Scientists discover surprising way great white sharks prep for coastal storms

As humans continue their attempts to mitigate Mother Nature with storm prep, marine animals are following their own extreme-weather protocols.

A recent study explores the behavioral responses of juvenile great white sharks to an encroaching storm.

In 2023, scientists from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Shark Lab at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) monitored the response of 22 juvenile white sharks as Storm Hillary drew closer to the California coast.

Using acoustic tags, the Elstner and his team tracked the movements of the apex predators before, during, and after the tropical storm.

“To our knowledge, this is the first study to document storm-response behaviour in white sharks,” said study author and PhD student Jack Elstner, in a press release. 

The researchers found that more than half of the sharks deserted their nursery grounds off the coast of Torrey Pines and Del Mar in northern San Diego to seek safer, more sheltered waters, returning only after the coast had cleared.

“Many sharks in this nursery temporarily left the area as the storm arrived or just after,” explained Elstner,

After this exodus, many made their way to the more protected La Jolla Cove, which is situated next to a prominent submarine canyon, giving sharks quick access to deeper water.

“We believe this more sheltered habitat may have served as an important nearshore refuge for some individuals,” said Elstner.

One deep diving youngin was recorded swimming to a depth of 433 feet, likely an attempt to flee rough condition at the surface of the sea.

“The fact that some sharks ‘tucked’ into the less wave-active La Jolla Cove during the storm was an interesting finding,” says co-author Chris Lowe, leader of the Shark Lab at CSULB. “We think that some were seeking shelter from the storm.”

The team believes that a change in temperature in advance of the storm may have told the sharks it was time to go.

In a single day sea-surface temperatures in the nursery sank from 68 degrees to 57.

Experts maintain that adolescent great whites are more sensistive to the cold than their adult counterparts, suggesting the youth sought warmer waters when temperatures dipped.

However, shark storm behavior was by no means uniform.

“It makes sense that not all sharks did the same things, in much the same way people respond differently,” says Lowe. “It’s a key survival characteristic that humans seem to share, too.”

Researchers maintain that as climat change escalates, understanding how marine species respond to extreme weather will be critical for their species and ours.

“White sharks and people are increasingly using the same coastal waters in California,” said Brice Semmens, a Scripps marine ecologist and co-author of the study.

“Studies like this help us understand how sharks respond to rapidly changing ocean conditions and allow us to make better decisions that support both shark conservation and safe ocean use — from surfing and swimming to recreational and commercial fishing.”

Meanwhile, across the country researchers at the University of Delaware are experimenting with using sharks to predict the intensity of East Coast hurricanes.

They are attaching electronic tags to the fish, which collect data such as ocean temperature and salinity measurements from the Atlantic Ocean that otherwise prove challenging and pricey to monitor.

This could lead them to gain more knowledge on the Mid-Atlantic’s “cold pool,” a layer of bottom water under 50 degrees Fahrenheit that forms in spring and disappears in fall — which can determine how fast hurricanes intensify.

The scientists, who began tagging the creatures in May, when sharks move closer to the coast after leaving their winter habitats, have found that shortfin mako sharks, blue sharks, smooth hammerheads and juvenile great white sharks are best fit for the experiment.

That is because those species tend to come to the surface most frequently, allowing their tags to transmit their findings to satellites. ​

In other shark bait, earlier this week, heart-stopping drone footage captured by a marine documentarian showed a man swimming in the shallow coastal waters between Santa Barbara and Malibu as several juvenile great white sharks moved through the area.

Meanwhile, last weekend in Maine, a 71-year-old lifeguard was dragged six feet underwater by a great white shark after nearly a dozen were spotted at a popular swimming spot.

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