A Splash of Southern Comfort

Hide-and-seek with sharks below California’s Point Conception

Brad Melekian

I have surfed the West Coast of the United States for half my life, and I pay only passing attention to the fact that “macropredatory” animals that are longer than the most egregious stand-up paddleboard and weigh up to two tons may, at any given moment, be swimming nearby during my sessions. I never really give too much thought to sharks because, well, it’s better not to. So I was a little concerned I might learn things I’d rather not know when I visited marine biologist Michael Domeier and his colleague, Nicole Nasby Lucas, at the Marine Conservation Science Institute. The research partners conduct cutting-edge studies of great white shark movement out of a converted house in, of all places, the small agricultural town of Fallbrook, California, just northeast of San Diego. And sure enough, soon after we met, they said things like, “these animals really have very tiny brains,” “they act almost exclusively on instinct,” and “they are very aggressive with one another,” adding that sharks are “curious” animals, intrigued by such shiny and non-shiny things as Coke cans and logs that – let’s be honest – to your average, tiny-brained fish might be very easy to confuse with a surfer when peered at from the ocean’s murky depths.

But then Lucas walked me back to her computer screen and showed me a map of the West Coast that charted the movement of nearly 100 individuals of the species known as Carcharodon carcharia – more commonly called the great white shark. Lucas and Domeier have followed these sharks with a variety of tags over the last 11 years, and trails of several different small, colored dots document how they congregate in two places near the West Coast — Guadalupe Island in Baja California, Mexico, or the Farallon Islands near San Francisco. They then swim directly west for 1,400 nautical miles, about halfway between California and Hawaii, to an amorphous and inconspicuous 500-kilometer spot of open ocean. And that’s it. No north and south cruising of the West Coast. Just east and west, back and forth.

Until Domeier, Lucas and other researchers (see “Straight from the Shark’s Mouth” in this issue) began to tag great whites off the shores of California in the late ’90s, scientists knew little about their movements. Domeier lifts the latest version of their tags, devices that vaguely resemble bulb pumps with eight-inch trailing antennae. They bolt these onto the dorsal fins of large sharks (mainly near Guadalupe Island), and the tags send radio signals to satellites when the animals surface. The signals show up on their computers in Fallbrook, allowing them to track every change in direction — some in real-time — as the beasts swim around the Pacific.

For California surfers north of Point Conception, these findings might be cold comfort, especially in the fall when there are plenty of mature sharks around. “On the central coast,” Domeier says, “somebody’s getting a flyby every single day.”

But for most California surfers who stay further south and do very little riding of waves 1,400 nautical miles west of the coast, this is wonderful news. Yet what about the otherworldly photos of breaching great whites at Sunset Beach in Los Angeles? What about the surreal footage captured by stand-up paddleboarder Chuck Patterson at San Onofre? The juveniles discovered in the Cardiff Reef estuary? “Most of the whites that are found coastally south of Point Conception are juveniles,” says Domeier. Although juveniles are not as dangerous as adults, Domeier cautions that they’re not safe, either.

While their studies have helped clarify the secret lives of great white sharks, Domeier and Lucas have also faced some controversy, too. After all, how does one bolt a tag to a shark’s dorsal fin? “It’s like Jaws,” Domeier says, and he’s not kidding. You can see the process on the National Geographic Channel’s Expedition Great White, a reality show Domeier initially participated in but has since left. The show depicts adrenaline-charged human males leaning over the rail of a boat and catching a large shark with hooks, and then attaching it to a hoist built to pull 60,000-pound yachts out of the water. Once the animal is lifted onto this boat, its tail is pinned down, a towel is placed over its eyes to help sedate it, and a hose is inserted into its mouth, which is flushed with water to keep the shark hydrated. Tags are then bolted into the dorsal fins — “mostly cartilage,” Domeier says, adding that “very little blood” results from this procedure and that sharks do not have the same sensitivity to pain that humans do — and the crew takes other relevant samples, like blood and semen.

Critics have questioned whether the knowledge gained from tracking great whites makes up for the distress the animals may go through. “There are some people in the conservation community who feel like any potential harm to the animal is not worth the gain,” says Domeier, adding that he understands this point of view. But he stresses that the tags themselves cause no harm, sharks heal quickly, and there’s no evidence that any shark they’ve tagged has died from the procedure. He notes that the knowledge that he and Lucas have gained from the process gives a far better understanding of shark behavior than existed even a decade ago, and that ultimately, the data can help manage and protect this vulnerable species.

And without question, much still remains unknown about migration and breeding patterns of great whites, an extraordinarily fit species that has survived for millions of years largely in the dark recesses of the ocean. The shark has always been a misunderstood animal, says Domeier. Though he cautions that “people need to have a healthy dose of fear and respect for these animals,” he also says we can take some measure of assurance from the fact that more surfers aren’t being attacked (see “The Great White's Burden” in this issue for a similar take on the behavior of their South African cousins). “If they wanted us on the menu, people would be attacked every day,” he says.