Chris Lowe, the California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) Shark Lab director, along with other organizers, hosted the 2019 Southern California Shark Workshop on Friday, Feb. 15, at the facility to discuss topics to help educate and prepare first responders who have jurisdiction along the California coastline for shark season.
The Shark Lab gives its research and information about sharks to the first responders, such as lifeguards, so that they can keep people safe when using the beach.
“The one thing we keep telling people is there are potentially millions of people in the water all summer long between San Diego and Santa Barbara amongst these sharks all the time, and yet these events are super rare [shark attacks],” Lowe said. “I think those data […] are kind of anecdotal, but, to me, are the best evidence that we are not on their menu. But, occasionally, accidents happen.”
Larry Giles, marine-safety captain for the City of Encinitas, said to the Signal Tribune, “It is basically a collaboration [the workshop]. We are here to get better educated [and to] come up with a good, sound scientific-background type response to these incidents and interactions [with sharks].”
He also mentioned that, because Southern California beaches are becoming more populated with human activity in the water– such as paddling, surfing and swimming– the more interaction humans will have with white sharks whose population has rebounded in recent years.
One of the topics discussed in the workshop was the use of environmental DNA and robot-tracking devices to monitor shark behaviors and track their movements.
“Environmental DNA is a process of collecting a volume of water [250 milliliters] and then extracting all the DNA pieces present in that water,” Lowe said. “Then, we can probe those pieces specifically for chunks of just white-shark DNA. In order to do this, you have to have good species-specific primers that only bind to white-shark chunks of DNA.
“Next, we need to figure out how long those chunks of DNA can last in the water and how far they can travel from a shark, because bacteria and UV light can break down DNA [that is] no longer attached to an animal, [and the] durations of these primer-size pieces range from hours to days.”
The Shark Lab is also using several other pieces of technology, such as a buoy, an autonomous underwater vehicle and a drone, to assist its shark research.
Patrick Rex, a CSULB graduate student, said, “It’s a VEMCO Live acoustic-receiver buoy. And, so, what it does is that it has a receiver under the buoy, and it can actually, in real-time, detect sharks. So, right now, we got receivers all across the coastline.”
The challenge with the buoy is that it gets surveyed about once a month– which makes it difficult to tag and track sharks, according to Rex.
“If a shark was there [at the buoy], we don’t know until a month later, so we can’t tag that shark, [and] we can’t assess its movements besides whether it is present or not,” Rex said.
Aside from detecting sharks, the buoy also has other useful functions for research, according to Taylor Smith, a CSULB graduate student.
“It has two different accelerometers on it so that it can also determine how big the wave action is,” Smith said. “It has a barometer to look at the air pressure. [It has] O2 sensors to determine the oxygen in the water, oxygen saturation in the water [and] temperature probes to get the temperature of the water. With all of those, it will also help to answer the question of, ‘Why are they [sharks] choosing these beaches?’ And maybe their preference is to have particular environmental conditions.”
A recent addition to the lab is the autonomous underwater vehicle, which can be deployed at local beaches to videotape and map out the seafloor, according to Emily Meese, a CSULB graduate student.
“It’s kind of creating a context of the environment that the sharks are in at that beach,” Meese said. “It will listen to a detection, realize it is coming from a specific direction and tell the robot itself– because it is autonomous– to move in that direction to continuously follow the shark. It’s just to track them [sharks].”
The Shark Lab plans to deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle this summer. Once a shark is identified, a tag can be placed on it to follow its movement, according to Meese.
Another device used by the Shark Lab is the DJI Phantom 4 Pros drone, which only goes above the surface of the water.
“We are actually using drone technology to run aerial surveys,” Rex said. “We have been collaborating with lifeguards and police departments and sheriff’s departments. They have been flying their helicopters and filming the beaches for us, and then we are analyzing the data. But that costs about $1,300 per hour versus [using] a drone, which is, at will, surveying. It’s much cheaper [and] more portable once you get to the beach.”
A CSULB press release after the event stated, “State government appropriated $3.75 million in the current state budget to help lab researchers [CSULB Shark Lab] study white-shark activity and contribute to public safety efforts.”
