By Nasai Rivas
Long Beach State Shark Lab’s California Shark Beach Safety Program received a $824,000 grant from the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation in May.
The news was a relief to marine biology professor Chris Lowe, after the program had received funding cuts, causing a potential shutdown.
“I was jumping up and down because I was getting really nervous that I was going to have to start laying off my staff and pulling equipment out of the water,” Lowe said. “I was literally two months away from having to do that when I found out we got the grant.”
The grant enables the program to continue with its research, outreach and support for lifeguards, residents and tourists in all coastal communities from Monterey to San Diego.
Lowe said the grant money helps fund salaries, travel and technology for the program.
In addition, the funds will help continue the program’s research on protecting white sharks and their nurseries across the California coast.
“There are a lot of juvenile white sharks that use our beaches as nursery habitats,” Lowe said. “They’re often in and amongst people, surfers and swimmers on a daily basis, but they’re not bothering anybody, and that’s exactly what our research is showing.”
Lowe said informing lifeguards about the data allows them to keep beaches open, saving coastal communities millions of dollars in tourism and protects sharks from being killed.
Without funding, lifeguards and coastal communities would lose access to important information.
“If there was an increase in bites, we would have no data to try to explain why…you can’t find a solution if you don’t understand the problem,” Lowe said. “And remember, historically, our solution to the problem was we go out and kill a bunch of sharks.”
Despite the grant, funding cuts from the federal government will still affect the program. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association and the National Weather Service help monitor climate change data in the Pacific Ocean. Lowe said the data was important for the program’s research on white sharks.
Another aspect of the program is its integral outreach for education.
Brayden Ortiz, 20, a double major in marine biology and environmental science and policy, volunteers for the program by educating the average beachgoer along California’s coast.
“Education is a way to break it down for just anybody that’s at the beach,” Ortiz said. “If people don’t care about the ocean, then a lot of our research really goes in vain, because most of the research pertains to human interactions, human influence.”
Ortiz said working for the Shark Lab, along with the program, is important because the new funding can help expand educational outreach on the program’s research.
“A lot of families are from the Midwest and different places. They’re terrified of sharks there,” Ortiz said. “So being able to educate these people and make them hopefully quell some of the fears that they might have of the ocean is really a large impact that we wouldn’t be able to do if the program was cut more.”
