2022 Shark Season Summary

Hi Shark People!

I just wanted to say thank you to all that have generously donated to our project to keep the monitoring of the California white shark population going! 2022 was a very successful season thanks to all of you as we were able to get out on the water 29 days to sample for sharks.

I just completed going through all of the video and photographs taken for the 2022 season. In total, we identified 85 white sharks! The highlight of the year was the number seen at the Farallones. 2022 was a banner year at the Farallons with 69 individual white sharks! This is an atypically high number of white sharks observed at this location and it is actually quite puzzling why there were so many.

Communicating with the biologists on the island who record counts of seals and sea lions, they saw a below average count of elephant seals but above average counts of sea lions. Quite interesting but perplexing as we would expect a higher number of sharks to be present with more elephant seals, as they are a more highly valuable caloric prey item. Well, the questions keep on coming!

At Tomales, we had another slow year of observations. At the beginning of the season, we were seeing a steady influx of individuals but by October 16th, this location was not an attractive stop for some reason. We identified 16 individuals, which is atypically low for this location. We have been seeing below average numbers of white sharks at Tomales since 2020. The reason is not obvious to us at this time but continuing to keep an eye on this historically important aggregation site for white sharks is very important to our research.

I am currently matching these 85 shark fins to our catalogue of individuals we have amassed since 1987. Adding new individuals to the database and entering the 'resights' of sharks we have seen at some point in past seasons gives us the 'code' we use to assess populations using statistical analyses to estimate abundance and population trends. We are excited to see what the estimates will be and will provide them once completed! Stay tuned!

Again, thank you so much for your support!

Paul and Scot

California White Shark Project