South
California safeguard protecting beachgoers from sharks on life support, expert warns
A renowned shark research center in California is in danger of shutting down after the state pulled funding for a program that provides safeguards against attacks.
Chris Lowe, the director of the Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach, told Fox News Digital that the program monitors great white sharks along Southern California’s coastline.
“In 2018, we received funding from the state of California to start the California Shark Beach Safety Program. And that was because there were more and more white sharks being seen along the California coastline, particularly along public beaches,” Lowe said.
“And this raised a concern for lifeguards who are responsible for keeping people safe. So they asked us, why are the sharks here? And are they a risk to people?” Lowe said. “And at the time, we didn’t really know.”
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA BEACHGOERS WARNED OF SPIKE IN SHARK ATTACKS THIS SUMMER AMID CUT OF RESEARCH FUNDING
The Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach is in danger of running nearly out of funds by the summer and may have to shut down programs that monitor sharks. (iStock)
Lowe said that after the program launched they have been able to use the funds to tag over 300 juvenile white sharks, with 235 of the sharks with active transmitters.
He said that they chose to tag great white sharks since 97% of bites in California in the last century are from these large predators.
The shark expert explained that the program also has 120 acoustic receivers along the sunny California coastline to “listen” for tagged sharks, as well as drone equipment.
“This enables us to provide lifeguards with data about what sharks are off their beaches. How long are they going to be there, what are they doing, and when are they going to leave,” Lowe said.
A great white shark swimming in the ocean. (iStock)
Lowe said that their research has found that sharks are “around people all the time” and that they “largely ignore people.”
“We also use drones, and that’s been an important part of our monitoring as well, because then we could see where sharks were in proximity to people and then address questions about what the risk is,” Lowe said. “And some of our data have indicated that sharks are around people all the time in Southern California. And the sharks largely ignore people.”
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Without the program, Lowe said, lifeguards would not be able to properly manage Southern California beaches from sharks.
“We don’t think that if the program gets shut down, we’re not going to see a spike in shark bites. What we think is the monitoring is helping lifeguards better manage beaches,” Lowe said.
“For example, let’s say a nine-foot shark, which is still a juvenile, is off a public beach, and it’s been there for days or weeks, and lifeguards know that from our acoustic telemetry monitoring data or even our drone data, but no surfers are reported seeing that shark,” he said. “Normally they would close a beach, but why close the beach if the shark is there all the time and nobody’s seeing it, and it’s not bothering anyone?”
On Friday, July 14, 2023, at about 12:15 p.m. PT, San Diego Fire-Rescue lifeguards patrolling about 100 yards from shore at Blacks Beach spotted three juvenile great white sharks. (San Diego Fire-Rescue Department)
The shark expert explained that the lifeguards have a wealth of information available to help determine if the beach needs to be shut down.
“If a tagged shark is detected off the beach, lifeguards get that data right away from our real-time buoys, and then they can click on a link that will tell them about where that shark is, how big that shark is, where it’s been, and what they’ll see is that quite often these sharks have visited other beaches, or they’ve been at their beach for weeks or months at a time.”
He explained that lifeguards no longer need to shut down the beach, they can just post a public warning about a shark’s presence.
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“In the past, anytime a white shark was seen off a beach, they would close the beach, or they pulled people out of the water,” Lowe said. “And now, they don’t have to close a beach. They’ll post signs warning the public that this is white shark habitat, but because of all the data we’ve accumulated over the last five years, they don’t have to shut the beach down.”
Lowe said that the local economy is negatively impacted if a beach is closed.
“Every time they close the Southern California beach, that results in an economic impact on that community,” Lowe said. “Just by learning more about the sharks, we’ve reduced the number of beach closures which have economic impacts on the California community.”
“What it’s done is it saved our coastal communities a lot of money from unnecessary beach closures,” he said.
A large white shark looks straight into the camera. Captured in the clear blue waters of South Australia. Three great whites were pinged this week off the coast of the southeast United States, researchers said. (iStock)
Lowe said that California has seen a rise in great white sharks in recent years, in part, because of continued conservation efforts.
“Our white shark numbers have been going up steadily, and that’s because white sharks have been protected in California since 1994,” Lowe said.
He said that an increased number of sharks in California’s oceans has “raised a big concern.”
