A loss of state funding is threatening the world-renowned Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach and could soon force it to pull back an early alert system that helps protect beachgoers in Southern and Central California from sharks.
The system, which operated with state funding over the past six years, sends lifeguards a text alert when juvenile white sharks get within 100 yards of certain beaches.
But now, if the Shark Lab doesn’t raise $500,000 in private funds by the end of September, that monitoring system could be on the chopping block.
Chris Lowe, the Shark Lab’s director since 1998, said he has been seeking outside funding for the lab since he was notified last December that the early warning system would no longer receive direct state funding.
He needs to raise half a million dollars to keep it operating at its current capacity for another school year.
If he doesn’t, “I’ve got to start pulling gear out of the water and laying staff off,” Lowe said.
The lab currently has a staff of 22, with a majority of them being students or graduate students. It has an operating budget just shy of $1 million dollars a year, Lowe said, adding that CSULB President Jane Close Conoley has been a strong proponent of the program.
“She understands the value that we bring to the community and the value of the education,” he said. “There are similar things in other countries, but they’re not all run through a single organization and none of them are run through a university.”
CSULB has tried to help Lowe keep the early warning system running, which first received $3.75 million in state funding after an increase in white shark sightings in 2018.
That money was supposed to last five years, but with the university’s support and Lowe’s navigation of the budget, they stretched the funds another year.
“During the course of the program, the university had supplemented the state operational support in a number of ways, including employee benefits, administrative support, physical space, and insurance costs,” CSULB spokesperson Jim Milbury said.
But now, the entire CSU system — not just the Shark Lab — is feeling the budget crunch: In July, CSU Chancellor Mildred García released a statement announcing the impact of California’s deficit would amount to a one-time cut of $75 million in 2024-25.
For 2025-2026, there will be a 7.95% reduction of ongoing funding to CSU, totaling a cut of $397 million.
The shark lab also has a growing list of needed capital improvements.
“I’ve really tried to minimize buying new hardware, so we’re trying to make everything last longer,” Lowe said.
The monitoring program, which covers coastal waters from Monterrey to the southernmost reaches of San Diego, still has a boat with a hull from 1983. Combined fuel costs between the boat and the lab’s Ford F-150 to tow it can add up to $3,000 a month in the summer.
“If we get refunded, there are a lot of things we want to do that will make us more efficient and make us more green, which we should be,” Lowe said.
For nearly 60 years, the Shark Lab has studied shark behavior, ecology and physiology. Donald Nelson, a pioneer in using sound to relay information across open space to study sharks, founded the lab in 1966.
The lab now has several outreach programs including a K-12 education program titled “Operation STEMbait: Sharks and Robots.” It also hosts an annual shark workshop for lifeguards.
During the pandemic, the lab’s monitoring of sharks through tagging and drones gave the lifeguards confidence that waters were safe for the increased number of surfers, despite having to cut down on staff, Lowe said.
With more funding, the lab’s next venture could explore how environmental DNA would be used to track the presence of white sharks.
Essentially, the lab staff takes a liter of water, filters it, then tests for the DNA of white sharks in the sample.
“Using this technique we can clearly identify where there are white sharks and how recently they’ve been there, based on their leftover DNA in the water,” Lowe said.
The goal is to build an autonomous, solar-powered surface vehicle that would travel up and down coastal waters monitoring tagged sharks and taking water samples.
If it detects a white shark, the device could send lifeguards a text alert and give them the latitude, longitude, time and date where it detected white shark DNA.
“[The vehicles] could remain outside of our beaches just cruising back and forth for weeks, providing lifeguards with all that data,” Lowe said. “That’s the future.”
If you would like to donate to the Shark Lab, you can do so here.