{"id":467368,"date":"2026-02-14T02:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T02:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/467368\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T02:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T02:14:08","slug":"divers-come-face-to-face-with-super-rare-deep-water-shark-off-california-terrifying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/467368\/","title":{"rendered":"Divers come face-to-face with super rare deep-water shark off California: ‘Terrifying’"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the terrifying moment student divers came face-to-face with an extremely rare deep-water shark off California.<\/p>\n

Murky footage showed the prickly shark suddenly appear out of the darkness during the alarming encounter on the La Jolla coast near San Diego last week.<\/p>\n

The clip showed one of the group\u2019s heads whip round when a huge fin emerged just above the seabed in front of them.<\/p>\n

One of the divers shines their light on the prickly shark in the dark Pacific Ocean. CBS8<\/p>\n

Cali Lingle called the rare ordeal a \u201conce-in-a-lifetime experience.\u201d CBS8<\/p>\n

It was followed by the rest of the 7ft beast, which turned away sharply as the divers flickered their torches towards it.<\/p>\n

Recreational diver Liam Dougherty, who filmed the entire encounter, told CBS 8<\/a>: \u201cI was terrified. I\u2019m terrified of sharks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cali Lingle from UC San Diego, who was also on the dive, said on social media: \u201cI thought the shark was a sevengill at first, but I saw two dorsal fins and the shark looked at least seven feet long.\u201d<\/p>\n

She continued: \u201cI was like, this is probably going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I just had. It felt like discovering a new species at first because none of us knew of the shark beforehand.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cIt reminded me of how big the ocean really is and how little we know, and gave me motivation to keep protecting and caring for our mysterious and beautiful oceans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prickly sharks are usually found in deeper, colder waters up to 3,600ft in the Pacific Ocean and not along the California coastline.<\/p>\n

The deep-sea dwellers are extremely elusive and are rarely seen by humans, with no official estimates on how many there are in the wild.<\/p>\n

Divers come face-to-face with the rarely seen, deep water shark off the La Jolla coast. CBS8<\/p>\n

Despite its name and size, they are not a danger to humans \u2014 having earned their nickname due to their thorn-like denticles.<\/p>\n

Zach Merson, a Scripps PhD student who studies sharks, told CBS 8<\/a> it was unusual the shark had strayed from its deeper habitat due to the area\u2019s warmer water temperature.<\/p>\n

But he added: \u201cHere in La Jolla, we have a submarine canyon. So, we have a really deep habitat right next to a really shallow habitat.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, it\u2019s not surprising at all that prickly sharks will come up sometimes to look for food in that shallower habitat.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is the terrifying moment student divers came face-to-face with an extremely rare deep-water shark off California. Murky…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[2356,7155,79,9460,194,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-467368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-san-diego","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-sharks","12":"tag-us-news","13":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}