{"id":454509,"date":"2026-09-05T13:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T13:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/454509\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T13:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T13:00:11","slug":"drone-footage-shows-shark-circling-swimmer-in-santa-barbara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/454509\/","title":{"rendered":"Drone footage shows shark circling swimmer in Santa Barbara"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A shark drone photographer captured extraordinary footage<\/a> of a great white circling a swimmer off the coast of Santa Barbara.<\/p>\n

Carlos Gauna, who has been documenting sharks for roughly a decade, regularly posts such videos to his YouTube channel, TheMalibuArtist<\/a>. His work has helped people learn that the apex predators are around humans more often than once thought<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The vast majority of those encounters are uneventful, with both humans and sharks continuing on their way.<\/p>\n

But a video Gauna shot on Sunday made him nervous.<\/p>\n

\u201cNormally when I film the white sharks around humans, they will come up to a human, figure out it\u2019s a human and then leave,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In this case, the shark \u2014 which Gauna believes to be a roughly 9-foot juvenile \u2014 lingered within arm\u2019s length of the swimmer, circling him several times.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis one took a little longer to figure out that this was not food, or that it was a human, and that kind of made me a little uncomfortable,\u201d Gauna said.<\/p>\n

He theorized that was because the water was turbid and muddy due to big surf, which may make it harder for a shark to differentiate humans from prey.<\/p>\n

\"Drone <\/p>\n

Drone operator Carlos Gauna, known as \u201cTheMalibuArtist,\u201d shares footage of a great white circling the swimmer after he got out of the water.<\/p>\n

(@TheMalibuArtist)<\/p>\n

Gauna found the swimmer on the beach and showed him the footage, filming his reaction. The swimmer said he had felt something moving through the water but hadn\u2019t seen the shark. Still, the man told Gauna, \u201cI think about the sharks, and I think if I do die this way, at least I\u2019ll be in my happy place.\u201d<\/p>\n

The swimmer did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.<\/p>\n

Like humans, sharks use a melody of senses to interpret the world around them, said Chris Lowe, director of the Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach. His team has recently been studying how hearing factors into this, and preliminary findings indicate that the sounds people make while swimming can make a shark more likely to approach from a distance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the same time, data compiled by researchers also suggest sharks are innately able to determine what is food, and humans simply don\u2019t fit the bill. \u201cWhether visibility is the key to how close they\u2019ll get before they make that recognition, we just don\u2019t know,\u201d Lowe said. <\/p>\n

Lowe reviewed the video and described the shark as inquisitive, saying it exhibited no behaviors that would indicate aggression or predation.<\/p>\n

Experts had predicted a \u201csharky summer,\u201d<\/a> as a marine heat wave, El Ni\u00f1o and climate change combined<\/a> to create record-high sea surface temperatures. <\/p>\n

Ocean temperatures have exceeded 82 degrees off Baja, sending juvenile white sharks, who prefer waters between 67 and 73 degrees, north toward California, Lowe said. Researchers have tagged roughly 45 sharks so far this year, compared with about 40 in all of last year, and the peak of the season has probably not arrived, he said.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean people should worry, as the vast majority of encounters don\u2019t result in bites. \u201cSharks know we\u2019re people,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople aren\u2019t food.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gauna hopes his videos help educate people about the importance of coexisting with sharks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one thing that I hope people learn from watching these encounters and watching my videos generally is that when we go in the water, we\u2019re entering their domain,\u201d he said, \u201cand we should always have the utmost respect for their home.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A shark drone photographer captured extraordinary footage of a great white circling a swimmer off the coast of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,179553,143901,2491,44175,18531,413,4679,592,22178,5875,34286,18335,179554,646,87057],"class_list":["post-454509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-carlos-gauna","tag-chris-lowe","tag-degree","tag-drone-footage","tag-encounter","tag-food","tag-human","tag-people","tag-researcher","tag-santa-barbara","tag-shark","tag-swimmer","tag-video-gauna","tag-water","tag-white-shark"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454509","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=454509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}