What the freak is happening off our beautiful, sin-kissed coast?
There was the giant squid invasion this past winter. There was the rare sighting of Orcas earlier this week (with a giant halibut thrown into the cioppino for good measure). And there's the constant threat by that sea monster the eggheads refer to as Enterococci.
But the latest spotting is downright Spielbergian.
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Great white shark sightings have been reported recently in the waters along Huntington Beach, San Onofre State Beach, Will Rogers State
Beach in Pacific Palisades, Terramar Beach in
Carlsbad, near Santa Cruz island off Santa Barbara and up the Central Coast through Northern California as far north as Oregon.
Surfer Randy Wright says in this report he has seen at least
12 great whites breaching along the coast near Pacific Palisades, four of which he captured on
video after setting up cameras at Will Rogers.
Ralph Collier, who heads research for the Shark Research Committee, confirmed at least one image Wright captured was a great white shark. That video was shot the Friday before Memorial Day weekend.
Given the increased number of sightings, coupled with the huge crowds that marked the unofficial opening of the summer beach season this past weekend, it shows Jaws and his cousins “don't want to attack humans,” according to Collier.
The last fatal great white shark attack involved a swimmer who was
killed on April 25, 2008, near Solana Beach.
Great whites are the world's largest known predatory fish, feasting on smaller fish, dolphins, seals and sea lions.
After increased sightings were reported in local waters in the early 1990s, then-state Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) called on the federal government to allow increased killing of seals and sea lions, which he claimed were drawing great whites too close to shore. Rivals and the media had a field day portraying Ferguson as a baby seal clubber.
Hey, there's another Ferguson–the late conservative warrior's son Jay–running for that same Assembly seat.
Quick, someone hide the baby seals!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
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