White Shark Research: Long Term Monitoring Study in Monterey Bay

About the talk:
Pelagic Shark Research Foundation founder and executive director, Sean Van Sommeran will give a lecture presentation summarizing and highlighting their findings and documentary and observatory studies at Ano Nuevo Island, Monterey Bay and Big Sur coast. He will discuss migration, behavior and conservation status of white sharks while sharing amazing footage and documentation of the pups in a rookery group and as well predatory behavior involving adults and elephant seals as well as masses of info we have gathered during our 1990 thru 2017 study seasons. This lecture will include all original photos, slides and videography including work from the island, from boats, aircraft and with aerial drone cameras.

About the speaker:
Sean Van Sommeran, director and founder of the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation has over 30 years of field research experience; he observed his first white shark predation on an elephant seal in Monterey Bay region as a pre-teen and built a career upon that childhood experience. The PSRF has tagged and tracked over 160 white sharks and over 80 basking sharks and thousands of other species of sharks, fish and marine mammals since establishing the PSRF in 1990. The PSRF is a small independent local organization and is the world’s first shark-specific conservation, protection and research organization ever established (1990).

With vast local experience, the Santa Cruz County-based PSRF has also worked in Central and South America, Gulf of Mexico, Central Eastern Pacific, Asia, Australia and South Africa. PSRF has been featured on National Geographic, BBC, Discovery, Animal Planet and Sharkweek as well as CNN, ABC, NBC and BBC news casts.