Before tragedy struck, the 3.5-mile stretch of bay between Sand Dollar and New Brighton beaches known on maritime maps as Soquel Cove had become a place of mystery, discovery and awe — one of the most unusual ecotourism destinations on the planet.
Charter boats, personal boats, drones, kayaks, and paddleboards combing the waters mere yards from shore. All in search of a glimpse of the mystical creatures that had begun congregating five years earlier in such numbers that the area was dubbed Shark Park.
But it remained part of daily recreational life for surfers, boogie boarders and beachgoers who opted to play in the waters along that desirable swath of sand despite signs warning of the unique locals who call this place home.
Pictures shot from above captured the bizarre co-existence and were splattered across social media streams. Sharks, mostly smaller juveniles that feed on small leopard sharks, skates and rays rather than the sea lions or seals a wetsuit-clad swimmer might be mistaken for, lurking within 10 to 20 yards of unsuspecting humans.
Stanford scientist Dr. Barbara Block calls Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary the “Blue Serengeti … a place as rich as the plains of Africa. But instead of lions, zebras and gazelles, we have grey whales, orcas, humpbacks, white sharks and bluefin tuna.
“When we enter the ocean here, we’re in a very wild place.”
But not since 1960, when a 16-year-old named Susan Theriot lost her leg at nearby Hidden Beach while swimming with classmates on a school field trip, had there been an act of aggression by a white shark against a human here.
Since 26-year-old surfer Ben Kelly was fatally bitten on the knee by a young adult white shark on the afternoon of May 9 at Sand Dollar Beach, this shared ecosystem has presented more questions than answers.
- Was the relative safety some felt co-mingling with white sharks — these were “baby sharks” after all — a mirage?
- Is the number of sharks in the area increasing or are there just more eyeballs on the ocean?
- What will the shark attack mean for ecotourism once the COVID-19 restrictions are relaxed?
There are no firm answers. But key stakeholders — the scientists who study white shark behavior and migration patterns, avid white shark researchers helping track the local population and boat tour guides clamoring for a reopening of their unique business — help bring a better sense of understanding.
Like the white shark species itself, it’s greatly complicated.
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They began congregating near the Cement Ship off Seacliff Beach in unseen numbers in 2015. A northerly push of surface water scientists refer to as the “Warm Blob” is credited with migration of all types of species typically found in Southern California waters.
Juvenile whites that used to grow bigger in Baja followed warmer water patterns north to coastal stops in Orange County, Malibu and Ventura — and then proceeded further north with the “Blob.”
“Climate change is causing shifts in ocean temperatures,” said Taylor Chapple, an assistant professor of marine science at Oregon State. “The blob event was unprecedented, drawing species into habitats in which they’ve never been observed.
“These are highly mobile but slow-growing and reproducing animals that cannot increase overall abundance quickly. But they can move significantly with changing conditions.”
Even with scientific shark tagging efforts that help track their migratory routes and amateur observers counting them from above via helicopter or drone — tallies have ranged from 20-30 in the Shark Park zone recently — the actual number of sharks that live here at any one time is impossible to know.
As Block, Prothro Professor of Marine Science at Stanford, puts it: “It’s a lounge — they are taking advantage of the heat.”
And then, as they grow and their dietary needs change, most move up the coast to areas like Ano Nuevo, the Farallon Islands or Tomales Bay, places rich with meaty pinnipeds. That’s typically where subadult 10- to 12-footers, like the one that struck Kelly, become bonafide mammal hunters easily exceeding 15 feet in a lifespan that can stretch past 70 years.
Block and colleagues will be releasing a paper later this year that will shed better light on where white sharks go and why. After more than 20 years of placing acoustic tags on white sharks, they found that a large number of them forage each fall in the waters off California, then migrate annually to a massive open ocean region the size of Colorado halfway between Hawaii and Baja known as the White Shark Cafe.
Takeaways from that study could shed light on the population trends at smaller stop-off points such as Shark Park.
“We’re hoping to be putting out more receivers and tags to learn more about the local aggregations,” Block said. “The objective now is to see how Aptos sharks fit into our local puzzle.”
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Whale-watching tours can be fickle in the Monterey Bay. Which partly explains why the afternoon shark safaris put on by several charter outfits the past few years have been a big success.
“People are skeptical that they’re going to see sharks and then they come back glowing,” says Ken Stagnaro of Stagnaro Charter Boats. “There’s no other place in the world you can have that short of a boat ride (15 minutes), be that close to shore and see great white sharks up close in the wild — I mean, c’mon.”
