Orange County’s Seal Beach is a popular spot for swimmers and surfers, so its lifeguards figured they’d use a camera drone to keep a better eye on them. But what they saw instead was “10 to 12 great white sharks just feet from shore.”
“Sharks are kinda, like, my biggest fear so that’s, like, very daunting for me,” one local told CBS News after seeing this video.
But the lifeguards don’t believe the sharks pose a significant risk. They plan to use the drone to monitor sharks for “aggressive” behaviour, but will keep the beach open while they do.
“If we get bigger sharks or we get sharks that are aggressive, we’re actually going to close the water. But right now, we have sharks that are 5- to 6-feet long, non-aggressive, acting like normal sharks, feeding on bottom fish, doing exactly what we would expect them to do,” said Seal Beach’s chief lifeguard, Joe Bailey. He has posted warning signs to alert visitors to the sharks’ presence.
Great whites aren’t new to SoCal’s waters. They’re frequently spotted by surfers, fishermen and are even occasionally seen leaping out of the water. Despite their presence, they don’t pose much of a risk to people. No fatal shark attacks have ever occurred on an Orange County beach.