Birthing spot seen of sharks?

A helicopter pilot who saw 60 great white sharks in 15 minutes last month in Monterey Bay might have uncovered an uncharted birthing ground for nature’s eating machines.

“The big females come up, they act different than normal, and the next day, there’s a little baby shark with them,” said pilot Chris Gularte. “One time it was the same day.”

Gularte, 47, is a 26-year helicopter pilot who runs aerial tours with Specialized Aviation out of Watsonville Airport. In a flight Friday, he sighted six great white sharks in 15 minutes.

“You just fly and count,” Gularte said. “They tend to come in around 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., during the heat of the day, and then they parallel the shoreline. When they go perpendicular, they are ready to move out to deeper water.”

In 2015, Monterey Bay gained national attention when Gularte and marine biologist Giancarlo Thomae took a flight and counted 10 juvenile great white sharks in the shallows near the Cement Ship at Seacliff State Beach.

“From the air, you see things nobody else does,” Gularte said. “The angle, looking down into the water. You see a big fat female (great white), and then a little baby, a 4-footer, shows up, and the big female looks pretty skinny. It makes perfect sense. You just put two and two together. If we could tag them, monitor them, maybe we’d know for sure.”

He urges state and federal scientists to include area sharks in a Pacific Ocean tagging program to verify the event.

Thomae agreed. “I believe that Chris discovered the northernmost-recorded great white shark rookery,” he said.

The premise that a public observation, not a research scientist, could uncover a wildlife phenomenon has precedence. In 2009, for instance, in The Chronicle, field scouts for my column reported multiple wolf sightings in Modoc County. It wasn’t until three years later, in 2012, that the Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed the first wolf in California since 1924.

For information about Monterey Bay helicopter tours, contact Specialized Aviation at 831-763-2244 or www. specializedheli.com.