Coverage spread: 2 sources — 2 right
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An uptick in great white shark sightings along Southern California beaches this summer has unnerved swimmers and surfers, including footage of a shark breaching out of the water near an unaware surfer. But experts say the phenomenon reflects a recovering shark population and predictable seasonal behavior rather than a growing threat to people, even as researchers race to build new monitoring technology ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
What the shark tracker says
Keith Poe, a shark tracker with more than 33 years of experience who has participated in National Geographic’s “Counting Jaws” project, told the New York Post that fears of beaches being overrun by dangerous great whites are unfounded. He explained that the stretch of coast from San Diego to Point Conception is largely a nursery area for juvenile white sharks — generally those under 10 feet long — whose movements are driven by two factors: water temperature and food supply. When ocean temperatures drop below 60 degrees in winter, juveniles head south toward Mexico because they cannot tolerate the cold. As waters warm, particularly amid El Niño conditions, they return north into shallow, sandy areas such as Santa Monica Bay to feed on halibut, skates and rays along the ocean floor.
Poe emphasized that these young sharks are “fish-eating juveniles” with no interest in humans, though he cautioned that beachgoers should stay alert to warning signs such as seals, sea lions or diving birds congregating nearby, which can indicate a feeding frenzy capable of attracting larger, more dangerous sharks. He noted that as great whites mature, their teeth and diet shift toward high-blubber prey like seals, making areas farther north — including Point Conception, San Miguel Island and San Simeon, where seal and sea lion colonies are common — more likely spots for encounters with larger adult sharks. Poe attributes the broader increase in shark numbers to decades of legal protections and the decline of commercial gill-net fishing, which historically killed many sharks as bycatch.
A parallel national pattern
Fox News frames the story within a wider national context, citing Chris Fischer, founder of the shark-research organization OCEARCH, who discussed what he described as an early surge in shark attacks this summer during an appearance with host Jesse Watters. Fischer pointed to a beach closure in New York due to bull sharks, a swimmer bitten in Queens, and a child attacked in knee-deep water in Florida. Like Poe, Fischer attributed part of the pattern to a shark population rebound, saying numbers have returned to levels last seen in the 1960s, and advised swimmers to avoid the water when bait fish are actively schooling nearby.
New technology for the 2028 Olympics
Separately, Fox News reports that researchers at California State University, Long Beach are developing a solar-powered autonomous surveillance vessel designed to detect sharks near Southern California beaches, with an eye toward protecting athletes and spectators during the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. According to Shark Lab Director Chris Lowe, the roughly 10-foot craft — about the width of a paddleboard — would patrol the coast for up to a week at a time, listening for acoustically tagged sharks, collecting water samples to test for white shark DNA, and launching an aerial drone to help spot sharks from above, all while relaying real-time data to lifeguards.
Lowe specifically flagged Long Beach Harbor, the planned venue for Olympic open-water swimming, as an area where white sharks have previously been detected, while Olympic surfing events are set to take place farther south in Orange County. He stressed that the goal of the technology isn’t to trigger alarms every time a shark is nearby, since sharks are already a constant, largely unnoticed presence along Southern California beaches, but to give lifeguards better data for deciding when to warn swimmers or clear the water. The Shark Lab has already tagged hundreds of juvenile white sharks and uses aerial drones and underwater listening stations as part of ongoing monitoring efforts.
How the coverage compares
The New York Post’s account centers on reassurance, using Poe’s expertise to argue that sightings are a natural, predictable seasonal pattern tied to water temperature and prey availability rather than a sign of increased danger to swimmers. Fox News takes a broader and slightly more cautionary tone, linking the California sightings to a string of recent shark-bite incidents elsewhere in the country and quoting Fischer’s warning about avoiding water where bait fish are present, before pivoting to the Long Beach robotics project as a proactive safety measure. Both outlets agree on the underlying scientific explanation offered by their respective experts — that shark populations have significantly rebounded due to protections and reduced fishing mortality — but the Post frames this rebound as evidence there’s little cause for panic, while Fox News situates it alongside actual attack incidents and a major public-safety investment ahead of the Olympics. Neither source provides shark-bite statistics for California specifically, and it remains unclear how soon the CSU Long Beach shark-detection vessel will become fully operational.
Sources
Featured photo: Original: Donald Graeme Kelley Vectorization: Devin Cook via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)