Great White Sharks Visiting San Francisco

Ponca City, We love you writes "Juliet Eilperin writes in the Washington Post that while for years, humans have thought of great white sharks as wandering the sea at random, only occasionally venturing close to shore, it turns out we were wrong. Scientists lured 179 great white sharks to their boat with a carpet decoy designed to look like a seal, and used a lance to attach satellite tags with the aid of 2.3-inch titanium darts to track the sharks and discovered that Pacific white sharks spend months near the northern and central California coast between August and February, foraging among elephant seals, sea lions, and other prey. The sharks were spotted as far inland as the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, east of the Golden Gate Bridge. 'It shows you how wild it is off our West Coast of North America. This is Yellowstone,' says Stanford University marine sciences professor Barbara A. Block. The fact that 'a major concentration' of great whites can ignore humans 'shows us the sharks are really minding their own business. The number of interactions with people is very small, considering,' says Salvador J. Jorgensen."

Comments

In TFA, love the first paragraph

[failedlogic]

Love the first paragraph in TFA that points out the obvious: "For years, humans have thought of great white sharks wandering the sea at random, only occasionally venturing close to shore."

Holy shit. I always thought "For years, elephants have thought of great white sharks wandering the sea at random, only occasionally venturing close to shore."

I just learned something today. Guess I thought I knew more about elephants than people. I am sadly mistaken.

Re:uh

[Nighttime]

As any serious diver will tell you, generally speaking, a shark sighting is a cause for excitement and anticipation, not panic. Leave them alone, and they'll generally leave you alone.

Unless there's ominous cello music playing in the background.