female narrator: The sunny coastline of San Diego with its stunning rocky shores and warm waters has long been a perfect spot for surfing, swimming, and kayaking.

San Diego's 1.4 million residents and millions of visitors share this space with a few other species, seals, sea lions, migratory birds, even sharks, and more of these animals arrived every year.

Can the area find the right balance between animal conservation efforts and a growing human population?

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ CC by Aberdeen Captioning 1-800-688-6621 www.abercap.com female announcer: This program was made possible, in part, by a grant from Anne Ray Foundation, a Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropy.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ narrator: Shark sightings off San Diego have splashed across news screens in recent years due to a public fascinated and alarmed by this iconic species.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ announcer: But the white shark population, as in great white sharks, has actually been growing steadily since 1972.

First, it was the Marine Mammal Protection Act that conserved its food sources, then additional state and federal laws were passed to protect these sharks.

Now their numbers are booming, leading to some surprising new encounters, including by these spear fishermen.

♪♪♪ Josh Miller: Day after Thanksgiving, very happy and full and had some time off of work.

It was like vacation time, basically, and the weather was beautiful, just, you know, we're just out on the water, not worrying about anything.

Greg Valencia: So we were about 20 feet deep.

I looked down.

I see Josh divin' into a big cave.

Well, after he comes shootin' out, he flies up to the surface to get air.

I see the lobster, snag it.

It actually ran into my face.

I just took it off my face mask, basically, and I come up, and Josh over here is goin', "White shark, white shark," and I've never heard him say it with that tone of voice, so I knew he was serious.

Josh: I saw a shadow, and I could just, you know, feel a little bit of a presence, and I just looked, and it was just clear shark outline.

Richard Daley: What was going through my mind was a reverence, and I was in awe of seeing a shark, a great white shark, for the first time, and then, next thing you know, I saw this big bite gash on its gills, and I realized that this thing could, you know, really hurt us if it wanted to, and, you know, that sense of awe turn into primal fear.

Josh: Right when we got out of the water and jumped on the boat, like, that's how when I realized how big he actually was.

He's bigger than our boat, and I have, like, a little 12 1/2-foot boat.

Richard: Well, it was definitely--I'm not gonna lie--just pretty scary in the moment, it just made us realize that they're there, and we just have to learn to coexist.

♪♪♪ narrator: And they are especially majestic from the sky.

Local photographer and surfer Scott Fairchild is an enthusiast tracking sharks with his drone.

Scott Fairchild: Just over about the last three or four years now, I can find a great white 95% of time and within 30, 60 seconds.

They're around.

But around August to October, we'll have quite a lot, and I start seein' the same one.

Started naming him Southpaw just 'cause one tag is extremely low left.

Of course, there's one called Scarface.

One's called Rudolph.

Has a big, white pronounced nose.

You can see it from really far away.

It is scary, and there are certainly still dangerous situations you should remove yourself from and take lesson on note of when that is and how to behave, but I do love that there is the coexistence and that people are learning that it's not all "Jaws" and that we shouldn't necessarily be afraid of them and, certainly, not all types of sharks.

They're not the evil monster.

They're not out, hunting us.

We're not on their diet.

We're not a part of their meal plan, and then we can interact and coexist peacefully.

♪♪♪ narrator: Most locals approach with caution, including this paddleboarder.

male: I'm a native San Diegan, and I've lived here most of my life.

I've been paddleboarding at least for the last 12 years, and I'm lucky enough to be able to get out at least three or four times a week on the paddleboard.

Starting in July of last year, I was doin' a lot of paddleboarding, enjoying my time, mostly up in the Torrey Pines area, and I saw my first white shark at the river mouth at Torrey Pines in Del Mar.

Now it seems like every second or third time that I'm in the water, I see a shark.

One day, I saw four sharks off Torrey Pines.

I've developed a technique with my son, who likes to body surf, and I'm on the outside, catchin' the waves on the paddleboard.

When I see a white shark that is larger than my paddle, I hold up my paddle like this.

When the shark is not as long as my paddle, I hold it up with two arms, and that just lets my son know that I've seen a shark and I think it's something to consider.

narrator: Still, others see the growing population as a rare and unprecedented opportunity.

