A hammerhead shark paid a rare visit to the Southern California coast this week in what is likely a predictable outcome of unusually warm ocean temperatures.
Fisherman Ariel Kohanchi was out around noon Thursday on the Malibu Pier for the first time in about a month, according to a video he published on YouTube, when he and others fishing on the pier spotted the distinct hammerhead shape just below the surface of the water.
“Hammerhead. Hammerhead. Hammerhead. Hammerhead,” Kohanchi said in disbelief, the video shows. “Oh my god!”
The shark made a few circles, its fins at times breaching the water’s surface as stunned fishermen looked on. One of them apparently hooked the fish, but the shark spat out the bait, according to Kohanchi’s account of events in the video.
Hammerhead sharks typically prefer warmer waters than those found in Southern California, and the last sighting near the coast was over a decade ago, according to the iNaturalist species-sighting database.
A confluence of factors has made water temperatures in the area unusually warm, said University of California San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography shark specialist Brendan Talwar.
Late summer and early fall bring the warmest temperatures of the year, he said. Combined with a particularly strong El Niño cycle this year and the effects of climate change, conditions have been ripe this season for warmer-water species to travel north, and vice versa.
“It’s uncommon but not impossible. If someone had asked at the beginning of this summer what shark species we should expect… I would’ve definitely said hammerheads,” Talwar said.
Getting to see one is a special occasion, he said, especially given the dire straits the fish are in worldwide.
The sharks have huge fins that are desirable in some parts of the world, they don’t fare well if caught accidentally and released and are facing “extreme declines” due to overfishing, Talwar said.
“I would treat any sighting of a hammerhead as an amazing opportunity to be really excited about,” Talwar said. “Their species are not doing well.”
Of the three most common hammerhead species, the Smooth hammerhead is most commonly sighted, Talwar said. They are “sometimes curious,” he said, especially if someone is fishing, but are “virtually harmless.”
Hammerheads were sighted off the Southern California coast in 2015, during the last strong El Niño cycle, California State University Long Beach Shark Lab expert Chris Lowe said in an email.
An 8-foot hammerhead was briefly hooked by two fishermen on the Malibu pier that year, prompting lifeguards to warn kayakers, surfers and paddlers in the water. A kayaker was bitten by a hammerhead that year, too, and people fishing off Sunset Beach encountered a 10-foot hammerhead, according to news accounts at the time.
Hammerheads stand out from other shark species by the distinctive shape of their heads, which stick out perpendicular to their bodies in the shape of, well, a hammer. The heads contain electroreceptors that allow the sharks to more effectively find prey.
Times staff writer Clara Harter contributed to this report.