CNN.com - Sharks cruise California waters near popular beach

A surfer at San Onofre State Beach looks back to shore Sunday as a shark lurks nearby. Story Tools LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- A shark expert warned Monday that a great white shark has been seen lurking in the waters off a popular surfing beach in Southern California loaded with swimmers and surfers but

A surfer at San Onofre State Beach looks back to shore Sunday as a shark lurks nearby.

A surfer at San Onofre State Beach looks back to shore Sunday as a shark lurks nearby.

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LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- A shark expert warned Monday that a great white shark has been seen lurking in the waters off a popular surfing beach in Southern California loaded with swimmers and surfers but lacking the marine mammals it typically eats.

The 15- to 17-foot shark has been sighted by military pilots several times this summer cruising past San Onofre State Beach north of San Diego, said Dr. Michael Domeier, president of the Pfleger Institute of Environmental Research.

State park officials said they posted a shark warning at the beach after a beachgoer videotaped the shark from a bluff overlooking the ocean, and surfers have reported two smaller sharks swimming within two feet of their boards and occasionally bumping their feet.

Steve Long, lifeguard supervisor at San Onofre State Beach, said the 6- to 7-foot juveniles have been hanging around San Onofre since last spring and "are very docile but they are of a size that could be intimidating."

In light of last Tuesday's great white attack that killed a 50-year-old swimmer at a central California beach, the Pfleger Institute's Domeier said he also wanted to alert the public about the larger shark's unusual behavior.

Domeier said sharks usually migrate through the Pacific during the summer and only linger when food sources are abundant.

Lack of marine mammals 'troublesome'

"Typically what has been thought of as food are marine mammals ... like whales and sea lions," he said. "There are not a lot of marine mammals in that area -- that is what is troublesome."

Last Tuesday, a great white shark attacked Deborah Franzman at Avila Beach near San Luis Obispo, which in central California and some 260 miles up the coast from San Onofre as she swam near a group of sea lions about 75 yards from shore.

Franzman was wearing a full-body wetsuit, fins and goggles, which state wildlife officials believe contributed to the attack. Franzman died shortly after she was pulled from the water with massive bite wounds on her legs.

"Shark incidents are extremely rare," Robert Lea, a marine biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said. "Sharks have no interest in feeding on humans but as an ambush predator they may mistake a human in a dark wetsuit for a marine mammal."

Domeier disagreed. "The politically correct answer is that she was mistaken for something else, but these are fish and fish have a very small brain. They don't think about what it is and then come back and apologize if they attack the wrong thing," he said. "If a person is making movements or creating some kind of shape that causes a strike reaction, it is not a mistake -- the shark was hungry."

The reason that sharks usually stop attacking after striking people "is that they are covered with rubber or have a scuba tank on their back," Domeier said. "If you are not wearing a wet suit (the shark) may come back and eat you."

Since the 1950s there have been 10 fatal attacks off the western U.S. coast, state officials said. The most recent fatal attack prior to Franzman's death occurred in 1994.


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