A shark with a broad head, pointy snout and contrasting light and dark dorsal fin mugged for a charter boat cruising about 12 miles off Catalina Island.
The sighting of the salmon shark on Friday, March 25, is being called very rare. Salmon sharks are related to white sharks, but are less common off California than other pelagic sharks.
“If you do see one here, it’s very special,” said Alisa Schulman-Janiger, a marine biologist who leads the American Cetacean Society-Los Angeles’ gray whale census and behavior project off Point Vicente in Palos Verdes and has studied marine life off Southern California for decades. She is also a research associate with the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles County.
Schulman-Janiger was on board Dana Wharf Sportfishing and Whale Watching’s Ocean Adventures when she spotted the unique creature. The boat was on an eight-hour trip looking for gray whales and was following a ridge along the ocean floor near Catalina.
“I saw the dorsal fin and we stopped,” said boat Captain Steve Burkhalter, for whom the sighting was a first. “Everybody on board could see it and it was making passes at the boat.”
Burkhalter said initially he thought it was a mako shark, but the dorsal fin looked different. He also said the head was bigger compared to other sharks. And, the dorsal fin had a contrasting color pattern. The shark also had white on its gills and jaw area.
Lot of parasites could be seen on its tail and fins, which both he and Schulman-Janiger called normal.
Schulman-Janiger sent a video of the shark to three experts, who each confirmed the sighting as a salmon shark.
“Salmon shark!!!!!! You are so lucky, ” wrote Eric Mailander, a shark enthusiast who has swum with salmon sharks off Alaska.
Schulman-Janiger said these sharks are rarely seen this far south; typically they swim off Alaska and in the northern Pacific Ocean where they have access to their favorite food: salmon, squid, sablefish and herring. She said she has only once seen another salmon shark in the area before, and that was off Redondo Beach.
Though it was far outside its range, the seven-foot-long animal appeared healthy, Schulman-Janiger and Burkhalter said. Likely, Schulman-Janiger said, it has been feeding on squid and some of its other less favorite fish that are found in this area.
