An “aggressive” great white shark was spotted in the waters near Huntington Beach on Tuesday, causing a popular surfing spot to be closed.
The Huntington Beach Fire Department said in a statement Tuesday afternoon that a great white shark approximately 10 to 12 feet long was spotted exhibiting “aggressive behavior” near Lifeguard Tower 16.
The beach was closed after a foil surfer reported a shark circling about 300 feet offshore around 3 p.m., Derek Peters, captain of the department’s Ocean Safety Battalion, told The Times.
Chris Lowe, director of the California State University Long Beach Shark Laboratory, told The Times on Tuesday night that the great white shark was an adult and may have been hunting seals. While swimmers were warned to stay away, Lowe said his researchers would be heading to the area on Wednesday with drones and other tracking methods to try to confirm the sighting.
Peters said the surfers who reported the incident were not hit, bitten or otherwise injured by the shark.
While the department was unable to independently verify the sighting – in addition to conducting beach patrols, they also conducted searches using drones, motorboats and rescue boats – they considered the surfer to be a “reliable source”.
The water near Huntington Beach is closed from High Point Street to the Huntington Beach Pier, the statement said.
The closure of the roughly two-mile stretch of road is expected to last until 3 p.m. Wednesday, but more patrols will be conducted before reopening, Peters said. People can stay on the beach, but are advised to stay out of the water.
Peters said the Huntington Beach area tends to see more sharks in the fall and spring because of migration patterns. The closure is the second shark-related water closure in Huntington Beach this year; this spring, a shark was spotted near the pier, resulting in a 24-hour water outage, he said.
Shark sightings have surged on Southern California beaches this year. Experts attribute the rise to El Niño, a weather pattern characterized by warming waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific.
Lowe noted that waters off Southern California have recently seen a number of juvenile white sharks in the 5- to 10-foot range because ocean temperatures in the area are “just right.”
He said juvenile white sharks like to spend time in areas where ocean temperatures are between 67 and 72 degrees Fahrenheit. They usually gather around Baja, Mexico at this time of year. But he said ocean temperatures there are getting too hot, so they’re moving north.
Many sharks go unnoticed by beachgoers, but “sharks are always around people” in the ocean, Lowe said.