Sightings of juvenile great white sharks are becoming more common off the Southern California coast, according to experts.
On Memorial Day afternoon, FOX5 reports officials warned visitors about a great white shark after they found an injured sea lion in the surf break around 20 to 30 yards from the shore.
According to FOX5, San Diego lifeguards spotted a 7-foot great white shark from a boat. It was determined to be a juvenile because of its size and attack on the sea lion, who was able to get away alive.
“Right now, there’s an aggregation of juvenile white sharks off San Diego,” Dr. Chris Lowe with Shark Labs at California State University Long Beach told FOX5. “And those form aggregations form along many of our public beaches. Some of those sharks have been there for about a year and a half and this is the first time we’ve seen aggregations like this off San Diego. We’ve seen them in Santa Monica, Huntington Beach and off Santa Barbara, but this is the first time in 16 years that we’ve seen them off San Diego.”
With help from lifeguards in Del Mar, they've been able to monitor the sharks' behaviors.
“One of the tools we use to figure out when sharks are by these beaches is if we can get out, we can tag the sharks with an acoustic transmitter. We have acoustic receivers all along the beaches that are listening for the tagged sharks," said Lowe. “The goal is to use that information to know when sharks will show up at beaches and can we predict when they’ll show up.”
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