The shark lab at California State University Long Beach has studied these animals for more than 50 years.

Today, it's busier than ever.

Dr. Chris Lowe: So what we're mostly interested in is the behavior of these sharks.

So why do they show up at these beaches?

How long are they gonna be there?

What are they doing while they're there?

And what the lifeguards wanna know is when are they gonna leave?

Probably the biggest environmental protection that California put in place to help protect white sharks and marine mammals and many other species was the banning of nearshore gillnets because many juvenile white sharks were being caught and killed in that fishery, but despite the fact that they're no longer being caught and killed in fisheries, that wouldn't explain the population growth that we see.

The only way that could happen was recovery of marine mammals, which is the adult white sharks' favorite food source, and they have come back better than we could have ever imagined.

narrator: Conservation efforts had been much more successful than anyone expected.

In 2020, the Cal State lab tagged so many sharks, the researchers ran out of tags.

Dr. Lowe: Quite often, when we put in place environmental protections, we don't always think through all the ramifications of success, and white sharks and recovering marine mammals is a great example.

So both populations or both groups have come back better than we could've ever imagined, but it poses new conservation challenges for us.

So, in the last ten years, the technology exploded.

We now have cameras that will work at for longer periods of time and that are much smaller.

We have better transmitters 'cause the electronics have gotten smaller.

We have drones.

And then the problem was we have these tools which are very expensive.

We now have the money.

So for the first time ever, in my career, we've got all of it.

We've got sharks.

We have the tools, and we have the funding.

So the great thing about this technology is we can correlate humans and sharks, when they're gonna be at the same place at the same time, and we can predict it, we believe, like you would rip currents.

So imagine coming here, and the one program you're here to watch is the weather.

So the idea here is can we predict when sharks and people will be together and just give them that information so that they can be safer when they go to the beach?

Everyone's interested in the great white shark, but believe it or not, when they hear, "white shark," they think it's two different species, and it's not.

They're one and the same.

Now, their original name was the "great white shark," but because there's only one species worldwide, scientists got rid of the "great," and we just refer to them now as "white sharks."

And in recent years, we've seen the development of a white shark nursery off San Diego, and they occur in densities and maybe 20 or 25 Sharks.

Biggest ones are around 8 or 9 feet long, but there are really tiny little rookeries in La Jolla, and this is a really beautiful cove.

It has a deepwater canyon that comes up to it.

We have lots of species of sharks that are now using that area, but what's really interesting is we track over 200 white sharks that we've tagged over the last ten years, and we rarely have them spending any time in La Jolla.

They pass through, but they don't stay.

narrator: But why here?

Why is the resurgent population of white sharks trolling the San Diego Coast specifically?

Some wonder if it's the potential food source.

♪♪♪ male: And my theory is, as the sharks grow in size, they have to move up the food chain, from the sting rays and the fish, up to the sea lions, and, of course, we could have a situation where a shark accidentally hits a human.

♪♪♪ narrator: The growing number of seals and sea lions is hard to miss as they have taken over different sections of the rocky beaches around La Jolla Cove.

These communities are also the result of successful conservation from that 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act.

♪♪♪ Since they're protected and they like where they are, they aren't going anywhere, so crowds of curious onlookers come to them.

♪♪♪ Robyn Davidoff: So as people come to see the sea lions, we often stand here as docents, and we ask them if they would voluntarily view from the seawall here so that the sea lions can have some space.

The sea lions are pregnant, and they are gonna be giving birth soon, so we asked for their cooperation to view from up here, and usually, once we explain that, people wanna know where-- "Which sea lion is pregnant?"

or "Where's the baby?"

and we are able to point that out, and then they are more than happy to view from up here.

Carol Archibald: People sit on the wall during the time that the pups are being born, and there's a smile on everyone's face.

They're comical.

They just walk, you know, on their little flippers, and they're adorable.

narrator: Protections for the seals and sea lions are also still being worked out.

Even though their physical bodies are defended by law, their habitats have been mostly open to the public, and the draw to see these charming creatures creates its own challenges.

Tish Schoffel: Before I started vending, I would come down here on vacation all the time, and I'm local.

