By The state of California has cut funding for programs within California State University Long Beach’s Shark Lab, resulting in a complete loss of funding by the end of September.
Long Beach State’s Shark Lab is widely known for its use of technology to tag and track sharks to study their behavior and ecology. The lab has worked on various studies to help answer whether or not white sharks pose a risk to humans. Along the way, the lab has become research partners with lifeguards to help educate people, while also providing safety measures.
Chris Lowe, director of the Shark Lab since 1998, is working to look for outside funding, whether from a foundation or individuals to keep the lab running.
“I need to find private funding. It costs about $1 million a year to run the program and that covers Monterey to San Diego. That is most of the California Coast line,” Lowe said.
The shark lab’s California Shark Beach Safety program needs at least $500,000 to make it through this year. Lowe said if the lab doesn’t get the funding he’ll have to start laying people off and pulling equipment out of the water. Life guards also won’t get their monthly updates and their outreach program would have to be scaled way back.
Lowe is hoping with new funding they can upgrade equipment to be more electrical-friendly which would result in lower spending.
“We have legislators that support what we do at both the county, city and state level. The state budget was just really bad,” he said. “The university also took a big budget cut, it’s tough and of course we don’t want to compete with the university.”
Earlier this year Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a new state budget, which included cuts to the UCs and the CSUs. CSU chancellor Mildred Garcia released a statement in July that said CSU’s will be facing a funding gap of $200 million and additional cuts are expected to happen in the next two years.
The final state budget for 2024-2025 would receive a one time cut of $75 million. For 2025-2026 there will be a 7.95% reduction of ongoing funding to CSU, totaling a cut of $397 million.
In June 2018, the Shark Lab was funded by the state after an increase of white sharks on beaches was noticed. The lab was given $3.75 million for five years and has managed to make the money last about six years.
Using the funding, the lab also founded the California Shark Beach Safety program. A 2019-2021 drone study was conducted where 26 beaches were surveyed across Southern California. Lowe said their study found juvenile white sharks were within 20 meters of people almost every day.
“Our drones captured no bites at those beaches. For the very first time anywhere in the world, this study documented how often people and white sharks were together, and the sharks are not out to get us,” Lowe said.
He said this study has been influential in how people react to sharks. Before, the first instinct was to get people out of the water when sharks were seen. Lowe said that the goal is to not close a beach unless it is needed.
“Life guards are using the data that they’re getting, and we’ve trained them to think like scientists. They’re now using this information to best manage the beach,” Lowe said.
Kevin Abbott has been the resident data scientist at the lab for two years. Abbot said the fundamental point of the lab is to keep people safe, and without funding they’ll lose that.
“We won’t be able to monitor our coast line, provide our education to not only kids and youth, but also the life guards in the area won’t be provided with the information they need to keep our beaches safe,” Abbott said.
According to Lowe, a majority of the Shark Lab employees are students.
“I won’t have as many opportunities for them. There’s some things they can do for free, but the goal is to take the students who’ve learned some skills and be able to pay them,” Lowe said.
Lowe said state funding will probably not improve until after 2025.
Headline has been changed to reflect accuracy. Loss of funding will only impact certain programs within Shark Lab.