Raina Stoops and her husband Joe are the other shark boat tour guides via Sea Spirit Ocean Safari. They also do the afternoon tours because it’s when the lighting is best for seeing sharks, when the wind typically goes slack on that side of the bay and when sharks are most likely to frequent the warmed-up surface water.
“The sharks come right up to the boat because they like the vibration,” Raina said. “We drive in and they come to us. We have a naturalist aboard and help educate people about how many more sharks are killed by humans than vice versa. This is probably one of the only wildlife tours of its kind.”
Before Kelly’s death, the main safety concerns in the area were for the sharks themselves. Several have washed ashore dead in recent years, one with signs it might’ve been hit by a speeding boat. Another was found to have been shot, perhaps a shark fishing attempt gone awry.
“Some people speed into that zone too fast — that’s the only real concern,” Stagnaro said.
In an effort to offset that, buoys were placed 200 yards offshore this week by State Parks lifeguards, also demarcating a safe zone for sharks seeking distance from boats.
Both Stagnaro and the Stoops hope to get their boats back in the water soon pending word from local health officials about acceptable occupancy and social distancing protocol.
Meanwhile it’s been business as usual for local drone pilots like Eric Mailander, who have been providing non-stop footage of Shark Park activity.
And then came a Facebook warning on Friday from Specialized Helicopters pilot Chris Gularte, who flies tours over the area frequently and often posts video of sharks and humans in dramatically close distance.
He didn’t have the visuals this time, but recounted the sight of a very large shark possibly acting aggressively toward a surfer, who quickly returned to shore.
“I want to really emphasize that it’s a very bad time to surf the Manresa beaches area north or south,” Gularte wrote. “I’ve been watching these big sharks really act differently this last month as I’ve never seen before. Stay out of the water — it’s just not the same as previous years.”
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Ralph Collier, founder of the Shark Research Institute, is one of the world’s foremost authorities on shark attacks. In very few cases, he believes, has a white shark intended to attack a human. From the details of Kelly’s death, he saw the telltale signs of an exploratory mission gone wrong.
“When a surfer is pulled off their board into the water, that’s more of an investigation,” said Collier, adding that sharks often display displacement behavior, trying to intimidate an unknown cohabitant out of the area.
That’s the logical explanation for kayaks or paddleboards that get knocked or bit. An extreme example occurred in Monterey in May of 2017 when a kayaker got knocked from his vessel, swam away and the shark continued to chew on the kayak.
“It knew it wasn’t a dead whale or elephant seal,” Collier said. “The only reason it kept biting it was to tell the kayaker to get out of here.”
Sean Van Sommeran is a grassroots researcher and white shark conservationist who admits to rubbing people wrong because he’s more free to speak than scientists who constantly have funding in the lurch.
Few have had boots on the ground — or eyes above — at Shark Park more than Van Sommeran, a Santa Cruz native with a commercial fishing background who began the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation in 1990 and has proudly helped tag 165 white sharks.
“I’ve been biting my nails for years,” Van Sommeran said in the wake of the fatality. “We’ve got a lot of pinnipeds and sharks that have been coming here for who knows how long.”
Collier amplifies that fact, noting how much bigger the species grows here in contrast to places with comparable white shark populations: “Compared to Australia or South Africa, we find sharks 800-1,000 pounds more because there is so much available food.”
Collier believes the white shark population has grown in the quarter-century since it gained federal protection. He also believes the proliferation of drones has drawn exponentially more eyeballs to a phenomenon that was probably there all along.
“I’m surprised people don’t get bit more often,” Van Sommeran said. “I tell people who paddle their kayaks out there to see the baby ones that there are big ones out there too. And they all have the battle scars.
“Have you ever seen the skull of an elephant seal? (The sharks) have to go look for the wolves and bears to tangle with. It’s a tough job description they have.”
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To surf or not to surf?
For Tyler Fox, an Aptos native and lifelong surfer of the zone simply known as “The Beaches,” it’s an easy call.
“Nope — it’s not worth it.”
Fox, who runs a popular surf culture magazine called Santa Cruz Waves and was a regular invitee to big-wave contests at Mavericks, has seen too much lately. Only days before Kelly was attacked, a friend of Fox’s got bumped by a shark. Another friend had one swim directly at him before diving below.
“We grew up as kids surfing these beachbreaks, looking for good sandbars — I love it. And we’ve always known they’re out there,” Fox said. “But when your friend gets bumped and another sees one swim under him clear as day, it’s getting weird. I think there’s something new going on.”
Surf breaks that used to draw a crowd are now close to empty.
“People are pretty shaken up. They’re scared to surf,” Fox said. “It will come back. But it will probably take some time.”