I worked in San Diego for 20 years, so I feel like I'm part of this cove here.

Marie Miller: We come out here every weekend, just whenever the "office" looks good.

The seals are my coworkers.

Jina Borowik: One day, I probably grabbed somebody and--say, "Can you watch my jewelry place?"

because the bigger concern was what was happening, somebody going past the rope, and I, three times in one day, would run down there.

I say, "Please, you guys, please, just respect the space."

narrator: Recently, the Seal Society secured a mandated closure of the Children's Pool beach area during harbor seal pupping season, and in April 2022, the Coastal Commission unanimously voted to close La Jolla Cove and part of Boomer Beach during sea lion pupping season as well.

Robyn: Over here, you might see a lot of sea lions.

This is called the Point La Jolla Bluffs, and a lot of the sea lions right now are over here because there's a lot of disturbances by humans over in their area at that Point La Jolla and Boomer Beach rookery.

Carol Woodroufe: After the closer happens, the sea lions will return to Boomer Beach and Point La Jolla, which is where they give birth every year, so they will come back there every year, and it's really the best place for them.

It's a great location for them, and people can view them from the wall and very safely.

♪♪♪ Carol: So we do have an increasing population of sea lions in this area, and some people have said this could attract sharks.

Ellen Shirley: And I think one of the fears to be dispelled is that you can't go swimming safely anymore because of the marine mammals in the area.

I think it came from "Jaws."

narrator: White sharks do eat seals and sea lions.

In fact, this happens quite a bit on a different part of California's coastline, miles off shore.

Dr. Lowe: Southern California is probably one of the most important rookeries for seals and sea lions along the entire West Coast.

So the Channel Islands, Northern Channel Islands, which has three or four islands with plenty of habitat, is where most of those animals come to molt.

That's where they shed their fur to help insulate them during the season.

They'll mate, and they'll give birth to their young, and they'll wean their young there.

We estimate that probably 70% of the entire California sea lion population, maybe as many as over 250,000 animals, will be using those islands throughout the summer.

So if you're an adult white shark, and you really like to eat marine mammals, the best place to be is out there because that's where a bulk of the population is.

So, if they get a big belly full of seal from killing a seal, that may give them enough calories that they don't have to eat again for a month.

So we do have little patches of rookeries along the coastline, but because there's so many people, we can't set up big rookeries there, and as a result, we just don't see adult white sharks on our beaches.

narrator: The Channel Islands are part of a larger Pacific Coast ecosystem that supports many animals, including the migratory birds that visit San Diego.

The Los Penasquitos Marsh and wetlands is a key stop for winged travelers along the Pacific Flyway.

The mix of fresh and saltwater yields a unique home for invertebrates that feed and support the birds.

Also the result of conservation, this area became a park in the 1970s.

California State Parks and the Los Penasquitos Lagoon Foundation have a plan to improve and support the ecosystem by adjusting the water flow.

Darren Smith: We're connected to the ocean, and the more conservation and the more good things happen in the ocean, the more good things happen in the park and in the lagoon.

We're seeing a lot more wildlife use of our lagoons and things like that since those preservation acts, so what happens in the ocean really helps us here on the lagoon.

You know, with a lot of the urban infrastructure and the stuff that we've put into--you know, we built houses and put roads in and things like that--have really changed these systems from really needing a little heavier hand with management, you know, ways to deal with the freshwater problems, so it's really important that we get all this extra fresh water that we wouldn't normally have in a lagoon like this to manage it in a good way.

And so one of the problems with the lagoon, when it closes up like this and fills up with fresh water, is the dissolved oxygen levels really drop off, and so a lot of the animals, the squishy critters that live in the mud and the muck that are food sources for a lot of these birds and other wildlife, are killed with low-dissolved oxygen.

Mike Hastings: And that's really critical to the health of this lagoon if we can't keep the inlet open.

A lot of bad things happen.

We have invertebrates that die, and our migratory birds no longer have a food source, and then we also have a freshwater mosquito that can breed in this lagoon that can transmit West Nile virus to anyone within a two-mile radius of this lagoon, so there's a lot of layers of importance as to why we need to keep this inlet open.

