While surfers flocking to Malibu for a hurricane swell is exactly what you’d expect, the aftermath of Hurricane Marine brought a new type of visitor. A video posted to Instagram this week shows a whale shark cruising the surface off Malibu. Whale sharks are the largest fish and largest shark species on the planet, and seeing one in California isn’t a good thing.<\/p>\n
Whale sharks are tropical animals. They filter-feed on plankton and small fish in the warm equatorial belt from Baja south, ranging as far as the Gal\u00e1pagos and beyond. Southern California is well outside their normal territory. Sightings in state waters exist but are extraordinarily rare, a clear sign of the changing climate and warmer than average ocean temperatures.<\/p>\n
The Malibu sighting is not happening in a vacuum. On August 13, a fisherman filmed a hammerhead shark from the Malibu Pier \u2014 another species almost never seen this far north. Yellow-bellied sea snakes, documented in Southern California only five times since 1972, have been the subject of fresh warnings as scientists watch this season’s warm water push tropical animals into ranges they don’t belong in. Stingray sightings are also up across the region.<\/p>\n
The through-line is temperature. The Pacific Ocean is warmer than it has ever been recorded, and this year’s El Ni\u00f1o has stacked on top of an already-warming baseline. Subtropical marine life is expanding its range northward as those waters follow it. Whale sharks, hammerheads, sea snakes \u2014 none of these animals decided California was suddenly a good place to visit. The water has brought them north and it’s a troubling sign.<\/p>\n
For surfers, the practical takeaway from the whale shark specifically is small. Whale sharks are docile filter-feeders and pose essentially no threat to humans. Hammerheads are not typically aggressive either. The sea snake, if you actually see one, is the one to give distance to as they are highly venomous.<\/p>\n
The larger takeaway is significant. A whale shark off Malibu is a beautiful, once-in-a-lifetime image. It is also a signal about a changing climate. If the pattern holds, this year’s rare sighting may become all too common.<\/p>\n
Related: Hurricane Marie Never Made Landfall in California. She Destroyed the Coast Anyway.<\/a><\/p>\n This story was originally published by Surfer<\/a> on Sep 11, 2026, where it first appeared in the News<\/a> section. Add Surfer as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While surfers flocking to Malibu for a hurricane swell is exactly what you’d expect, the aftermath of Hurricane…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":892461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,3335,48,5472,13906,66,323],"class_list":["post-892460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-canada","tag-instagram","tag-malibu","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/892461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}