Great White Sharks Swarm SoCal Lineups as El Niño Heats Up (Video)
Southern California is a known hotspot for juvenile great white sharks.
The waters off Los Angeles to San Diego serve as a nursery, of sorts, for these young whites, with a suitable water temperature and ample prey (stingrays, fish, and so on).
And it’s typically in the summer and fall when the great whites start showing up in California’s shallow waters, mingling amongst surfers. But this year has been different. It’s been unusually warm; a potential super El Niño is on the way. And so, shark sightings on the Southern California coast, amidst surfers, has been more frequent. See below.
The images come from Bo Bridges, a photographer and videographer based in Los Angeles’ South Bay, featuring scenes from Manhattan Beach. They show surfers unwittingly sharing the lineup with juvenile great whites. But the drone shows a different perspective. Regarding the unseen beasts lurking beneath, Bridges captioned:
“They’re back! It’s been a little over 10 years since the last great white summit here in the South Bay! And it looks Mother Nature and El Niño have invited all the babies. Crazy thing was – I was out paddling this morning and we had one shark breach about 100’ away 5’ in the air!! So of course, I had to investigate further! Found em!!”
Previously, in recent weeks and months in Southern California, the shark activity has already been atypically high. First, there was the surfer in Newport Beach who was circled by an 8-foot shark while sitting on her board. Then, a 20-year-old hooked one off the Hermosa Beach Pier, then stripped down to his undies, and set it free. And most recently, a frenzy erupted also at Hermosa, when fishermen caught over 20 sharks in one day.
And experts predict that the high shark activity will continue into the summer.
“We started seeing baby white sharks about four-and-a-half feet long about a month ago, which is really early,” said Dr. Chris Lowe of the Shark Lab. “Now the simple explanation for that is the water is really warm right now, unusually warm for this time of year. So based on that, we predict it’s going to be a very sharky summer.”