Thomas Super was taking a Sunday morning stroll along Hermosa Pier with his girlfriend when the two spotted a shadow moving under the surface.
Initially thinking that the figure below the waves was a dolphin — “We see them all the time,” Super said — it took a few moments for the couple to realize what they were seeing.
“One of the fishermen who was on that side of the pier said ‘Holy cow, that’s a shark!’” Super recalled. .
The only concern Super had was for a couple of swimmers who were swinging around Hermosa Pier — though that ended up being a fairly short worry, as the shark had already begun making its way back out to sea as the pair began heeding the warnings.
Great white shark sightings have become increasingly common in the South Bay. Most sightings have occurred in Manhattan Beach, where concerns rose to a fevered pitch after a man was injured by a shark in early July. That incident, which caused non-life-threatening injuries to swimmer Steve Robles as he swam pier-to-pier from Hermosa to Manhattan, is believed to have been caused by a fisherman who had yet to cut his line after hooking a juvenile great white shark. It resulted in a 60-day ban on fishing off of Manhattan Pier and prompted changes to Manhattan Beach fishing ordinances.
Super guesses that the shark he spotted Sunday morning was about “7 or 8 feet” — a common size for juvenile great white sharks, which are unlikely to threaten to mammals (humans included) without prompting.
Coincidentally, the sighting comes less than a week after California State University Long Beach professor Chris Lowe gave a presentation to the Hermosa Beach City Council that noted just how common it is for great white sharks to appear in the South Bay, particularly during this time of year.
“Between Hermosa Beach Pier and Manhattan Beach Pier, you can see [groups of juvenile sharks] any given day during the summer and the fall,” he said.
Super, a Redondo Beach resident, said he hadn’t seen a great white so far south previously.
“It’s the first time that we’ve seen a shark by Hermosa, or Redondo for that matter,” he said.
The shark circled the area for fewer than five minutes, Super said, before returning to deeper waters, nothing more than another example of the increasingly common interactions between South Bay residents and sharks.
