As ocean temperatures rise, UCSB tracks Santa Barbara’s great white sharks with AI
CARPINTERIA, Calif. - The waters off Santa Barbara may look calm from shore, but just below the surface, researchers say dozens of juvenile great white sharks can be found.
Researchers at UC Santa Barbara are using artificial intelligence to get a closer look at those sharks and the data could become even more valuable as ocean temperatures rise.
Once or twice a week, researchers send a drone over the water to search for sharks. The footage is then automatically processed using AI to help count and measure the animals.
“We come out here, particularly during the summers, once or twice a week. We fly a drone, we look for sharks,” said Douglas McCauley, a UCSB professor of Ocean Science. “That data from that drone actually gets automatically processed by artificial intelligence to count and measure the number of sharks.”
The information helps scientists understand why shark numbers change from day to day and from one year to the next.
It is also shared with the public through what researchers describe as a “shark weather report,” giving people a better idea of what is happening in the water before they head to the beach.
“We send it out for free to the community, a little bit like a weather report for sharkiness on a given day,” McCauley said. “So that folks know what we’re seeing and then can make good, smart, safe decisions about how they’re interacting with the oceans.”
This year, that information could be especially important.
Ocean temperatures off Santa Barbara are near 73 degrees, much warmer than normal and researchers have seen nearly twice as many white sharks in the area.
McCauley said young white sharks typically move south toward Baja when local waters cool. But warmer conditions may be keeping more of them in Santa Barbara waters.
“Typically as the ocean cools around here, it gets too cold for the little sharks. They go south to Mexico, to Baja,” McCauley said. “But they’re sticking around and they’re here in higher abundances.”
Researchers say the unusually warm conditions make this year particularly interesting as El Niño develops.
The data could help scientists better understand how sharks respond to warmer ocean conditions and what those changes could mean in the future.
“It’s a bit like a crystal ball to tell us what sharks may be like in the future,” McCauley said.
McCauley said this year's data could provide a glimpse into what shark habitat may look like decades from now.
But researchers emphasize that the goal is not to keep people out of the ocean.
“We want them to interact with the oceans,” McCauley said. “That’d be the worst thing if people in the community decide if they got scared of sharks that they didn’t go to the ocean.”
Instead, researchers hope better information can help people feel more comfortable in the water and make safer decisions.
People can also receive free shark updates through SharkEye, which provides notifications about shark activity along the coast.
For more information and to sign up for notifications, visit SharkEye.com through the UC Santa Barbara website.
