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Hammerheads in Southern California

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Bill McIntyre

San Clemente, CA
Staff member
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Jan 27, 2005
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We've always had occasional smooth hammerheads in SoCal, but with the unusually warm water this year, we are seeing many more of them. A couple of weeks ago we had one circling the boat and one of my dive buddies got a nice video of it as it swam under him.


Later, as he and another guy were gutting yellowtail on the swim step, it seemed to take great interest and was making passes right under the stern. It was hard to get photos with the glare on the water, but here are a couple that are at least acceptable.

There has been a lot of discussion among spearos about whether these sharks were dangerous to divers, and a few days ago we got a partial answer. A guy was on a large party boat on Tanner Bank, a sea mount about a hundred miles offshore, and he shot a nice yellowtail. He had it by the gills and was trying to keep it away from a sea lion when a hammerhead showed up. Guys on the boat shouted to the diver to turn loose of the fish, but he didn't hear them. The shark grabbed the fish and his hand. He got his hand back but was bleeding pretty profusely. A Coast Guard helicopter came out and lifted him off the boat and took him to the hospital where he had about three hours of surgery to repair a tendon and some broken bones. Luckily there was no nerve damage.
 

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Reactions: Erik, foxfish and John B Griffith Jr
That's awesome! We have had some Scalloped Hammerheads chasing Tarpon in as little as a meter of water all over the local dives spots here in Florida...would love to see some Smooth Hammerheads. Time to visit the Left Coast!
 
John, I thought those were great hammerheads in Florida. I grew up in St. Petersburg and my Dad was a tarpon guide. He talked about seeing hammerheads herding tarpon until they jumped out on the sand at Anna Maria key. I recall seeing one cruising the flats in about three feet of water, and it must have been close to 20 feet long. One time I saw a tarpon that had been bitten off cleanly right behind the dorsal fin, and what remained weighed over 100 pounds.
 
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Vid looks like a great hammerhead. I didn't know they were in your waters. Over here, they can be dangerous when they are big, but much less so than bull sharks or even Caribbean reef sharks. A buddy of mine got run out of the water when he did not have a fish. The shark came up right behind me and I never saw it, just some excited diving buddies screaming at me to get in the boat Right Now.

Your Tanner Bank shark wasn't dangerous to divers, the guy just had his hand in the way of dinner.
 
I'm pretty sure its a smooth hammerhead. We don't have great hammerheads out here.
 
I'd heard of the shark sightings by kayaks, but hadn't heard of incidents involving boaters. I wonder if this trend will continue.
 
Yesterday a guy showed me photos of a diver near Santa Barbara. He had a yellowtail hanging from his stringer and had shot another one that was in his hands. A hammerhead came after the one on the stringer and bit him on the side of the hip. One photo showed the torn up wetsuit, and then another one showed a relatively small gash in his side.

I never carry fish on a stringer. I always take a fish back to the boat before trying to shoot another one. But of course shore divers don't have that luxury.
 
Maybe a float system with a stringer would help. In the very least, it would allow the diver a bit of distance from the catch, though that wouldn't do much good when swimming back to shore.
 
Shark agressiveness is a funny thing and varies tremendously with area. West Coast Florida spearos nearly all carry a stringer, almost never have problems even though there are plenty of sharks. Do the same thing 150 miles away in the Keys and you will have trouble pretty soon. Only fools carry a stringer in the Bahamas and not for very long. In the Bahamas, some areas have extremely agressive sharks and some don't, seems to get worse as you go south, but I've no idea why.

The recent California stuff looks like global warming/warmer water allowing a new and more agressive shark into an area that had little problem in the past.
 
I do wonder about the trends in shark behavior. Maybe they are more aggressive in some areas due to a comparatively scarce food source?

The warmer waters are part and parcel of the El Niño trend. Hopefully it delivers the rain that it usually does. It's just so parched around here
 
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