On Memorial Day weekend in 2016, a triathlete set out on a mile-and-a-half swim that would take her from the entrance of Newport Harbor along a buoy line, an area often used by bathers. But before she could finish, she was attacked by a great white shark; the bite wounds, stretching from her shoulder to her pelvis, indicated that it was a ten-footer, at least.
…“Most people do not realize that our front yard—L.A.’s front yard—is home to one of the largest nurseries for white sharks in the world,” says Chris Lowe, professor of marine biology at Cal State Long Beach.
…An El Niño ocean doesn’t only alter the way great whites migrate; it’s a different ecosystem entirely. Creatures more at home in the waters off southern Baja, like yellow-bellied sea snakes and scalloped hammerhead sharks, have been spotted near L.A.- area beaches during recent El Niños, and there are far larger changes that marine ecologist Tom Ford, executive director of the Santa Monica-based Bay Foundation, has recorded…