We're About To Reach The Summit
SURF:
If you're superstitious, just pass over the next few sentences because I may jinx your weekend surf plans. For those of you who don't believe in those sorts of things:
How good do we have it rignt now? Fun combo surf the past few days, warm air temps, light winds, sunny skies, and water temps in the mid 70's?! Does it get any better than this? Just when you think it couldn't get any better, along comes this weekend.
A solid storm off Antarctica mid-month has sent us good SW swell for the weekend. Look for chest high+ surf later tomorrow in northern SD and shoulder high surf in the OC. For Saturday, the swell peaks with head high+ waves in northern SD and overhead sets in the OC. Sunday starts to drop but there's still plenty of good surf (and sunny skies and warm water, blah blah, blah). We also should have a little NW windswell building for the weekend which will help break up the lines at the beach breaks. And here's the tides, sun, and water temps for the next few days:
- Sunrise and sunset:
- 6:20 AM sunrise (6 AM paddle out?)
- 7:19 PM sunset (7:30 PM paddle in?)
- Water temps are holding at 75. Bam!
- And tides are pretty boring (again) this weekend:
- 1' at sunrise
- 4.5' late morning
- down to 1.5' late afternoon
- and back to 4' at sunset
FORECAST:
The good swell from the weekend fades early next week but you might be able to find some chest high surf early on.
Towards Thursday, we get a small reinforcement from the S for more waist to chest high waves.
And further out, we may see another good SW swell for shoulder high+ surf towards the 6th (along with more NW)? As far as the tropics are concerned, that taste of Chubasco early in the summer is gone and La Nina is back in control.
WEATHER:
Humid weather will decrease over the weekend but we'll still have air temps in the low to mid 70's along the coast. By mid-week, we warm up again as high pressure builds and beaches are back to the high 70's. All the while, low clouds and fog will make an appearance in the nights and mornings. If anything changes between now and then, make sure to follow North County Surf on Twitter!
BEST BET:
This weekend will be worthy of the Emergency Boardriding System. Flip that switch!
NEWS OF THE WEEK:
Even though sharks make unfortunate mistakes sometimes (i.e. biting surfers), they are an important part of our ecosystem and the health of our oceans. Adult great whites may look scary with their sharp teeth and lengths of 15-20', but for the most part, they swim far away from shore. The real predator in the oceans though are orcas who have been known from time to time to attack great whites (and leave humans alone as far as I know). With their intelligence and lengths up to 30', they roam freely in the oceans. But it hasn't been that way forever as scientists think the Megalodon (a favorite subject of mine) may have snacked on Orcas over 20 million years ago. Which means they were mighty big.
New research led by Jack Cooper, a paleobiologist at Swansea University, concluded that megalodons were faster than any shark alive today and big enough to eat an orca in just five bites and was an even more impressive superpredator than scientists realized before. Here's what they found:
The Otodus megalodon, the inspiration behind the 2018 film "The Meg," lived more than 23 million years ago. Fossils of the extinct giant are hard to come by: While there are plenty of fossilized shark teeth, their bodies mainly consist of cartilage rather than bones, and are rarely preserved. Paleobiologist Jack Cooper set out to use 3D modeling from a rare and exceptionally well-preserved megalodon spinal column to extrapolate information about the shark's movement and behavior. Their research was published in Science Advances last week.
New research led by Jack Cooper, a paleobiologist at Swansea University, concluded that megalodons were faster than any shark alive today and big enough to eat an orca in just five bites and was an even more impressive superpredator than scientists realized before. Here's what they found:
The Otodus megalodon, the inspiration behind the 2018 film "The Meg," lived more than 23 million years ago. Fossils of the extinct giant are hard to come by: While there are plenty of fossilized shark teeth, their bodies mainly consist of cartilage rather than bones, and are rarely preserved. Paleobiologist Jack Cooper set out to use 3D modeling from a rare and exceptionally well-preserved megalodon spinal column to extrapolate information about the shark's movement and behavior. Their research was published in Science Advances last week.
"We estimate that an adult Megalodon could cruise at faster absolute speeds than any shark species today and fully consume prey the size of modern apex predators," wrote the researchers. Most of what we know about megalodons come from scientific inferences: Scientists have estimated the extinct sharks could be as long as 65 feet through a comparison with great white sharks, thought of as their "best available ecological analog," since they both occupy the top rung in the food chain, according to the article. (For comparison's sake, Great Whites above 20' are rare and the shark in the movie Jaws was an exaggerated 25', so yes, a 65' shark is mind boggling).
The researchers used a megalodon vertebral column from Belgium, a tooth from the United States, and the chondrocranium -- the cartilaginous equivalent of a skull -- from a great white shark to build their 3D skeleton. Then they used a full-body scan of a great white shark to estimate how flesh would sit on the megalodon's skeleton.
With a complete 3D rendering, they came up with estimates for the volume and body mass of the shark's whole body. By comparing the figures to the size of modern sharks, they estimated the shark's swimming speed, stomach value, calorie needs, and prey encounter rates.
The particular megalodon they modeled would have been almost 16 meters, or 52 feet, long. It weighed around 61,560 kilograms, or 135,717 pounds, according to their estimates (around 67 tons- which is about 2 fully loaded semi trucks. Holy cow).
They estimated the megalodon would have been able to devour prey the size of orca whales -- which can be up to 26 feet long and weigh over 8,000 pounds -- in just five bites. Prey the size of a modern humpback whale would have been too big for a megalodon to eat in full, according to the researchers. Eating large prey may have given the megalodon a competitive edge over other predators. Eating large amounts at a time would have also allowed them to travel great distances without eating again, much like modern great white sharks.
An adult megalodon would have needed to eat a whopping 98,175 calories per day (and the FDA says adult humans should consume around 2,000 calories a day), 20 times higher than an adult great white shark. They could have met their energetic needs by eating around 31.9 kilograms of shark muscle, according to the researchers' estimates.
The megalodon was also faster than any shark alive, with a theoretical average cruising speed of around 3.1 mph. This speed would have allowed it to encounter more prey, helping it meet its massive caloric demands.
Overall, the data extrapolated from the 3D model paints the portrait of a "transoceanic superpredator," say the researchers. Luckily, today's orcas don't have to worry about running into the massive shark. The megalodon went extinct around 3.6 million years ago, according to the United Kingdom's Natural History Museum, for reasons scientists are still trying to understand.
So the next time you paddle out to some offshore reef in the early morning hours- don't worry- there's no megalodons around.
PIC OF THE WEEK:
Keep Surfing,
Michael W. Glenn
Never Been The Underdog
3X VMA Winner
Proud To Be A Grom
