Sharks Swarm Beneath Unknowing Surfers in SoCal (Video)

“Pretty much every day in Southern California,” says Times reporter Jack Dolan, “there are people unwittingly swimming and surfing in and amongst these juvenile great white sharks. In fact, beaches all up and down Southern California, and in LA County in particular, are essentially great white nurseries. They are just little sanctuaries where the sharks hang out, and grow into adult sharks.”

In fact, per a study from the Shark Lab from a while back, they showed just how often surfers are sharing the water with sharks…mostly without them even knowing it. By using drone observations over the course of two years, they found that juvenile great whites between the ages of one and five years old were cruising near people 97% of the time, at a specific set of beaches in San Diego and Santa Barbara Counties.

But don’t be alarmed; the fact that sharks were this common amongst surfers, when compared to the attack rate, this means that the sharks aren’t all too interested in feasting on humans.

“[Dr. Chris Lowe of the Shark Lab] said people are just like flotsam," said Dolan. "They’re not thinking of them as food, the sharks aren’t a threat. So, they [the sharks] just ignore them [the humans].”