♪♪♪ narrator: Ultimately, these challenges are the result of successful conservation.

The existence of protections illustrates a desire to find a way to share the environment.

In the case of white sharks, although swimmers should always be mindful in the water, Chris Lowe argues the sharks actually pose little danger to humans because they're just kids.

Dr. Lowe: The three reasons why we think juvenile white sharks use Southern California beaches as nurseries is, number one, they don't know they're a white shark yet.

It's the safest place for them to be.

The water is shallow and protected.

Number two, the water is warmer right along that coastline than it is a couple hundred yards offshore.

And, three, there's lots of food for them.

The number one food item that we find in their stomachs are stingrays, and we have a very abundant stingray population of Southern California beaches.

narrator: Since shark mothers don't stay with their babies, these juveniles are fending for themselves, and the waters north of La Jolla make the perfect nursery.

Scott: They'll go out of their way to avoid surfers or, literally, within inches, and they don't look at 'em--anything.

Stand-up paddlers, however, they seem to go look at, even follow for a little bit maybe the rhythmic nature of the paddling, but they'll do a circle or two and go on their way.

Dr. Lowe: So one of the things that we've noticed from the drone footage is that those sharks, by and large, tend to ignore people.

The question we're asking is "Are those sharks now so used to people that they ignore them?"

Because they've been hanging out at these beaches since they were babies, and now, periodically, maybe even annually, come back to those same beaches and seem to behave the same way.

So that might suggest they've become habituated to people.

narrator: Plus, according to Lowe, they aren't interested in seals or sea lions either.

Dr. Lowe: Our diet changes as we grow and mature, so white sharks do the same.

So when they're very young, they're feeding on fish and stingrays because they're abundant, they're easy to catch, and their skill sets have to develop to catch bigger, faster things, so as they get older, they start feeding on more fish in the water column, but it's not until they're really over ten feet long that we see them starting to try to feed on marine mammals.

So it may take an adult white shark five to six years to learn how to do that.

That takes a lot of practice.

So, obviously, juveniles, large juveniles and subadult white sharks, teenagers, if you will, if you're gonna learn how to do that, you wouldn't do it along our Southern California beaches 'cause there's just not enough seals to target, but if you can find your way out to the Channel Islands in the summer, there's ample opportunities.

♪♪♪ narrator: Area scientists, officials, and concerned citizens are all finding ways for this booming metropolis to coexist with a growing wildlife population.

One surprising form of activism--getting a tattoo.

Kyle Walker: So Sharky Weekend was an event that I started back in 2015.

I would basically design a small sheet of flash.

Over the three years that I was doing it, the third year, I was turning away 20 people a day, and I did a hundred shark tattoos by myself in a three-day period.

That was the first year I just took doing it for fun and realizing that it's getting so big that I should probably give back and turn this into more of a shark conservation event.

Well, last year was our most successful year, and I think we did over 140 tattoos between five artists, and we actually generated a little over, I think, $19,000.

narrator: The funds go to support Stefanie Brendl's work at Shark Allies.

Stefanie Brendl: Events like the Even Keel tattoo event show people that you can get involved even within a small way, and you can show your support.

It also has really helped reach completely new demographics.

I was really into scuba diving and traveling in the Pacific, and I just started to learn more and more about sharks and get more fascinated by the bigger animals, so I felt that I had been so privileged diving with sharks and having all these adventures that I needed to change gears and get more active and actually helping them.

One of the biggest threats for sharks and one of the reasons why they're overfished globally is the trade for shark fins.

The act of finning that lots of people know about by now, you know, when the fins get cut off and the animal is thrown back in alive, an agonizingly slow death or being eaten by other animals or suffocating, a lot of people know about that now, but the problem has always been that, if you try to ban the act of finning, it's almost unenforceable because it happens out at sea.

In 2010, I was part of the first movement in Hawaii to ban the actual trade of fins.

So trade fin bans are very different from finning bans, and the reason why we pursued those is simply to make enforcement easier.

You can protect them in one country, but that country might still be participating in shipping fins from Central America through their country.

The story of sharks is very much parallel to the story of wolves, and if you study what happens with eradicating and then reintroduction of wolves, you can see it's a very successful model.

