Great White Sharks Are Making A Comeback … But Don’t Be Scared

Shark Week on TV might start tonight, but it’s always shark week for researchers at Cal State Long Beach’s ‘Shark Lab.’

It’s one of the oldest shark research labs in the country, established in 1966.

Great white sharks were once dwindling in numbers; nowadays, they’re thriving in California’s warming waters.

But more sharks doesn’t mean more dangerous encounters.

To find out why, LAist’s Sharon McNary spoke with Chris Lowe, director of the Shark Lab and professor of marine biology at Cal State Long Beach.

McNary: We know that white sharks have made a remarkable conservation comeback story, but what brought this all about? 

Lowe: When we look at historical fishing records, we know that white sharks are being caught in commercial fisheries, and they were protected in the state of California in 1994. Also, we banned the use of nearshore gillnets. We think those are the two key things that allowed white sharks to come back. But also, their food has come back; marine mammals, one of the favorite things for adults to eat, have also made a remarkable recovery.

McNary: That’s really good news. We know that scientists are celebrating the population revival of sharks, but as a triathlete who swims in the ocean, I’m conflicted — I don’t want to be shark food. Do more sharks in the water necessarily mean a heightened risk of people getting hurt?  

Lowe: That was something we didn’t know. And when we got funded by the state to form the California Shark Beach Safety Program in 2018, it was one of our primary goals to see how often people and sharks were together at the same time. One of my graduate students flew drones over 26 California beaches. What he found, where juvenile white sharks aggregate, is that people and sharks swim together every single day. So, white sharks swimming right underneath people and they didn’t even know the sharks were there. That tells us that we’re interacting with these animals on a daily basis, and they're not bothering anybody.

McNary: Well, do the little sharks go away? And are they replaced by big, mean adult sharks? 

Lowe: No, so these juveniles range in size from 5 to about 9 feet long. They’ll use beaches, we call it a nursery, like a playground. They just move back and forth, they’re using the warm water, and there’s lots of food for them to eat — mainly stingrays along the bottom. By and large, our video analysis tends to suggest they ignore people. They treat people like flotsam.

McNary: Well, that’s really good news. How are climate change and warming waters affecting shark populations? 

Lowe: One thing we’ve noticed about these white shark nurseries is that they’re marching north. It used to be the only place we saw juvenile white sharks was south of Santa Barbara, but starting in 2015 — when we had The Blob and that strong El Niño — we saw white shark nurseries in Monterey May. Monterey Bay has been getting progressively warmer as a result of climate change, so what this tells us is that as the water is warmer, some species of sharks are going to march their way north.

McNary: I have to ask, are their real live sharks inside the Shark Lab? 

Lowe: Of course! We have four species of sharks on campus. We have horn sharks, leopard sharks, gray smooth hound sharks, and swell sharks.

McNary: Well Chris, what do you wish more people understood about great white sharks? 

Lowe: We really want people to understand that just because a white sharks’ out there and it may be near you, it’s not going to bite you. In fact, that’s one of the revolutionary things we found from our droning study. I think the more people understand them, the less they’ll fear them — and triathletes can feel comfortable about swimming.

Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.