I’ve met a fair share of white sharks during my lifetime of working and recreating at sea. We are blessed here in the Santa Barbara Channel with a robust and apparently growing population of the toothy critters. They make for an admirable apex predator, at least until something bigger and stronger (like an orca) comes along.
I’ve had some relatively intimate times with these critters which some of us at sea refer affectionately to as “the landlord.” When fishing on my charterboat, they would occasionally swim up close to investigate because we had fish on the line, baits in the water and perhaps a little blood on the decks washing out through the scuppers.
Most of the time they would swim up close to investigate and not seeing anything as large as they typically hunt (a sea lion for example), they would wander off.
One time a large one opened up and mouthed the lower unit of one of my outboards, but thankfully not hard enough to do any damage. Other times they would swim up to the outflow from my bait tank, and it looked like they were sniffing, much like we sniff when walking by the open door of a candy store.
Personally, I love reading and studying about white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias). They are protected and we are not allowed to catch them recreationally. One of the more interesting reads is about the difference between an encounter and an attack. Science-based agencies want to be accurate without being sensational, so are generally moving away from the word “attack.”
These big sharks tend to ask questions with their teeth instead of with their brain. It isn’t quite fair to refer to a question as an intentional attack. Most bites are exploratory where the shark is investigating an unknown object in its environment.
This is referred to as an incident, even though stitches may be required. An attack may be when a shark mistakes a person (perhaps in a dark wetsuit with fins) for a natural food source such as a seal or sea lion. It is generally believed that sharks rarely actually and intentionally attack a human.
Agencies like the California Department of Fish & Wildlife (DFW) tend not to track incidents where a sighting occurred without contact. They also don’t track incidents where a shark was provoked, such as cases involving fishing or chumming.
While the number of non-injury incidents appears to be increasing (possibly because of white shark population increase), the number of injuries looks to be stable and remains low. With tens of thousands of people entering the water annually, and slightly more than 100 shark incidents involving injuries to humans documented since 1950, statistics show white sharks are not after us.
May it always be so!
— Capt. David Bacon operates WaveWalker Charters and is president of SOFTIN Inc., a nonprofit organization providing seafaring opportunities for those in need. Visit softininc.blogspot.com to learn more about the organization and how you can help. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
