Myrtle Beach shark sightings spike. Is Hurricane Erin pushing them toward shore?
Over the weekend, at least five sharks could be seen swimming at different points near the shore at the 67th Avenue North beach access in Myrtle Beach.
As their fins skimmed the water, one question came up repeatedly among beachgoers: Is Hurricane Erin pushing the sharks closer to shore?
According to a Coastal Carolina University marine biologist, studies suggest that marine life like sharks can detect storms like Erin, and make efforts to move away from them. However, the recent uptick in shark sightings likely has nothing to do with the storm. In fact, more sightings doesn’t even mean more sharks.
“If anything, they would want to move away from the shore,” Erin Burge, who studies fish ecology and behavior, explained. The closer the sharks come to shore, the shallower the water they swim in becomes, making any effects from a passing storm at the water’s surface more pronounced to them. For this reason, they are more likely to seek deeper waters when dodging a storm’s path, Burge said.
Typically, what brings sharks closer to shore is food availability, according to Burge. And no, that doesn’t mean human swimmers. When bait fish move closer to beaches, so do sharks.
Burge said that shark sightings typically increase from September through November, when the water in inlets starts to cool down, leading fish like mullet to migrate into the ocean. The sharks migrate with them, bringing them more often into view.
But the reason more sharks have been seen lately in Myrtle Beach waters has nothing to do with the actual number of sharks near shore, and everything to do with beachgoers’ ability to see them, Burge explained.
For the past few weeks, north and northeast winds have been blowing through the Myrtle Beach area, bringing clearer water with them, Burge said. So the sharks swimmers are encountering aren’t new, they’re simply visible.
Sharks are a common companion to Myrtle Beach swimmers, whether they go unseen or not, but Burge said they aren’t cause for concern.
“They don’t want to eat people, they don’t want to bite people, they’re mostly little,” he said.
However, swimmers should still exercise an abundance of caution in the coming days as Hurricane Erin passes by off the coast. While the storm won’t bring more sharks, it is causing an increase in life-threatening rip currents and larger, rougher waves.
