Great whites sometimes visit San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 4 (UPI) -- One of the most feared animals on earth, the great white shark, occasionally enters San Francisco Bay, a report published Wednesday said.

Researchers from Stanford University and the University of California at Davis said they are not frequent visitors, the San Jose Mercury News reported. The group followed the movements of 179 tagged sharks between 2000 and 2008 and recorded five sharks swimming through the Golden Gate on a total of 10 visits, all in 2007 and 2008.

The tagged sharks traveled far from California. Typically, they winter at places like Point Reyes north of San Francisco where there are lots of seals and sea lions and migrate westward in the spring to Midway or Hawaii.

Some spend the summer in the open ocean between Hawaii and Baja California.

"We tend to think of white sharks as animals that wander oceans aimlessly," said Barbara Block, who works at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station. "What we're learning is how selective a predator they are. The go up to 4,000 miles in a trip and come back to within half a mile of where they left."

The study was published in the British journal "Proceedings of the Royal Society B."