A string of recent shark sightings at North Orange County beaches has Huntington Beach Police alerting beach goers throughout Memorial Day weekend. The last weekend in April saw the first ever confirmed sighting of great white sharks by lifeguards at Seal Beach, with regular reports and sightings continuing since then. Now, with the May 19th sighting of more than a dozen sharks swimming at nearby Sunset Beach, police have issued warnings to the public and are posting signs all over beaches in the North Orange County stretch of coast. Those warnings will stay in effect through Memorial Day weekend, likely affecting the holiday weekend plans for many in the area. The police warnings will be in effect through Tuesday.
The May 19th sighting occurred when a police helicopter spotted more than a dozen juvenile great whites swimming approximately 50 feet from shore, where surfers would normally be in the water, however none were near the sharks at the time. Eight days earlier a half dozen 6-foot great whites were spotted in the same area, but it’s unclear if both sightings featured the same group. Days later, an OCSD Harbor Patrol boat captured up close GoPro footage of one great white circling them. The behavior of the sharks, circling or bumping nearby swimmers, didn’t alarm authorities so a warning wasn’t issued until the holiday weekend approached.
While several sightings and the posting of warning signs could change the plans of casual beach goers for the holiday, Huntington Beach lifeguards and one Cal State Long Beach marine biology professor will be taking the opportunity to track and tag several of the sharks that stay in the area. Just to the north, when Los Angeles’ South Bay area experienced several shark encounters and one 2014 attack in Manhattan Beach, CSULB researchers studied the growing juvenile great white population extensively. They found that the high number of smaller great whites that were moving closer to shore was the result of a healthier ocean ecosystem. Since the juvenile sharks feed on smaller fish rather than hunting in deeper waters, they will instead follow the richest sources of food. Whether or not research in the Orange County section of beaches will bring back new information or not is yet to be seen.
