‘Smiling’ great white sharks photographed near Santa Cruz beaches
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (KRON) — A local marine wildlife photographer captured images of young great white sharks who appear to be “smiling” as they swim close to Santa Cruz County beaches.
The underwater photographs, shot by Eric Mailander this June, look like something you’d see with the “Baby Shark” song playing in the background. More than 20 juvenile great whites were swimming near New Brighton State Beach.
“We have all seen the aerial views of the dark shark shadows close to shore,” Mailander said in reference to drone images. The underwater photographs show how “cute” great white sharks are up close, he said.
“It looks like they are smiling. I wanted to show what they look like under the water,” Mailander told KRON4.
An area of water near New Brighton is nicknamed “Shark Park,” where young great white sharks appear annually. Mailander helps scientists with the Monterey Bay Aquarium track populations off the coast of the Central California.
Last week he launched his small boat and lowered a long pole with a GoPro camera attached into the water to document the sharks’ dorsal fin identification numbers. Curious juvenile sharks swam straight toward the GoPro to investigate the strange object, the photographer said.
The largest migrating sharks — some up to 16-feet-long– migrate into the Monterey Bay in October, also known as “Sharktober.” When chilly ocean water temperatures rise in June, 7-foot-long juvenile sharks swim into the bay to warm up.
“When the water temperatures dip below 60 degrees, you don’t see any sharks. When it spikes, like right now, the juvenile white sharks (appear),” Mailander said.
Fortunately for boogie-boarders, swimmers, and surfers, there have not been any reported incidents in recent years of the juveniles behaving aggressively toward people around Shark Park. “They are not bothering anybody,” Mailander said.
The photographer and other longtime shark observers counted up to 40 sharks near New Brighton State Beach in a single day. “This year has been phenomenal, best year since 2015,” the photographer said. “Shark Park is a great area to learn because it’s a natural habitat.”
Mailander and Monterey Bay Aquarium scientists published some of their population research findings in a 2021 study, “North Pacific warming shifts the juvenile range of a marine apex predator.” The study found a dramatic increase in white sharks in the Monterey Bay, overwhelmingly comprised of juveniles, from 2014 to 2019.
The study states, “Even though white sharks are endothermic, greater surface-to-volume ratios in these juveniles may challenge their thermal inertia and ability to thermoregulate especially at the cold limit of their thermal habitat. As a result, the thermal range of juvenile white sharks is likely a major driver of the habitats they occupy, and this appears to be sensitive to climatic shifts.”
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