Nothing can replace what a top predator can do to a landscape and the animals living in it, and Yosemite was actually suffering.

They brought five wolves back that then turned into maybe ten.

Everything changed.

The problem is you cannot reintroduce sharks.

Once they're gone, they're gone.

narrator: In Southern California, white sharks are not only protected but are also being tracked to see how the population shifts and grows, and experts are using that information to protect humans as well.

Dr. Lowe: So if we really wanna know how close a shark gets to a beach, we'll use this technology, and this is called acoustic telemetry.

So this is an acoustic transmitter.

It produces an ultrasonic sound that will then travel through the water, sometimes up to a half a mile away, to be detected by an acoustic receiver.

So this type of transmitter gets darted into the shark's back, so we can use a drone to spot the shark, get right alongside it, use the drone to estimate how big the shark is, stick a camera underneath the water so we can peek underneath the shark and see if it's a male or female, and then dart it with one of these transmitters.

So we can track a juvenile white shark from infancy, almost to adulthood.

Dr. Lowe: So this basically, this buoy, gets deployed off a beach in about 20 to 30 feet of water, about 100 yards off the beach.

So any time a tag shark swims by one of these buoys with an acoustic transmitter, the receiver will log the time and the date and ID number.

This automatically sends that information into the cloud, which will then send the lifeguards a text message telling them a tag shark was just detected.

The lifeguards can then go to a website, and it will tell them everything about that shark, how big was it, where was it tagged, and where's it been lately, so they can use that information just like we do, understand the patterns of these sharks.

So, for them, this tool becomes really important in terms of how they manage their beach.

Should you close a beach if there's a 9-foot white shark out there that nobody's seeing but you know it's there?

That might mean that shark doesn't pose a problem.

It's been there for weeks, months at a time.

Surfers don't see him, but they know they're there.

So, imagine, every time they close the beach, that might've cost that beach community $50,000 a day.

So here's how lifeguards, one of our clients, if you will, who deal with the public on a daily basis, can use this timely scientific information to make better decisions on how to manage their beach.

narrator: At least one local citizen is also taking the initiative to protect juvenile sharks.

Scott: I stopped saying where I was seeing them just for the safety of the sharks 'cause I started seein' some marks on 'em, so I never say where I see them anymore, and I'm not seeing that overwhelming shark hunters, so to speak, if you wanna call it that, so I'm kind of glad that's died down.

narrator: And, of course, quite a few locals work to protect the seals and sea lions.

Robyn: On May 1, this area will be closed to the public, and the way they'll do that is they're going to put a chain across here with a sign saying, "Sea Lion Pupping Season.

Closed from May 1 to October 31," and it'll be in English and in Spanish.

male: But Boomer Beach is a very special place.

It is the only bodysurfing beach, so we went through a complete community process to try to preserve access to Boomer Beach and limit the closure of Point La Jolla, and we now have come up with a little bit of a compromise to still allow access to Boomer Beach.

Hopefully, the tourists will respect the sea lions and allow them to have their pupping season without a lot of problems.

narrator: Sometimes solutions come from thinking outside of the box.

Dr. Lowe: And a majority of the people that are accessing the water are doing so closest to parking lots.

So if you wanna try to control some of that, maybe a way to control that, instead of putting out signs and pulling people out of the water is to close that parking lot, and by doing so for a few hours, you can then better regulate who gets into the water until the situation calms down.

narrator: And at Los Peñasquitos, officials are making it possible for abundant ocean water to improve and sustain that local environment.

Mike: This inlet opening we're gonna do, it's called more of a breach where we just open up what's the sand plug here and create a channel from the ocean to allow the lagoon to drain.

While those are great for water quality and vector issues, they're not that long-lasting.

The real project we do at the end of May, where it's eight, nine, ten work days is we actually take that channel and excavate all the way up to the main channel where there's actually a deepwater spot.

narrator: Conservation can yield unexpected and challenging consequences.

San Diego's case studies may provide valuable lessons for all of Southern California.

Darren: It's really important to protect and manage as carefully as we do so that it's here for future generations to enjoy.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ announcer: This program was made possible, in part, by a grant from Anne Ray Foundation, a Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropy.

...