Just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
A new study has found that sharks often swim within biting range of humans; only the humans aren’t aware of them. Researchers from California State University’s Shark Lab used drones to study white sharks along the Southern California coastline – and found they swam near humans on 97 percent of the days they studied them, the study indicates. “Most of the time water users didn’t even know the sharks were there,” says Patrick Rex, the study’s lead author. “But we could easily see them from the air.”
While that may seem unsafe, it should be noted that there have been no reported shark attacks near any of the 26 beaches researchers studied between January 2019 and March 2021, Shark Lab officials say. “We never expected to see so many encounters every day with no incidents,” says Shark Lab director Chris Lowe.