Overview
- A drone operated by a relative captured a great white shark tracking two paddleboarders off the Santa Barbara coast, footage that participants only saw after returning to shore.
- Paddleboarder Kayla Ross told reporters she and her partner had gone out intentionally to look for a shark that had been spotted near the area and left the water after her partner signaled he saw something.
- Ross described the episode as nerve‑racking but said she was unharmed and not deterred from paddleboarding, even expressing interest in future encounters with larger sharks.
- The incident follows a camera‑captured encounter about two months earlier when foil surfers Tavis Boise and Ron Takeda were pursued by a great white, contributing to a recent cluster of recorded encounters in the region.
- The coverage highlights how consumer drones and user video are surfacing nearshore shark activity and could influence how beachgoers behave and how authorities monitor and respond to sightings.