"I expect any day we're going to start seeing hammerheads," Lowe said.
Conservation and Risk Management
Local officials have already taken measures to protect both sharks and beachgoers.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife said it was "anticipating a larger presence of white sharks."
The body passed emergency regulations last month to prohibit the use of certain fishing gear at beaches and on piers to limit any accidental hooking of white sharks.
The species are fully protected in California, and it's illegal to catch them.
But John Ugoretz, a pelagic fisheries and ecosystems program manager at the state's fish and wildlife department, said that hasn't stopped people from trying.
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Modern fishing equipment presents a major danger to swimmers and surfers.
A powerful shark snared on a metallic line could "become like a cheese cutter" that could decapitate a person, Lowe says.
"What we've seen already this year is a pretty significant increase in people interacting with those white sharks in southern California in particular," Ugoretz said.
"That includes people fishing for white sharks."
He added that California has seen "aggregations" of white sharks regularly, but in El Niño years those aggregations are bigger, move further north towards Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay, and stay later into the year.
"Conservation measures for sharks in California have already been successful, and we're already seeing increases [in populations]," Ugoretz said.
"We're just very concerned with the potential, not only for additional sharks being caught and killed, but also the potential for a hooked shark to wrap the line around a swimmer, or even in a worse case, biting someone while it's fighting on that line."
