A 26-year-old surfer was knocked off his board by high waves at a Santa Barbara County beach Friday evening.<\/p>\n
The man, who was accompanied by a friend, went night surfing at Haskell\u2019s Beach in Goleta when he was suddenly pulled into the water. His surfboard washed ashore. <\/p>\n
His friend called 911 and reported the swimmer missing.<\/p>\n
A rescue crew from the Santa Barbara County Fire Department arrived at 6:28 p.m., and sent out aerial drones to scan the water. The man was spotted about a quarter-mile offshore, according to the fire department. <\/p>\n
Video of the rescue<\/a> shows the man holding the top of a lobster trap buoy, which prevented him drifting farther to sea. Two officers from the department\u2019s water rescue team pulled the man back to shore. <\/p>\n He did not require medical attention, officials said.<\/p>\n \u201cNever go into the ocean alone \u2014 especially in rough conditions,\u201d the Fire Department said in a post to X<\/a>. \u201c[Having someone with you] can save lives.\u201d <\/p>\n According to the surf monitoring website Surfline<\/a>, waves at Haskell\u2019s Beach \u201c[ease] a touch in the afternoon but [pump] through sundown.\u201d The beach is known as a beginner\u2019s spot.<\/p>\n A 2021 survey by the Santa Barbara Channelkeeper Watershed Brigade counted a total of 44 lobster traps on the coastline between Haskell\u2019s and Ellwood Beaches, as reported by NoozHawk<\/a>, a local Santa Barbara news outlet. Brigade volunteers continue to remove the derelict traps<\/a>, known to be hazardous to beachgoers and wildlife.<\/p>\n From 2016-23, there were 3,631 fatal unintentional drowning cases in California, according to data from the state\u2019s Public Health Department<\/a>. The National Weather Service reported a total of 99 surf-related deaths<\/a> in 2025, nine of which were in California. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 26-year-old surfer was knocked off his board by high waves at a Santa Barbara County beach Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[80942,174,7,9,8,11057,1576,80939,80941,80940,1555,80943,80944,25269,646,80946,80945],"class_list":["post-168441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-26-year-old-surfer-cling","tag-beach","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-fire-department","tag-friend","tag-haskell","tag-high-wave","tag-lobster-trap-buoy","tag-man","tag-rescue-crew","tag-strong-santa-barbara-wave","tag-total","tag-water","tag-water-rescue-team","tag-website-surfline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}