At a Glance
- Basking sharks were spotted twice this spring in Santa Monica Bay, California.
- Basking sharks are the second-largest sharks in the world, second only to whale sharks.
- Once abundant off the West Coast, basking sharks became targeted in the 1960s by fishing and eradication programs.
After a 30-year absence, basking sharks that can grow to the size of busses have been spotted in Santa Monica Bay, California.
Capt. Skip Rutzick, who operates the Duchess Yacht Charter Service out of Marina del Rey, told The Argonaut he has spotted the large plankton-eating sharks twice this spring, first on March 31 and then on April 20, both about three to four miles off the south-facing Malibu coast.
“It was a very special thing,” Rutzick told the newspaper. “I’ve been on the ocean 1,000 times in the last five years and I’ve seen many whales, I couldn’t tell you how many thousands of dolphins, and the very rare ocean sunfish the Mola mola — but to see a basking shark was very special.”
Video footage shows the sharks to be about 20 to 25 feet in length. They can grow to about 33 feet, or the size of a bus. The sharks were later identified by Brad Wilbourn, an experienced underwater photographer and master diver, after studying their movements and structure.
“They were moving very, very slow," he said. “Basking sharks are very slow and lumbering, and they really take their time because they’re filter feeders — their mouth is wide open and they’re gathering whatever plankton they can get ahold of.”
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Once abundant off the West Coast, basking sharks became targeted in the 1960s by fishing and eradication programs and their numbers plummeted. Now, it's nearly impossible to spot one.
“It has really been 30 years since we’ve seen them in any numbers,” Christopher Lowe, director of the California State University’s Shark Lab, told Newsweek.
John Hyde of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told The Argonaut “it’s rare to see basking sharks, period.”
Basking sharks are the second-largest sharks in the world, second only to whale sharks, and are listed as a species of concern by NOAA, meaning they might qualify as an endangered species if scientists could gather more information.
“We really don’t know much about basking sharks, especially in the Pacific,” said Hyde. “We know that we don’t see them very often, but we also don’t see them caught in a lot of fisheries.”
