October 25, 2021

Hi Shark People!

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this project! We have been making it out to our sampling sites when the weather and sea state allows and thus far, it has been a productive season. At Tomales, we are still primarily seeing the smaller demographic (7-12 footers, AKA sub-adults), however, on October 14th, we were elated to see one of the best known sharks in our dataset, Mr. Burns. For the 16th year in a row, we have seen Mr. Burns at Tomales Point, making him our most consistent shark in our long-term monitoring program! He is the venerable patriarch of this location and has a commanding size of 17 feet. Mr. Burns is a shark that provides invaluable insight to characteristics such as growth rate for this species. In the 16 years of observing him, he has grown a mere 2 feet over that time period! The question you might be asking yourselves is, "Well that's a long time to grow just 2 feet, I wonder how long these animals can live?" Our observations give credence to longevity estimates in the scientific literature (Hamady et al. 2014) that estimates male white sharks live at least 73 years!

At the Farallone Islands, we have also seen another one of our old friends, Elvis (not the singer). Elvis is a 17 foot male with a long history at the Farallon Islands. In 2018, we observed Elvis and he was a mess (see photo). We documented multiple fresh (as well as older) wounds from scrapping with another white shark. You can also see old scars that are black in color. This year, you can hopefully see (sorry for the photo quality), that he has healed up nicely and has added more layers of scarring to his body.

Please stay tuned as we will be getting back out there to continue the season!

Thanks again,

Paul