Trio of Great Whites Are Largest Ever Spotted in the Surfside Area

SEAL BEACH, CA - Just when we got used to the dozen juvenile great white sharks that have tarried in Surfside for more than a year, the largest sharks ever spotted in Seal Beach arrived this week, forcing a 24-hour closure of Surfside and Sunset Beach.

A Huntington Beach Police Department helicopter spotted three 12-foot great white sharks near Anderson Street at the border of Huntington Beach and Seal Beach.

“We’ve never seen a shark that size in Seal Beach before,” said Seal Beach Marine Safety Department Chief Joe Bailey.

There is a big difference between a 12-foot great white and a juvenile shark. The young sharks that have been lingering off the coast in the unusually warm waters over the last year range in size from 5 to 7 feet long. They grow about a foot a year, according to shark experts. And sharks that small tend to feed on fish and stingrays.

A 12-footer is another story.

“Those are the kinds of sharks that hunt seals and sea lions and could mistake a swimmer for a seal,” said Bailey.

That’s a serious concern in Seal Beach, where some of the world’s top rough water swimmers gather to swim on a regular basis.

Seal Beach, Huntington Beach and most marine safety departments in Southern California have the same policy when it comes to sharks: They post warnings when smaller sharks are spotted and close the beach when sharks larger than 8 feet long appear.

It’s a relatively new problem off the Orange County coast, where the decimation of sharks, seals and their food sources in the last century made large shark sightings a rarity. Not so anymore. The recovery of the seal, sea lion and great white populations are a double-edge sword, Professor Chris Lowe, director of the Cal State Long Beach shark lab, has told Patch. The shark recovery is a sign of the ocean’s health, but it also means humans are going to need to adapt to the presence of large sharks in the area.

“For 40 years we have had unfettered access to the ocean. We never had to deal with predators because they were gone,” Lowe told Patch. “I think we need to recognize that these predators are coming back. When we go in the ocean, it is not Disneyland. Your safety is not guaranteed.”

In May, a 52-year-old woman training for the Iron Man competition was attacked while swimming offshore in Corona del Mar State Beach. Fitness instructor Maria Korcsmaros suffered bite wounds from her shoulder to her pelvis, requiring hours of surgery.

While great white sharks are becoming a common sight in Surfiside and Huntington Beach, no shark has been spotted on the other side of the jetty in Seal Beach’s main beach, said Bailey. The two beaches are a mere stone’s throw from one another, but a significant amount of boat traffic divides the beaches, keeping the sharks to the south so far.

Officials in Huntington Beach and Seal Beach will continue to patrol the region, and if no more large sharks are spotted, the beach could reopen today.

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City New Service; PHOTO of Great White shark by Hermanus Backpackers via Wikimedia Commons