Great white redux: See Spot swim
SWIMMERS AND surfers thought twice about entering the Santa Monica Bay this time last year when an angler caught a 200-pound great white shark from the Hermosa Beach Pier. Now, TV news crews and others have spotted two sharks that may be even bigger near bay beaches, triggering concern for public safety.
Will Rogers State Beach remains open, even though sharks were seen there as recently as last week. Lifeguards say sharks are not their chief concern, though they are warning beachgoers that mako or white sharks may be prowling just offshore.
“Having sharks in the ocean is not an unusual occurrence,” says Capt. Garth Canning of the Los Angeles County Fire Dept.’s Lifeguard Division. “A much greater risk, by far, are the strong rip currents.”
These sharks are most likely white shark pups. They frequent coastal areas during the spring and summer. Many of them are born here and linger as long as they can feed on fish.
“We’re just getting into” the pupping season, says Christopher Lowe, a marine biologist at Cal State Long Beach. “Things should start heating up over the next month or so, and it will go into October.”
Rick Oefinger, owner of Marina del Rey Sportfishing and a captain in Santa Monica Bay for 30 years, says he has often seen white sharks, mostly after an influx of sardines or anchovies, which attract larger fish. “I’ve seen more 4- to 6-foot white sharks here while fishing for barracuda in the spring than anywhere else,” he says.
Adult white sharks are believed to give birth near the coast before returning to deep water. A typical litter is four to eight pups, each one about 3 feet long; they grow to 4 1/2 feet by summer’s end. The juveniles off Will Rogers State Beach were probably born last spring.
Scientists know little about where young white sharks travel. At the Monterey Bay Aquarium, researchers insert satellite pop-up tags in juvenile sharks recovered from gill nets to track their movement.
Preliminary findings indicate that juveniles stay near shore until they reach 10 to 12 feet and begin feeding on seals and sea lions at island rookeries. One shark tagged off Ventura swam to Baja California waters.
Eric Martin, co-director of the Manhattan Beach Roundhouse Aquarium, at the end of the city pier, says the sharks off Will Rogers beach appear to be the same ones that have been chasing fish around the pier since November.
One is a 9-footer that Martin’s staff named Waldo, and it’s anyone’s guess as to when it will start craving something more substantial than fish. The other is a 6-footer named Spot because it has white markings near its right pectoral fin and gills. A weekend volunteer at the facility told Martin he saw one of the sharks bump a surfer, who promptly got out of the water.
“We’ve been keeping mum about this because we don’t want to” cause panic, Martin says. “But I have to admit that seeing them on the news off Will Rogers has made me wish they’d come back.”
Surfers and swimmers might wish otherwise.
To e-mail Pete Thomas or read his previous Fair Game columns, go to latimes.com/petethomas.