Shark that mauled man unlikely to be found
“What I know is that all those headlines are based in pure speculation.” Ken Paglia Spokesperson for Fish and Wildlife
Scientists said it will be nearly impossible to identify the great white shark that attacked a swimmer near Lovers Point beach in Pacific Grove, leaving him with significant wounds on his legs, stomach and arms.
“While we can recover DNA from a bite to help determine species, doing the same from a shark after an incident is highly unlikely and we do not have DNA tests for individual sharks,” John Ugoretz, marine program manager at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, wrote in a statement about the violent incident on the morning of June 22.
Firefighters searched the water with drones and the Department of Fish and Wildlife gathered evidence for a forensic investigation, ultimately determining that the shark that bit Steve Bruemmer, 62, would remain shrouded in mystery, despite news reports speculating that the animal measured 20 feet, and crowning it “the world’s largest great white shark.”
“What I know is that all those headlines are based in pure speculation — they did not come from us,” said Ken Paglia, a spokesperson for Fish and Wildlife.
A representative for the Pacific Grove Police Department also said she had no idea where the 20-foot number originated. At least one news report attributed it to the victim, who said in an interview that experts had estimated the shark’s size — which would have made it among the world’s largest — based on the severity of the bites. Bruemmer declined to comment through a spokesperson Wednesday.
Sharks cruising along the California coast typically range from 7 to 18 feet long, said Andy Dehart, president and CEO of Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach, Fla. Dehart said he believes the animal that bit Bruemmer must have been massive, though likely not 20 feet long, given the purported nature of the wounds and the treatment required by a trauma surgeon at Natividad Medical Center in Salinas.
Like his counterparts at Fish and Wildlife, Dehart said that officials have little chance of finding and apprehending the shark, nor is it fair to accuse the shark of “premeditatively attacking people.” White sharks in particular are difficult to trace in part because they move frequently and travel extreme distances, Ugoretz said. He noted that these marine predators seldom interact with people and are not expected to ever become “problem animals,” in the vein of coyotes or mountain lions.
A shark that bites a human has probably mistaken the person for prey, Ugoretz said, “incorrectly” believing the person was a seal or sea lion.
“They don’t feed on humans,” retired UC Davis Professor A. Peter Klimley said, pointing out that humans are too full of sinewy muscle to appeal to a predator that mostly hunts blubbery seals and sea lions.
Klimley has written numerous papers on shark behavior and said the animals’ chance interactions with people usually occur if the sharks pass by a beach or populated area while migrating from one seal colony to another.
Although last week’s shark encounter sowed panic among beachgoers and law enforcement who closed Lovers Point beach and Sea Palm turnout for three days following the attack, some marine experts did not seem surprised. Several cautioned that humans who swim in the ocean were encroaching on the sharks’ habitat, not the other way around. Though we may use the ocean as a tourist draw and source of recreation, Ugoretz warned that it’s still a wilderness.
“In California, even close to shore, the depths drop off pretty quickly,” Dehart said, adding that most people who spend a lot of time swimming in the ocean may not realize how close they get to sharks on a regular basis.
Yet if the enduring power of “Jaws” and lurid sharkattack headlines has cemented our fear of these animals, Dehart cautions that they have far more reason to be afraid of us. Each year, he
said, humans kill 73 million sharks globally through targeted fishing. By contrast, people report fewer than 100 shark bites.