SeeCalifornia.com

Exactly two years and 1 day after 19-year old Lucas Ransom lost his life to a great white shark at Surf Beach near Vandenberg AF Base on Oct. 22, 2010, Francisco Javier Solorio was bitten by a great white shark on Oct. 23, 2012. He lost his life in a similar manner near the very same spot. Both men were riding the waves and enjoying a sunny, Central Coast beach day out on their boards.  Great white shark sightings have been abundant on the Central Coast from Santa Barbara to Santa Cruz throughout the fall season 2012, though the Monterey Bay Aquarium in this region didn’t succeed in capturing a suitable great white shark this year for a temporary display the public can pay to see.  With an unquenchable thirst and curiosity about this massive ocean creature, over one million people have paid to look at a great white at the Aquarium in past years’ displays.

Great White Shark “bites”

• 10 people have been killed by great white sharks in California in recent decades.
• South of California in Baja Mexico shark tourism has become a top attraction. People stand in an underwater cage while bait is scattered in the nearby waters to attract sharks to come closer.
• Great whites don’t typically eat humans, though they do bite them out of curiosity. Once a shark bites into a human and discovers the bone to meat/ fat ratio, it usually will move on and continue to hunt for seals and sea lions.
• There are an estimated 220 adult and near-adult great whites along the Central Coast, with the seal rookery at Año Nuevo proving a draw for the predators.
• Chances of survival from great white shark bites are increased when swimmers and surfers use the buddy system. Researchers have hypothesized that the reason the proportion of fatalities is low is not because sharks do not like human flesh, but because humans are often able to escape after the first bite, thanks to nearby surfers and swimmers who apply first aid and bring the injured to shore.
• Regarded as an apex predator in the wild, the great white actually has enemies such as the orca whale. At the Farallon Islands, California, a case was documented in which  in a female orca immobilized a great white shark, suffocated it, and then proceeded to eat the dead shark’s liver. After the attack  the local population of about 100 great whites vanished.  A satellite tag on one of them tracked its movement as it immediately submerged to depth of 1,600 feet, then swam to Hawaii.