Tag: great white shark
Shark Bite Exposes Uneasy Coexistence Between Fishermen, Beachgoers

Shark Bite Exposes Uneasy Coexistence Between Fishermen, Beachgoers

By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times

MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. — The weekend biting of a long-distance swimmer by a great white shark exposed an uneasy coexistence between fishermen and beachgoers at Manhattan Beach Pier.

The swimmer, Steve Robles, a 50-year-old real estate professional, is expected to recover from the bite he suffered Saturday. The shark is free, but the fishermen involved are not off the hook with swimmers and surfers.

On Sunday, some accused the fishermen of precipitating the encounter by “chumming” — tossing bloody fish guts into the water to attract the shark.

“Us surfers and bodyboarders and swimmers, we despise the fishermen on our pier,” surfer Mimi Miller told ABC News. “It is a nuisance for them to be there. They put us in danger every single day that they’re there.”

Eric Martin, co-director of the Roundhouse Marine Studies Lab and Aquarium at the end of the pier, said the fishermen had not been casting chum into the ocean — just using regular bait.

At a typical beach and pier in Southern California, fishermen, and beachgoers often compete for limited space.

In Manhattan Beach this equation includes juvenile great white sharks, who have settled on that portion of Santa Monica Bay as something of a teen hangout.

Experts say both the fishermen and the swimmers may be exacerbating the risk that the predators pose. The sharks have become a target for some fishermen, who are allowed to hook them and pull them up to the pier’s pilings before having to release them.

Fishermen say beach users sometimes put themselves at risk. The Internet is filling up with videos of close encounters. Long-distance swimmers will grab fishing lines and float in the deeper water where fishermen trolling for bat rays might bring up a great white instead.

“It is not safe for the swimmers at all,” said Jason, one of the fishermen who snagged the shark Saturday morning just before it bit Robles. He spoke on the condition his last name not be published, saying he feared for his safety and that of his family.

The fisherman said he sought a police escort to get to his vehicle because “while we were packing up to leave, people were telling us that surfers and swimmers were ganging up and that we were going to get jumped.”

Manhattan Beach police Sgt. Matt Sabosky could not confirm Jason’s account Sunday, although he said it was possible his officers did provide assistance.

Jason said he and two friends had arrived at the pier about 5 a.m. Their goal was to catch large bat rays and release them. They’d gone to other piers in recent months because fishermen were hooking mainly great whites at Manhattan Beach, he said.

Their bait was frozen sardines, which they attached to their hooks. Nothing was biting; they were bored and thinking of going home, said Jason, when one buddy got a mighty pull. All three took turns gripping the pole for more than 30 minutes.
He said they identified their catch as a shark when it surfaced about 30 yards offshore — and about 10 feet from a surfer, Jason said.

“Our main concern was taking the shark further out to sea before cutting the line — turning his head and pulling him out to sea,” Jason said.

There is disagreement over how soon they could have or should have cut the line.

The hooked shark cut toward a group of about 10 distance swimmers — including Robles — well offshore.

A video, circulating widely online, shows the fishermen seeming to make light of the shark’s approach toward the swimmers until they realize someone had been hurt.

Before the shark was hooked, Avner Papouchado, 47, who was paddle-boarding nearby, said he was struck by the thickness of the fishermen’s line — making it suitable for big-game fish — and how far it extended from the pier.

Juvenile great whites are not known to threaten humans, Martin said. Biting a human — or a sea lion, which is the common prey of adult sharks — could injure a juvenile by breaking off its less rigid “baby” teeth.

The bite was almost certainly the result of an accidental collision between swimmer and agitated shark, Martin said.

Authorities said they had no plans to cite or arrest the fisherman, but no fishing will be allowed until Tuesday.

Photo via WikiCommons

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Great White Shark Population Is Healthy And Growing, New Census Shows

Great White Shark Population Is Healthy And Growing, New Census Shows

By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — A new census study shows there are more than 2,400 white sharks off California and suggests that existing protective measures should be maintained because they are increasing the size and health of the population.

The study by a 10-member team led by George H. Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research, bolsters a recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration determination that the eastern Pacific Ocean population of great white sharks does not warrant listing under the Endangered Species Act.

“That we found these sharks are doing OK, better than OK, is a real positive in light of the fact that other shark populations are not necessarily doing as well,” Burgess said. “We hope others can take our results and use them as a positive starting point for additional investigation.”

The team, like NOAA, began researching the status of the great white shark population in 2013, after the environmental groups Oceana, Shark Stewards, and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a petition calling for endangered species protection.

The environmental groups were reacting to the first census of great whites ever attempted. Conducted by researchers at the University of California, Davis, and Stanford University, and published in the journal Biology Letters in 2011, the census estimated that only 219 adult and sub-adult great whites lived off the Central California coast, and perhaps double that many were in the entire northeastern Pacific Ocean, including Southern California.

The great white shark, which can reach 21 feet, weigh 3 tons and hunts waters shared by surfers, scuba divers, and swimmers, feeds at the top of the food chain, and the status of its population can have cascading effects on species from sea lions to anchovies.

The surprisingly low estimate prompted environmentalists to launch fundraising campaigns to “save the great white shark from extinction,” and file the petitions that made Carcharodon carcharias the first candidate for listing as an endangered species in California ocean waters.

The UC Davis/Stanford University census also drew sneers from shark experts who claimed it was based on faulty assumptions. The actual white shark population, critics said, was likely 10 times larger — a result of state and federal laws curbing pollution, banning near-shore gill netting, protecting sharks, and halting the slaughter of marine mammals they prey on.

Caught in the middle were state and federal wildlife authorities who accepted the petitions for consideration because the census study was, at the time, the only available science on the subject that had been published in an internationally recognized scientific journal.
Earlier this year, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife both determined that listing was not warranted.

“In this case, the environmental groups were too quick on the draw,” Burgess said in an interview. “Their hearts were in the right place, but their petitions cost taxpayers a heck of a lot of money and diverted resources away from species genuinely at risk.”

Photo via WikiCommons

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