More great white sharks spotted along Central Coast beaches

A great white was spotted Monday along La Selva Beach, not out of the ordinary, just a friendly reminder of what’s lurking out in the water.

Local Alex Walther has been surfing La Selva Beach his whole life, and shark encounters are no surprise, just last week he crossed paths with a great white.

“Yeah I got a little spooked, because I was the only one out there, and it was kind of foggy and windy, sort of like Jaws conditions,” said Walther.

It was a closer call last summer for Miles Gutegesell and his buddies, where his one friend accidentally grabbed the fin of a shark.

“And as he’s paddling back out, his face just goes pale like he saw a ghost. And we were like, ‘What? What?’, and he was like, ‘Shark! Shark!’, and we all start paddling in. Scariest moment of our lives’,” said Gutegesell.

Shark expert David Ebert said there’s more young great whites for this time of year, ranging from 5-6 feet in length.

“And a lot of it has to do with the El Nio events we’ve been having where the waters been a bit warmer, so they’ve basically expanded their habitat up here,” said Ebert, Program Director of the Pacific Shark Research Center out of Moss Landing.

They can be found swimming along Seacliff State Beach near the cement ship and La Selva Beach. However, more sharks in the Monterey Bay is actually a good sign.

“When you start seeing sharks, sea lions, and things like that on the increase, it speaks well to the health of the bay in general,” said Ebert.

According to Ebert, since 1950 there’s about 3 shark attacks a year across the entire California coastline, so the likelihood of a shark attack along the Monterey Bay is very slim.

“I mean, people die in car crashes all the time and people don’t stop driving. So I mean people get eaten every now and then, but you can’t stop surfing from it,” said Gutegesell.