GWS study

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/04/MN751AE8D7.DTL

Thanx for that one Amph.

Still, it can't be comforting for swimmers at Aquatic Park to know that the acoustic tags recorded five great whites inside the entrance to San Francisco Bay in 2007 and 2008. The researchers don't know what the sharks did or how long they stayed, but it does suggest to swimmers that flopping around in the water between August and December might not be a good idea.

Aargh...there goes my blissful "no need to deploy the Shark Shield inside the Bay" days. My guess is they are cruising the furbags at Fishermans Warf, but the Harbor Seal colony at the ARW mat be another spot.

Great article - that's some cool info.   

Thats really cool, amazing to know they are cruising around in the bay. Especially now I'm not there!

5 sharks from 2007-2008 is a very small amount of shark hours in the bay. There is current in the bay during big swings that scares me more than a shark. I wonder if they eat the bat rays in the bay.

Make sure you click on the little map picture in the article. It shows all the tracked shark's locations for every month of the year. Very interesting. I thought Jan-Mar was when they all left. The months when all the sharks are gone is May-June. It sounds like May is the month for diving way out there on the reef at Shelter Cove.

Wasn't the surfer attacked in Marina in June 2 years ago?
June is halibut season off the shoreline and I remember very well chickening out of a planned halibut spearfishing dive off Del Monte as this attack occured.
Because of this very attack I slunked off to Stillwater....and hid the fact until this day.
[ is it slunked or sleanked?]

And now...ie right now for the next 6 weeks is the very worst time to be in the water apparently.
Steve

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Nah, Todd was attacked in late Aug at Marina beach.

5 sharks from 2007-2008 is a very small amount of shark hours in the bay.

True, but the scary part is that 2 of them returned. One shark entered the Bay 4 times. To me, that means it found something it liked inside the Bay. Or it wouldn't have come back, right?

Copy+pasted from the Merc article: http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_13705787?source=rss&nclick_check=1
The five sharks that came into San Francisco Bay represent less than 1 percent of the nearly 64,000 detections researchers picked up along the California coast from acoustic tags. Some details are known about the bay visits, however. One shark was detected one time inside the Golden Gate Bridge in December, 2008; a second shark was detected one time, in April 2008; a third shark was detected four times, between November 2007 and November 2008; a fourth shark was detected once in May 2008 and a fifth shark was detected three times, in August and September 2007.

Wasn't the contact encounter at Bean Hollow in June? or was it July? I have it logged, but my log is at home.

I think they only come in for as long as they can hold their breath.

I wish they would do another study on why they sometimes attack surfers and kayaks but they probably won't.  They are not worried about the preservation of our species yet.  As long as there are a lot of seals to eat, I don't think they will evolve to like our meat.   I wonder why they prefer red or is that just coincidence?

I wish they would do another study on why they sometimes attack surfers and kayaks but they probably won't.  They are not worried about the preservation of our species yet.  As long as there are a lot of seals to eat, I don't think they will evolve to like our meat.   I wonder why they prefer red or is that just coincidence?

I think this has been studied, but the sharks are pretty complex critters. They attack non-standard items for all kinds of reasons, territorial, mating, curiousness. The animal lacks hands so it has to mouth something to determine what it is/ edibility.

with the MMPA, more seals=more sharks. At the same time, more humans in/on the water=more encounters with said sharks.

Yeah, then they need more sharks to get ridd of the seals...  It's like that kids story where there's a mouse in the castle so the king gets cats, then he gets dogs to get ridd of the cats, then lions to get ridd of the dogs, then elephants to get ridd of the lions, then finally a mouse to get ridd of the elephants. 

I guess our fairy tale ending would be if fishermen were the mice... 

Very interesting reading, glad to know I won't be needing my 14/0 hooks in April. 

I always wonder about the size issue. A GWS isn't a GWS. They can range from a few feet long to 20 feet and 4-5000 lbs. When and where are the big mature sharks is what I want to know. I realize that even a smaller shark can pose a danger to me but they aren't the same as a whale sized shark.

In the book Devil's Teeth the researchers talk about the 15 footers (that's a big shark) and then they talk about how there were a few sharks that were much bigger than the 15 footers.

If I was yak fishing and an 8 or 10 foot white checked me out it would feel a lot different than having a 2 ton 8 foot wide monster cruise by me. My Cobra Triple is huge and it's 3 feet wide and 16 1/2 feet long. Researchers have said GWS can be 8 feet wide.

I think I would look like a formidable opponent to a 10 foot shark with all my dive gear and a gun (I'm 8 feet long with my fins not counting the gun) but a huge mature GWS would probably just look at me as filling.   

If anyone wants to read the scientific article mentioned in this newspaper story..

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2009/10/29/rspb.2009.1155.full.pdf

Brian