“With increasing numbers of sharks, we just didn’t know if that was going to increase the probability of people being bitten,” Lowe said. “And with young sharks using beaches as their nursery habitat, that raised a big concern because we have a lot of people in the water off Southern California year round and among the sharks.”
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Lowe said that if they do not raise funding from local supporters, they will be forced to shut down.
An aerial view of the California State Capitol on February 01, 2023, in Sacramento, California. (Justin Sullivan/Justin Sullivan)
He said that funding was cut because of California’s “very poor” state budget this year.
“Our program was funded for five years and we received funding in 2018. We stretched that $3.75 million state funding to six years,” Lowe said. “We were been very frugal with our funds and getting a lot of good information.”
“Our funding runs out in June and because of state budget, is very poor this year,” he said. “It doesn’t look like we’re going to be refunded.”
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He said that they are seeking private funding from individuals and foundations.
“We use a lot of technology in our shark research, and a lot of those tech companies are based here in California. So we’re kind of hoping that maybe some of our big tech companies might be willing to pitch in and help us out,” he said.
Photos by Allison McLean
According to the Chinese New Year, 2025 was the year of the snake, and Dallas shed more than its fair share of restaurants and bars.
We actually started off on a high note with the closure of Salt Bae’s restaurant, Nusr-Et, which had the audacity to charge upwards of $1,000 for a steak.
After that, local favorites started dropping like flies. Many leases seemed to come to an end with an increase in demand for space sending rent skyrocketing. Along with rising food costs, local restaurants are taking a hit.
It’s not all bad, though. Peppered into the mix are some restaurants and bars in Dallas that closed, but were remodeled and reimagined into new concepts. Others are looking for new spaces with lower rent. The rest, however, are gone for good.
The beginning of this year will likely be no better than the last, and it’s as good a time as ever to get out and support your favorite local spots. Money tight? We know where to go.
These are all the Dallas restaurants that closed in 2025.
It looked improbable two months ago.
Two years ago — impossible.
But against the odds, Miami and Indiana have a date in the College Football Playoff final — a first-of-its-kind matchup on Jan. 19 in the second national title game of the expanded-playoff era.
The Hoosiers (15-0), the top-seeded favorite in the 12-team tournament, stomped Oregon 56-22 on Friday night to reach the final. The Hurricanes (13-2), seeded 10th and the last at-large team to make the field, beat Mississippi 31-27 the night before.
Indiana opened as a 7 1/2-point favorite, according to the BetMGM Sportsbook.
The game is set for Hard Rock Stadium in South Florida — the long-ago-chosen venue for a game that happens to be the home of the Hurricanes. Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza is a Miami native who grew up less than a mile from the campus in Coral Gables.
“It means a little bit more to me,” Mendoza said of the title game doubling as a homecoming.
Miami quarterback Carson Beck (11) holds the offensive player of the game trophy after winning the Fiesta Bowl NCAA college football playoff semifinal game against Mississippi, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Glendale, Ariz. Credit: AP/Ross D. Franklin
He’ll be going against the program known as “The U.” Miami won five titles between 1983 and 2001 and earned the reputation as college football’s brashest renegade.
A quarter century later, they are one side in a tale of two resurgences.
Miami’s was sparked by coach Mario Cristobal, a local boy and former ‘Cane himself who came back home four years ago to lead his alma mater to a place it hasn’t been in decades.
Among his biggest wins was luring quarterback Carson Beck to spend his final year of eligibility with the ‘Canes.
Miami head coach Mario Cristobal yells from the sideline during the second half of the Fiesta Bowl NCAA college football playoff semifinal game against Mississippi, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Glendale, Ariz. Credit: AP/Rick Scuteri
Beck, steadily rounding back to form after an elbow injury that ended his season at Georgia last year, is getting better every week. He has thrown for 15 TDs and two interceptions over a seven-game winning streak dating to Nov. 8.
“He’s hungry, he’s driven, he’s a great human being, and all he wants to do is to see his teammates have success,” Cristobal said after Beck threw for 268 yards and ran for the winning touchdown against Ole Miss.
It was the latest step in a long climb from No. 18 in the season’s first CFP rankings on Nov. 4 — barely within shouting distance of the bubble — after their second loss of the season.
The Hurricanes haven’t lost since.
