What is El Niño bringing us besides rain? Hammerhead sharks, experts say
A possibly record-breaking El Niño may be bringing more than winter rainstorms to Southern California.
The periodic ocean pattern characterized by unusually warm water in the eastern Pacific could cause heavy rain as it heats the atmosphere and changes circulation patterns, according to forecasters. But experts say it already has attracted dozens of great white sharks as their food sources migrate from more tropical areas, and now several hammerhead sharks have been seen off the coast.
On Sept. 6, a group trying to catch yellowtail fish off Sunset Beach encountered a 10-foot hammerhead that was attracted by chum the group was using. The day before, a kayaker was bitten on a leg by a hammerhead near Malibu.
Cal State Long Beach marine biology professor Chris Lowe said hammerheads have been known to visit Southern California waters during an El Niño year. He saw them in 1997, and said some have been found as far north as Central California.
Hammerheads have been reported off Southern California the past two summers, but their numbers have increased because warm water draws them and their food supply, mainly yellowtail and tuna, up from Central America and Baja California, , Lowe said.
“You’ve got a whole tropical food chain that’s moved into our neighborhood,” he said. “That warm water is bringing that food up here, and that food is being followed by its predators. That’s how we get that subtropical food web that we normally don’t have showing up here.”
Lowe, director of Cal State Long Beach’s Shark Lab, has been studying sharks for more than 25 years. He said the warm water has attracted other non-indigenous marine life, such as a whale shark seen off Dana Point, manta rays spotted near Huntington Beach and thousands of tiny pelagic red crabs that washed ashore in Newport Beach.
“It’s a different ocean that we’ve been used to for the last 40 or 50 years,” he said. “Big predators are coming back, and that includes seals, sea lions, sharks and all the things we never had to share the waves with. Now they’re coming back and we’re going to learn to share.”
The Seal Beach Marine Safety Department, which uses a small drone to look for sharks once a week, hasn’t seen any hammerheads in the area, Marine Safety Chief Joe Bailey said. It hasn’t spotted any great whites in the past two weeks, he said.
Lowe said he and his students have been tracking the movements of six juvenile great white sharks near Surfside in Seal Beach and Sunset Beach in Huntington Beach. They hope to sail out to tag some hammerheads for identification, he said.