{"id":402093,"date":"2026-07-17T10:25:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T10:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/402093\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T10:25:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T10:25:09","slug":"california-braces-for-its-sharkiest-summer-in-a-decade-but-experts-say-dont-panic-sharks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/402093\/","title":{"rendered":"California braces for its sharkiest summer in a decade \u2013 but experts say don\u2019t panic | Sharks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Surfers, swimmers and fishermen across California<\/a> will be sharing the waves with an influx of visitors this summer: young great white sharks.<\/p>\n

Juvenile white sharks are already appearing along the coastline, fleeing warmer than usual waters in Mexico during what\u2019s expected to be an incredibly strong El Ni\u00f1o.<\/p>\n

But while shark experts say it could be the sharkiest summer in California<\/a> in a decade, they also say beachgoers shouldn\u2019t be too alarmed as the apex predators have spent generations learning what\u2019s on the menu. And humans aren\u2019t delicious.<\/p>\n

\u201cHumans don\u2019t look like prey, they don\u2019t sound like prey,\u201d Dr Chris Lowe, the director of the Shark Lab at California State University Long Beach, said. \u201cIf it doesn\u2019t feel like prey [to a white shark], they ignore it. It\u2019s not a threat, it\u2019s not food.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lowe has spent 20 years monitoring white sharks using drones and tracking data. In 2015, the last time El Ni\u00f1o conditions were this strong, his team saw twice as many white sharks along the California coast than usual, to the point that the creatures established a shark nursery near Monterey Bay.<\/p>\n

Juvenile white sharks \u2013 those between 6ft and 9ft in length \u2013 now make regular pilgrimages between Baja California in Mexico up the California coastline, staying close to shore to feed on fish, rays and squid and grow safely before venturing into deeper waters.<\/p>\n

At the same time, shark incidents remain exceedingly rare<\/a> in the state. There have been just 250 since 1950, and only 17 fatalities, according to data compiled by the California department of fish and wildlife. The number of deadly shark bites, about 2.5 per decade, has also remained relatively stable throughout that period.<\/p>\n

Researchers at Lowe\u2019s lab have tested white shark behavior around water-goers to get to the bottom of that good news.<\/p>\n

In one study, scientists recorded audio of surfers, swimmers and kayakers in the ocean to see what the different groups sounded like and what vibrations they made underwater.<\/p>\n

The team then took that audio and played it back to sharks at sites where they aggregate. The animals weren\u2019t particularly interested in the sounds of surfers or kayakers, but would respond to the sounds of a swimmer, possibly because of the dual sound of slapping arms and kicking feet.<\/p>\n

The sharks would move to investigate, get about 10ft from a swimmer, and then leave.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur conclusion is we think sharks can actually tell the difference between people, and because we don\u2019t smell like food, sound like food, look like food, they don\u2019t consider us food,\u201d Lowe said. \u201cWe know that, because could you imagine the number of people that would be bitten or consumed in California?\u201d<\/p>\n

Those figures seem to be a relative anomaly in California, and could be a product of the type of sharks that are becoming more common off its coastline: namely young white sharks, despite their fearsome reputation.<\/p>\n

In Florida, long considered the shark bite capital of the world, reef sharks like blacktips are far more common<\/a>. In 2025, the state saw 11 incidents of unprovided bites, 44% of the total of the entire US.<\/p>\n

A spate of shark bites in Australia, including multiple fatalities and serious injuries, have been linked to both bull sharks and white sharks<\/a>. Climatic factors like warmer ocean temperatures have seen bull sharks spend more time in the Sydney area, a beachside city with a population in the millions.<\/p>\n

Gavin Naylor, the director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the University of Florida, said there\u2019s a reason why shark incidents are more common in some places than others.<\/p>\n

\u201cA white shark is about as different from a blacktip shark as a kangaroo is from a dog,\u201d Naylor said. \u201cYou cannot compare bites in California with bites in Florida. The bites in Florida are from completely different species.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Australia may have some of the same species as California, the country sees more bites on average because the sharks in Australia that are near population centers are a lot bigger.<\/p>\n

But even in shark havens like Florida, bites remain rare when you consider how many people flock to the beaches the state\u2019s known for.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tell people all the time that if sharks really did target people we\u2019d have about 10,000 bites in the US alone,\u201d Naylor says. \u201cHumans are like little plump sausages, they\u2019re very easy to eat. It\u2019d be a smorgasbord.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat that tells you, the sharks are actually doing their level best to avoid people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lowe acknowledges that there\u2019s limited science to demonstrate why sharks bite, because sometimes, they do. The go-to theory for unprovoked attacks, he said, is mistaken identity. And in California, where bites are rarer than in other shark havens, he hypothesized that white sharks may just learn really quickly even if they do bite.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got these animals swimming around this environment all the time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe the sharks that mistakenly bite people haven\u2019t been around people much, or maybe they don\u2019t make mistakes very often, period,\u201d he said. \u201cI just don\u2019t know how else to explain it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As to how to stay safe in the water? If you would have asked him two decades ago for wisdom about how to stay safe in California waters, he\u2019d give a different answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy advice was any shark that\u2019s bigger than a person could be a potential threat,\u201d Lowe said. But hard drives full of drone data, showing sharks getting curious, and close, to swimmers and surfers before turning away once they recognize it\u2019s not a meal, have eased his own fears.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlash forward 20 years \u2026 I swim with these white sharks every day and I have no qualms doing it because of the data that we collected.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Surfers, swimmers and fishermen across California will be sharing the waves with an influx of visitors this summer:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-402093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}