinator at the Florida Museum of Natural History, reports the numbers each year and has just finished compiling them for 2001.

"Last year was anything but an average year, but that's because it was more like the summer of the media feeding frenzy," Burgess said.

The number of attacks remained almost identical in both the United States - 55 in 2001 compared with 54 the previous year - and Florida, the nation's leader, where they decreased from 38 to 37, Burgess said.

But a few high profile cases turned an otherwise slow news summer on its head. It began with the dramatic rescue of eight year old Jessie Arbogast, whose arm was severed by a bull shark in the waters off Pensacola, Florida, Burgess said. After saving his nephew in the July 6 attack, Arbogast's uncle pulled the shark to shore, emergency medical personnel retrieved the arm out of the shark's throat. Surgeons later reattached the limb.

"It was a made for TV movie kind of incident - one that clearly captured the imagination of the American public - and certainly was worth every line and TV spot that it got," Burgess said.

Burgess, who handles about 300 inquiries a year on average from newspapers and radio and television stations on sharks, did more than 900 interviews during July, August and September 2001.

"I had more calls in those three months than I had in the previous three years combined," he said. "Some of them were from radio shows in places like Montana, North Dakota and Idaho, where there hasn't been a shark since the Miocene."

The suggestion made by some special interest groups last year that attacks have increased because 1993 U.S. fishery regulations have resulted in more sharks is groundless, Burgess said. Sharks are slow growing animals and most of those born eight years ago have not reached sexual maturity yet, he said.