The warning is not just about sharks. Stingrays are also likely to be something to watch this summer, Lowe said, because the same warm-water conditions that can draw young white sharks closer into California’s waters can also support the stingray populations they feed on.<\/p>\n
In 2015, Lowe said researchers saw baby white sharks in Monterey Bay for the first time. Juvenile white sharks generally have a lower temperature limit of about 60 degrees, and Monterey Bay\u2019s spring waters have historically been too cold, often in the mid- to upper 50s.<\/p>\n
But waters off Santa Cruz warmed to nearly 70 degrees in 2015, Lowe said. Since then, researchers have documented a nursery aggregation in the Monterey Bay area.<\/p>\n
Lowe said the pattern reflects a broader shift: California\u2019s coastal waters have been warming over the past 30 years, making parts of Northern California increasingly viable as nursery habitat for young white sharks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is becoming a perfect storm,\u201d Lowe said. “This is what we think is going to make SoCal the white shark Mecca this summer.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The warning is not just about sharks. Stingrays are also likely to be something to watch this summer,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-735981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=735981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}