Such deadly attacks are rare. According to California'sDepartment of Fish and Game, there have been 12 fatal shark attacks since the 1920's.
According to the Associated Press, Ransom was a junior at the University of California, Santa Barbara, majoring in Chemical Engineering. The Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department reports that Ransom's friends and other bystanders pulled him from the water. He had a severe leg wound and died a short time later.
This is the time of year that many adult white sharks return from long open-ocean forays and begin to feed on seals and other pinnipeds at coastal and island rookeries off Central and Northern California.
But the top-level predators can lurk off the coast at any time. The last fatal attack by a great white off California was in late April of 2008, involving a swimmer off Solana Beach in San Diego County.
Previously, a scuba diver was killed by a white shark off Mendocino in Northern California in August of 2004. A year earlier, also in August, a woman was killed as she swam near seals off Avila Beach, which is about 30 miles north of Vandenberg.
Though shark attacks are rare, there's a consensus among some scientists that white shark population off California is increasing.
Christopher Lowe, who runs the Cal State Long Beach Shark Lab, attributes this to a longstanding ban on fishing for white sharks, a longstanding ban imposed on gill-net fishing in white shark nursery areas close to the coast, and the phenomenal rise in the number of California sea lions, which constitute a readily available food source for large white sharks.
Lowe, however, has not implied that this will translate into more attacks on humans, because white sharks have evolved over millions of years into such specialized predators.
Patric Douglas, CEO of Shark Diver, which is a California-based commercial shark-diving company that has extensive experience with white sharks, has witnessed the predators' behavior up-close dozens of times and can attest to their cautious, investigatory approach to possible prey.
Douglas agrees with scientists that most, if not all white shark attacks on humans involve mistaken identity, and advises people to stay out of the water very early in the morning when the sun might be at such an angle as to make it difficult for sharks to discern people from prey -- notably pinnipeds.
other shark news: howard absolutely loves my washing machine
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