Marine Biologists Warn of Record Great White Activity; Lineup at Trestles Unaffected
LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA — Researchers at the California State University Long Beach Shark Lab have announced that warming Pacific Ocean temperatures, anomalously early juvenile white shark sightings, and a seal population that shows no sign of relocating are combining to produce what scientists are calling “a very sharky summer” for Southern California coastal waters, a prediction the surf community has received with the same enthusiasm it receives every sharky summer forecast, which is to say: mild acknowledgment followed by immediate return to surfing. Coverage from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
Dr. Chris Lowe, director of the CSULB Shark Lab and the nation’s foremost expert on the animals that share Southern California water with approximately three million weekend surfers, noted that baby white sharks measuring four to five feet were spotted as early as one month ago — significantly earlier than historical averages. “Based on that, we predict it’s going to be a very sharky summer,” Lowe said, with the measured delivery of a man who has said this many times and knows exactly how the audience will respond.
How the Surf Community Processes This Information
Stage one: awareness. The beach closure notification arrives via app, news alert, or a guy in the parking lot who always knows things. Everyone nods. Stage two: deliberation. A period of approximately forty-five seconds during which surfers consider whether today is the day to sit it out. Stage three: paddling out. The deliberation resolves, as it has resolved every morning since 1922, in favor of getting in the water.
This is not recklessness. Statistically, the chances of shark encounter remain extraordinarily low. Dr. Lowe’s lab tracks juvenile white sharks specifically because juveniles are responsible for most human encounters — not out of predatory intent, the researchers emphasize, but because juvenile sharks are still learning to distinguish between seals and humans and surfboards, a misidentification that is tragic for the human involved but understandable from the shark’s perspective, given that surfboards from below look disturbingly like sea lions.
The Huntington Beach Case Study
The month of April alone produced two separate beach closures in Huntington Beach tied to great white shark activity. The first interrupted the Vans Jack’s Surfboards Pro, a WSL qualifying series event. The second closed Sunset Beach for 48 hours after lifeguards observed a 10-foot shark feeding on a sea lion carcass in chest-deep water.
In both cases, the closures were lifted after 48 hours. In both cases, surfers were back in the water approximately forty-five minutes after the reopening. In both cases, nothing happened. This is the statistical reality of shark activity in Southern California: frequent sightings, infrequent encounters, and a surfing population that has made a collective decision about acceptable risk that does not require input from marine biologists.
“We’re not telling people not to surf,” Dr. Lowe said, not for the first time. “We’re giving people information so they can make informed choices.” The information, processed through the filter of the informed surf community, consistently produces the choice to surf.
What Actually Reduces Shark Encounter Risk
The Shark Lab recommends: avoiding murky water, which eliminates much of the Santa Monica Bay lineup. Avoiding dawn and dusk sessions, which eliminates the only hours when parking is manageable. Staying away from seal colonies, which eliminates Seal Beach, La Jolla, and the stretch of coast near Point Dume that has the best surf. Avoiding areas with fishing activity, which eliminates every pier in Los Angeles County. Surfing in groups rather than alone, which would require people to agree on a spot.
The Shark Lab’s advice is, in aggregate, functionally identical to not surfing Southern California. The Shark Lab does not intend this. The surf community notes it anyway.
The Actual Science
Warming ocean temperatures are a measurable factor in the early arrival of juvenile white sharks. Water temperatures along the SoCal coast have been running above historical averages for months, creating conditions that are hospitable for sharks earlier in the season. The Surfer Magazine reporting on the Huntington Beach closure quoted Lowe specifically: “The water is really warm right now, unusually warm for this time of year.”
The implication for summer — when the water warms further, when the beach crowd is at maximum density, and when the seals are doing what seals do near surf breaks — is that 2026 will produce more sightings, more closures, and more 48-hour waiting periods during which surfers stand in parking lots staring at the ocean.
The Shark Lab will be there to track it. The surfers will be back in the water as soon as the 48 hours are up. The summer will be, as predicted, very sharky, and also very surfed, because that is Southern California, and that is what happens here.
More wildlife management satire: The Daily Mash.
The Summer Forecast in Summary
Southern California is heading into what the CSULB Shark Lab is calling a very sharky summer with all of its usual equipment: surfboards, wetsuits, wax, leashes, and a philosophical framework that has successfully processed decades of shark warnings without significantly reducing the number of people in the water. The beach closures will happen. The 48-hour windows will feel long. The surfers will be back in the water the morning after reopening, checking the swell, arguing about the tide, and paddling out into an ocean that contains more apex predators this year than last year and fewer parking spots than ever. This is summer in Southern California. It has always been this. The Shark Lab will keep counting fins. The lifeguards will keep watching. The surfers will keep surfing. The sharks, for their part, will keep being sharks, which is to say: effective, ancient, and entirely indifferent to the content calendar.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/