No, not that one...

This one: Carcharodon carcharias - the man in the grey suit

We've been having a lot of Great White Shark encounters in SoCal recently. Apparently, they're sticking around longer after giving birth and no one really knows why, but I'm sure global warming is the reason because it's the reason for everything else. Aside from the triathlete that got attacked and killed in Encinitas, some of the stories being told are pretty interesting:

On June 21, 2008 Bettina Pereira was kayaking 300 feet from shore at West Cove, Catalina Island. Her husband Andrew remained aboard their boat to fish with their children. Air and water temperatures were estimated at 80 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit respectively. It was about 9 AM with a clear sky and a calm sea surface. Pereira was paddling a 12 foot blue kayak over water 50 feet deep with 40 feet of visibility. The bottom dropped off quickly to over 500 feet just beyond her starting location. William Weilbacher was fishing from his boat, which was one of five fishing boats within several hundred yards of Pereira. He provided the following information; “I was in the process of pinning my first squid on the hook when I heard a scream from the direction of the kayak. I looked over and saw the kayak flipping over and the woman going in the water. She was about a hundred yards away. I saw a big splash next to the boat and then saw what I initially thought was an arm waving back and forth and splashing. After about two seconds I realized the 'arm' was actually part of a huge shark tail oriented vertically in the water and it was thrashing back and forth right at the surface. The large dark shape was actually part of the shark sticking out of the water. The portion of the tail I could see looked like it was three feet long. The shark was pushing on the kayak and the woman was on the far side of the kayak holding on and screaming.” Andrew Pereira said “Bettina felt a strong bump to the back of her kayak. It was so hard she thought a boat had run into her. When she turned to look behind, she saw the body of a large shark coming up underneath her kayak. It rose up so quickly that she was thrown from her seating position in the kayak to one of standing upright on her feet, which were on the back of the shark.” Weilbacher continued; “We were anchored so there was nothing we could do in time to be of any use, but there were two other small boats drift fishing. We were closer and I don't know if they couldn't see what was happening as well, or what. We started screaming at them to go help her and that there was a shark and they both went at her at full throttle. I would estimate the size of the Great White Shark to be 15 feet.” Bettina Pereira sustained some bruising but was not cut by the shark during her most shocking encounter.

and

On March 7, 2008 Thomas Larkin was surfing with two friends. He recounted the following; “I was surfing a 6’6” Avisco (carbon fiber) Surf Prescriptions Bat Tail Quad. I paddled out at Dog Beach near Huntington Cliffs around 7:10 in the morning at a pretty full high tide. Dog Beach is located in a stretch of Huntington City Beach between Seapoint Street and Golden West Street. I was meeting two friends there, Matt Donoghue and Craig Angel. The current was moving around a lot of water, and both of them were on longboards, so about 20 minutes into the surf I was tired of paddling over to them on my shortboard, and was surfing pretty much alone. There were two bodyboarders about 100 yards north of me, and I was almost due west of the ramp walkway. At about 8:00 AM, I caught my best wave of the session, and even though Matt and Craig had already gotten out, I wanted one more. I paddled back out and was sitting in the lineup alone, with the closest surfers about 200 yards south, and the bodyboarders were inside and north. I was waiting for a set for about 5 minutes when I felt a jolt down on the tail of my board, immediately followed by violent bubble cascade, which sunk the board down about another 8 inches (see photograph). I didn’t really get what was going on as quickly as I should have, but as soon as it begun it had ended and I was apparently alone again. A wave popped up, I paddled into it but pearled because of the water in the nose of my board, I quickly got back on and paddled into the whitewater of the next wave and boogie boarded it to the beach where I emptied the board through the apparent bite mark." The diameter of the bite suggests an adult White Shark in excess of 15 feet in length.

You can see the bite on the page linked above. I surf there all the time with a similar board. Oh well.

On June 3, 2008 Scott Ball and Kyle Faust, a professional diver, were spearfishing near Carlsbad State Beach. Ball was wearing a black and grey spring suite, a black 100 cm speargun, a black mask, and a blue snorkel and long blue fins. Water temperature was estimated at 65 degrees Fahrenheit with the depth about 15 feet. The ocean floor was primarily several reefs with open sandy areas between. There was a steady breeze pushing 3 – 5 foot ground swells under a clear blue sky. It was 10:30 AM and they had been in the water about 45 minutes. Ball recounted; “I was near the bottom when I saw something huge coming at me. It was a shadow off in the distance. I surfaced to tell Kyle what I had seen. A few minutes later I dove under to find a large black eye, bigger than my fist, no more than 1 or 2 feet from me. The shark is starring at me when it makes a slow turn to swim away. It was a big shark; the teeth on it were huge and actually visible in the mouth. After a few seconds of this stare down it did almost a casual turn and swam off. The visibility was 8-10' and at one point I couldn't see the head or the tail just the massive girth and body. The top of the shark was a dark grey and the bottom was much lighter in color. When it pushed away with its tail it actually moved me a bit in the water from the force. So now I make the rookie mistake and start ‘booking it’ to shore going ‘oh s--t.’ On my way in, about 30 seconds later, I looked to my left and saw a dorsal fin, 2 – 2.5 feet high, coming directly at me. As it neared me it sank below the surface and swam directly under me. I don’t know how long it was and I’m not going to say it was as wide as a VW, but it was massive in width and length. The last time it came at me was real fast. The shark buzzed me a total of 3 times, so it was very persistent. Once on the beach I noticed a crowd so I walked over and there was a beached sea lion being harassed by 3 or 4 beachgoers. The seal was about 10 feet from the water’s edge but would not go in the water to get away from the harassment. This was a learning experience and a scary one.”

You're chances of surviving a GWS attack while diving are actually pretty poor, because there's nothing between you and the shark's lower teeth. It can just clamp right down on you. If you're on a surfboard, you've only got something like a 20% chance of dying if attacked, even though the odds of getting attacked in the first place are extremely low. Really, it's a miracle more people aren't attacked given how much we use the water. I think GWSs are probably smarter than we previously thought. They're kind of like big, toothy dogs that after looking at something and smelling it, they take a test bite and decide from there whether to eat it. More often than not though, they probably just look and then swim off, like what happened (more or less) to the guy above.

Still, my friend wants to go surfing in the Channel Islands in the fall, and there are a lot of seals there so I'm probably going to use some sort of shark repellent device when I go. Medical help is simply too far away out there.