Hoosiers rise from nowhere to the edge of a title
Indiana’s climb to the top is an even longer haul. This is the program that had a nation-leading 713 losses over 130-plus years heading into the 2024 season. Since then, only two.
The turnaround is thanks to coach Curt Cignetti, who arrived from James Madison and declared: “It’s pretty simple. I win. Google me,” while explaining his confident tone at a signing day news conference in December 2023 when he landed the core of the class that has taken Indiana from obscurity to the edge of a title.
But Indiana’s biggest catch came about a year ago from the transfer portal — the oxygen that drives the current game.
Mendoza, who went to the same high school as Cristobal in Miami, chose Indiana as the place to finish his career. So far, he has won the Heisman Trophy and is all but assured to be a top-five pick in the NFL draft.
“Can’t say enough about him,” Cignetti said.
One more win and he’ll bring a national title and an undefeated season to Indiana, an even 50 years after the Hoosiers’ 1975-76 basketball team, led by coach Bob Knight, did the same.
Lots of people could see that one coming. Hard to say the same about this.
CFP selection committee almost kept this game from happening
It might seem like ancient history, but Miami almost didn’t make the playoffs.
In its first ranking of the season, back in November, the CFP selection committee ranked the Hurricanes eight spots behind a Notre Dame team they beat to start the season.
The history of Miami’s slow crawl up the standings, then its leapfrogging past the Irish for the last spot, has been well-documented. If Miami’s trip to the final proved anything, it’s how off-base the committee was when it started the ’Canes at 18, even if they were coming off a loss at SMU, its second of the season.
Though these programs haven’t met since the 1960s, there is familiarity.
One of the best games of 2024 was Miami’s comeback from 25 points down to beat Cal. The quarterback for the Bears: Mendoza, who threw for 285 yards but got edged out by Cam Ward in a 39-38 loss.
With Ward headed for the NFL, the Hurricanes were a consideration for Mendoza as he sought a new spot to finish out his college career. But he picked Indiana, Beck moved to Miami, and now, they meet.
Miami cashes in big
The College Football Playoff will distribute $20 million to the Big Ten and Atlantic Coast Conferences for placing their teams in the finals — that’s $4 million for making it, $4 million for getting to the quarters, then $6 million each for the semis and finals.
While the Big Ten divvies up that money evenly between its 18 members, Miami keeps it all for itself — part of a “success initiatives program” the ACC started last season that allows schools to keep all the postseason money they make in football and basketball.
Atlanta Hawks (19-21, ninth in the Eastern Conference) vs. Golden State Warriors (21-18, eighth in the Western Conference)
San Francisco; Sunday, 8:30 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Golden State will try to keep its three-game home win streak alive when the Warriors face Atlanta.
The Warriors are 13-5 on their home court. Golden State is 9-12 against opponents over .500.
The Hawks have gone 12-10 away from home. Atlanta ranks second in the league scoring 17.6 fast break points per game. Nickeil Alexander-Walker leads the Hawks averaging 3.9.
The Warriors average 15.9 made 3-pointers per game this season, 2.8 more made shots on average than the 13.1 per game the Hawks give up. The Hawks average 14.5 made 3-pointers per game this season, 2.4 more made shots on average than the 12.1 per game the Warriors allow.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jimmy Butler III is averaging 19.6 points, 5.5 rebounds and 4.9 assists for the Warriors. Stephen Curry is averaging 25.7 points and 5.1 assists over the past 10 games.
Onyeka Okongwu is averaging 16.2 points, 7.8 rebounds and 3.3 assists for the Hawks. Jalen Johnson is averaging 21.1 points over the last 10 games.
LAST 10 GAMES: Warriors: 7-3, averaging 120.1 points, 42.5 rebounds, 30.4 assists, 8.9 steals and 4.6 blocks per game while shooting 47.5% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 115.0 points per game.
Hawks: 4-6, averaging 116.9 points, 42.4 rebounds, 31.9 assists, 10.1 steals and 4.2 blocks per game while shooting 47.1% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 116.0 points.
INJURIES: Warriors: Seth Curry: out (thigh).
Hawks: Kristaps Porzingis: out (achilles), Zaccharie Risacher: out (knee), CJ McCollum: out (quad), N’Faly Dante: out for season (knee), Corey Kispert: out (hamstring).
___
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
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