Shark expert Ralph Collier remembers standing on a boat on the backside of Catalina a few years back, chatting with a fellow biologist as a group of kids paddled around on kayaks.
“One of these days, one of the kayakers is going to get hit,” he recalled saying.
Collier’s prediction was right. On Saturday, a Huntington Beach woman was knocked off her kayak just 500 yards from shore, a bump from a large shark that sent her flying into the water screaming while her family and other anglers watched helplessly from a boat.
Bettina Pereira survived the encounter with out a bite, and just sore muscles. When she flew into the air, Pereira actually stepped on the shark at one point, then pushed off in the opposite direction, her husband Andrew said in an interview Monday.  Read that story here.
Collier, who runs the Shark Research Committee, contacted Andrew and confirmed it was a great white they encountered, based on the description and behavior of the shark.
“They’ve been at the island for millions of years,” Collier said. “So the fact that something has finally happened over there does not surprise me. I’m surprised it’s taken this long.” Collier said that it was an “investigation attack.”
“The shark was not interested at all in eating her, otherwise it would have stayed in the area and eaten her,” he said.

It was unusual behavior, however, for the shark to come back and ram the kayak, which knocked her into the air and flipped the kayak over.

There have now been 148 confirmed shark attacks along the Pacific Coast since 1900, most of which are investigation, he said. Some, however, end up being predatory attacks.
A similar kayak incident happened in the ’90s, he said, when a kayaker in Northern California was knocked off and she landed on it. At first, she thought it was a rock – until it started moving. The woman got on another kayak to get safely to shore, since hers had huge punctures in the bottom of it.
In 1989, a woman who was kayaking was killed off Malibu, her body found floating off Oxnard.
“She had sustained one bite to her thigh, which removed substantial amounts of tissue and she bled to death,” he said.
The latest shark encounter comes after a slew of reports this year off Orange County waters, and after one man swimming with a group in Solana Beach in San Diego County was killed.

One surfer in Huntington said his board was chomped on earlier this year. A Dana Point charter boat reported seeing one just a few weeks ago. And just Saturday, a woman on an outrigger said a large great white followed a group as they paddled about a mile off Laguna. If you want to see more reports, check out this Google map of OC shark reports.
So are there more sharks out there?
Collier said there are a number of reasons we could be hearing about a recent spike in sharks.
First, the population of great whites could be rebounding. Great whites have been protected for 13 years, after they were hunted for profit in the ’70s and ’80s. After the movie Jaws, they became hot commodities, collectors willing to pay up to $25,000 for a jaw.
The Monterey Aquarium has been tracking a few great white sharks, trying to find out more about the elusive creatures. The first shark they held in captivity was caught off Huntington Beach, but they had to let it go after it started eating some of the other fish in the same tank. The shark was tagged and released so biologists could track behavior.
Collier said great whites come to Southern California to give birth. He believes they come here to feed on grunions, which have been seen in great numbers this year.
“Which is good for the grunion, but it’s also good for the predators that prey for them,” he said.
Usually, the mom sharks take off for colder water, but the pups stick around Southern California until they reach about 7 feet.
The water temperatures this year have been unusually cold, lingering in the 60s until a few days ago. Whether that is another reason why there’s been a reason for the increased reports is unclear.
“Like anything else, all we need is more money so we can tag enough animals to draw conclusions from,” he said.

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