Smile! Great White Shark’s got a good dentist. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Researchers have just figured out something that no one who surfs in Baja California wanted to know: There’s a great white shark nursery along Baja’s Pacific Coast.
Scientists have long known that great whites migrate up and down the coast between California and Baja California. And that — to the delight of shark divers and the dismay of pinnipeds — adult great whites frequent Guadalupe Island, a volcanic island 150 miles off the Baja coast.
But this much is new: Sebastian Vizcaino Bay, a lagoon halfway down the Baja Peninsula, is a nursery for newborn great whites. Sebastian Vizcaino Bay sits on a remote part of Baja California 500 miles south of San Diego, but is not far from the famed Seven Sisters region of righthand point breaks. Researchers reported the news in a journal article published this winter.
If it’s any consolation to surfers, virtually the entire coast of Southern California, from Point Conception to San Clemente, is also considered a white shark nursery. That would explain the many sightings of juvenile great whites in recent years, as the species’ numbers have rebounded.
Researchers figured out that the region in Baja is a nursery by counting the number of times fishermen caught juvenile great whites, and what time of year those inadvertent catches occurred. Interestingly, scientists still don’t know where great whites give birth. The juveniles might be born in the nursery areas off the coast of Baja or Southern California. Or they might be born farther offshore. As with the United States, Mexico, since 2014, has had a fishing ban on great whites.
