You are paddleboarding next to 15 great white sharks! - CA police warn beachgoers
Great white sharks swim among us at San Diego County beaches
The young predators are generally more interested in stingrays than you
By DEBORAH SULLIVAN BRENNAN
AUG. 1, 2020
DEL MAR —
On a cloudy morning Wednesday, shark researchers from Cal State Long Beach followed a young white shark as it wound its way along the shore off Del Mar.
Using a drone to spot the animal and an inflatable boat to follow it, they traced the shark’s path across the rocky reef as it darted past surfers waiting in the lineup.
The footage they captured didn’t represent a rare appearance of the ocean predator among beachgoers, but an everyday occurrence on the Southern California coastline. White sharks, known popularly as “Great Whites,” are regular visitors that share the sea with us daily, new studies are finding.
Classic horror films notwithstanding, juvenile white sharks glide every day among surfers, swimmers and paddle-boarders, generally without incident.
Most sharks found off Southern California beaches aren’t behemoths like those featured on “Shark Week,” or
“Deep Blue” the massive female recorded on video off Guadalupe Island in Mexico. White sharks can grow to 20 feet or more, according to a
NOAA species profile, and live up to 70 years, Lowe said. Those close to shore, however, are typically juveniles ranging from newborn to several years old: “babies” or “toddler sharks,” as researchers Rex and James Anderson of Shark Lab refer to them.
The young sharks are usually about four to nine feet long, they said, and likely seek shallow waters for heat, food and protection. Sharks are cold-blooded, and rely on the environment to maintain their body temperature. So younger ones, with smaller body mass, gravitate to warmer water. That’s also a better bet for juvenile sharks that haven’t yet learned to hunt marine mammals.
“The most abundant food source and easiest for them to catch is stingrays,” Lowe said. “We have lots of stingrays in our water.”They may also select shallow water to avoid adult white sharks, which will happily eat their young. Given that, the young sharks are often hungry and skittish.
Surfers lined up along the low waves, distance swimmers paddled to an outer buoy, and kids splashed at the water’s edge. For several hours, Rex piloted the drone over the site, seeking a quick, dark shape in the surf. Dolphins surfaced in the waves, and sea lions worked the line behind the breakers, hunting for fish. Rex paid close attention to that zone; the sharks often follow the same route just beyond the crashing waves.
“It’s scary to think of white sharks being out there, but it actually means that we’re making good choices from a marine management perspective, and the population is recovering,” she said.
What does this mean for humans? Potentially fewer stingrays, for one thing, as young sharks gobble them up. Might we also be meals for hungry sharks?
“We’re definitely not on their menu,” Lowe said. “We know that. That is well-determined globally. We know that people are occasionally bitten. And one of the theories is they mistake us for prey. Another idea is they might bite when they’re threatened, to defend themselves.”
Through drone flights, Lowe, Rex and colleagues are counting the number of surfers, swimmers, stand-up paddleboarders, boogy-boarders and waders, to analyze and predict encounters with sharks.
“So far, what we’ve seen is the sharks don’t really care,” Rex said. “They don’t pay attention to people. Unless the person gets too close, and then they usually just startle and swim away. We have not documented any aggressive behavior from a juvenile white shark to a person.”
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.co...ite-sharks-swim-among-us-at-san-diego-beaches
