Experts say that California beachgoers can expect more great white sharks cruising near beaches this summer. Photo: Gerald Schombs//Unsplash
It’s going to be a sharky summer. Due to a marine heat wave, researchers are predicting an unusually high number of juvenile white sharks in San Diego. However, there’s actually a bright side to that: they may end up making the ocean safer for beachgoers.
That’s because juvenile white sharks feed on stingrays and bottom fish, which have long been the bane of visitors to Southern California waters. In fact, there’re a lot more of them than there used to be, due to humans killing off their predators and anthropogenic climate change warming waters that were previously uninhabitable for the critters.
“Our data shows you’re probably safer going to a beach with juvenile white sharks than without,” Chris Lowe, director of the Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach, told CBS8. “They’re feeding down the stingrays. Stingrays injure over 10,000 people in Southern California per year.”
So why are all these sharks coming to San Diego waters? The answer is related to that aforementioned marine heat wave, combined with this year’s especially strong “Godzilla” El Niño. As a result, warmer waters off the coast of Baja California are pushing juvenile white sharks further north.
“We started seeing baby white sharks about four, four-and-a-half feet long about a month ago, which is really early,” Lowe told NBCLA. “Now the simple explanation to that is, the water is really warm right now, unusually warm for this time of year.”
