LOS ANGELES – A high-tech system that alerts swimmers when sharks are lurking in Southern California’s coastal waters could be shuttered as funds have begun to run dry, managers warn.
The shark warning alert system has been operated by the Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach since 2018. Using a system of buoys, tags and monitors that track the local population of white sharks, sending an alert to local lifeguards when the sharks come within 300 yards of the buoys.
The Shark Lab’s director, CSULB professor of marine biology Dr. Chris Lowe, said the lifeguards receive links to their cellphones that he likened to baseball cards of the sharks in the area. Their profiles display their size, location and how long they’ve been at that beach.
The lab received $3.75 million that was supposed to fund the system for five years, though they managed to stretch the money to six years.
Now, they need more.
“We’ll have to pull all of the equipment out of the water because we won’t be able to maintain it [if we don’t receive more funding],” Lowe told KTLA’s Kareen Wynter on Thursday. “We’ll have to stop tagging sharks because we won’t have the money to go out and do that. So the lifeguards won’t be getting that information, and that is used for public safety.”
Lowe says the lab needs $7.5 million in funding by June to keep the system afloat. They hope that money will come from private donors.
Lowe said the lab has partners that benefit from their work, such as the NOAA and the Department of Fish and Wildlife.