Great White Shark 20 Feet in Length Sighted Off Balboa

A fish “definitely” identified as a great white shark about 20 feet long was sighted within 100 yards of the Balboa Peninsula shore Thursday afternoon, prompting lifeguards to order swimmers and surfers onto the beach.

A spokesman for the Newport Beach Marine Department said swimmers probably would be kept out of the water today as well, in case the huge predator is sighted again in the area.

Great white sharks are known to attack and kill people, but attacks in Southern California waters have not been confirmed.

The Sea Watch, a 32-foot lifeguard boat, motored to within a few feet of the shark. “It definitely was a great white,” said Marine Safety Lt. John Blauer. Lifeguards estimated its length at 20 feet because “it was two-thirds as long as the boat,” Blauer said. The great white shark depicted in the movie “Jaws” was 28 feet long.

The shark was first sighted about 3:45 p.m. between the Balboa and Newport piers by Capt. Larry Ryan, skipper of a Vessel Assist boat returning from a tow operation.

David LaMontagne, president of Vessel Assist, a company that offers non-emergency towing and other assistance to boaters, said Ryan told him the huge shark was first seen about 300 yards offshore.

Lifeguards said the fish was so long and thick that the Vessel Assist crew at first thought it was a pilot whale.

“Ryan said it moved slowly toward the beach while he watched it, and he radioed for assistance,” LaMontagne said.

Lifeguards immediately began clearing the waters near where the shark was sighted by sending vehicles with public address systems along the shore.

The lifeguard vessel and a small armada of private and commercial boats surrounded and watched the shark for about 45 minutes, and then it submerged and disappeared. “Just the commotion could have made him decide to go elsewhere,” Blauer said.

At that point, lifeguards ordered swimmers and surfers out of the water along all the city’s beaches. By sunset, the shark had not been reported sighted again, Blauer said.

Thursday had been “definitely a beach day,” with clear skies and temperatures reaching 70, Blauer said. An estimated 35,000 people were on the sands between the Santa Ana River and Corona del Mar, making the beaches “fairly crowded.”

However, the water temperature was a chilly 60 degrees, and only about 2,000 people were actually in the water at the time the shark was sighted, Blauer said.

Dennis Kelly, professor of marine biology at Orange Coast College, said news of the shark was surprising. “To have one that close to the beach is pretty weird, that’s for sure. . . . That’s the largest I’ve heard that close to shore.”

He said that contrary to some reports, great white sharks are not uncommon in Southern California waters. “We had three caught last year--two off the pier at Manhattan Beach and one off Huntington Beach. We had one caught off Newport Pier in the 1960s and one was caught in Santa Monica Bay. We’ve seen a couple of humongous ones around Catalina Island. What’s uncommon is to have one this close to the beach.”

He said that great whites, unlike other sharks, “are pretty surly by nature. They’re so big, they’re pretty much fearless. Swordfish fishermen have told us that great whites will raise their heads right out of the water and bite at harpoons.”

Yet in Southern California waters, the great whites seem not to be nearly as ferocious as in other waters, Kelly said. Great whites have attacked humans in Northern California, but “that just doesn’t happen around here. They don’t attack humans down here. If they were going to attack people here, we’d have had lots of attacks by now.”

Kelly said he believes the sharks come to Southern California to give birth and that was probably the reason for the shark’s appearance Thursday off Newport Beach.