Beaches along the Vandenberg Coastline remain closed after the deadly shark attack at Surf Beach two days ago. Sightings of great whites have become more common, prompting shark advisory signs around Central Coast beaches.
But what's behind the increase in these shark sightings and attacks?
Great white sharks are as mysterious as any animal out there so its hard to pinpoint the exact reason for the increase in sightings but many theories have been offered that some experts aren't buying them.
Peter Howorth, director of the Santa Barbara Marine Mammal Center, deals with mammals in distress. Some of them are victims of obvious shark attacks and he's seeing a much larger number of attacks on these mammals than ever before.
"From the period of 1976 to 2008, we would see perhaps one attack every few years. Then from 2009 that grew to several attacks per year.
So what's causing white sharks to attack more often? One theory suggests that more people are in the water swimming, but Howorth doesn't buy it.
"We have had more than a seven-fold increase in attacks on humans from the 1990s compared to 2000 and on. That cannot be explained by more than 7 times the people in the water."
Another theory says the population of seals and sea lions is larger than ever. Once again, Howorth disagrees and says, "pinnipeds, seals, and sea lions have been sufficiently abundant to support a very large population of white sharks for more than 20 years."
The last theory points to the year 1994, when Proposition 132 banned coastal gill nets, which would occasionally catch and kill sharks accidentally. The same year, white shark hunting became illegal. According to Howorth, "once the restrictions went in to place to protect the white shark by reducing the fishing effort tremendously, the population has been slowly increasing."
That increase in population has resulted in mammal attacks in record numbers. Howorth says there have been more attacks this year than ever before. There have been about a dozen since April.
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