Leopard sharks swim in the warm, shallow water of the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla Cove, which is home to the largest annual aggregation of them in the world. Every summer, locals and visitors flock to La Jolla Shores and the cove in San Diego to swim, snorkel, kayak and dive with the sharks, which are harmless.

A woman stumbled across over a dozen dead baby leopard sharks near the shores of a San Diego beach, according to local news reports.Emily Dean was hiking with friends on a La Jolla trail near Black’s Beach when the group encountered the dead fish lined up along the trail.“We made it about halfway down, and we stumbled upon a rock where three of them were laid out to dry, and it had been freshly done because there was water marks like they had been just left there to dry out,” Dean told KFMB-TV.

Leopard sharks are extremely common along the San Diego shores, Jack Elstner, a Ph.D. student at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego, told SFGATE by phone. They usually gather in large numbers in the area in the summer and fall, typically beginning in June, but Elstner said they can be spotted year-round.

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Black’s Beach is north of Scripps Pier in La Jolla and is just north of the San Diego-Scripps Coastal State Marine Conservation Area, a protected space for marine life. The entire conservation area spans 934 acres and was protected under the Marine Life Protection Act of 1999. 

“Not only are acts like that illegal, but it’s really harming a very important, like, a biodiversity hotspot that we have right out here,” Brent Fish, an aquarist with Birch Aquarium, told KFMB-TV.

However, in other areas, fishing for the sharks is common, Elstner said.

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“There is certainly a lot of fishing for leopard sharks in Southern California … but this is something that I haven’t seen or heard about. A bunch of sharks piled up on the beach or on the trail — it’s a strange thing.”While leopard sharks can reach 7 feet in length, Elstner said they are safe to be in the water with. Visitors and locals who want to see marine life up close can visit the south end of La Jolla Shores Beach and bring snorkeling gear, according to the San Diego Tourism Authority. 

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“They’re completely harmless,” Elstner said. “These animals are feeding mostly on small fish and crustaceans.”

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