Photo: Oleksandr Sushko//Unsplash
Predictions of a “sharky summer” around SoCal beaches don’t seem too far-fetched. For the second time in a week, a portion of Huntington Beach, California has been closed off to the public following the sighting of a shark exhibiting “aggressive behavior” near shore.
The nine to 10-foot great white was spotted at Sunset Beach while actively feeding on a sea lion carcass. Lifeguards closed the water for a mile in each direction at North Pacific Avenue and 12th street (Sunset Beach Tower 12) for 48 hours as a precaution.
“The shark was exhibiting aggressive behavior near shore,” wrote Huntington Beach Lifeguards on Instagram Wednesday. “In addition to the inherent danger posed by a great white shark in the area, the risk increases when they are actively feeding on large food sources.”
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An Uptick in Shark Activity
The Jack’s Surfboards Pro was put on hold just last week at the Huntington Beach pier due to nearby shark activity. Another beach closure happened just a few miles south in Newport Beach in March as well, after a woman alerted lifeguards that a shark had circled her in the water.
As mentioned, experts have warned that Southern Californians should expect an uptick in shark activity this summer thanks to a marine heat wave and incoming El Niño that could drive more sharks north from Mexico.
“We think the warmer water is giving females a chance to give birth earlier. The temperatures are better for their pups. We don’t know that for sure. We just know that we started seeing babies around the end of February, which we typically don’t start to see until April,”Chris Lowe, a professor of marine biology and director of California State University Long Beach’s Shark Lab, told The Inertia. “That suggests it’s going to be a sharky summer. The last time we had conditions like this was 2015, and that was a sharky summer because it got so warm in Baja that a lot of the juveniles that are normally born and live in Baja got pushed up into California.”
