Drone captures great white shark trailing paddleboarders off Santa Barbara

On Sunday, June 22, 2026, a drone captured a great white shark trailing two paddleboarders off Santa Barbara after the pair had gone out looking for the animal they had heard was in the area.

Kayla Ross said she and her companion paddled far offshore before a family member, who had launched the drone to help locate the shark, told them to head in. “We paddled pretty far out... He said that he saw something and that we had to head back to shore right now. But I didn’t see it because I was just looking forward, paddling. So I didn’t know what he saw, how big it was, so we just went straight back. But that was a little nerve-racking,” Ross said. She said the pair initially believed they had missed the shark, only to realize it had been tracking them the entire time.

Ross said she went out twice to look for the shark and would do it again, even hoping to find an even bigger one next time. Carpinteria and nearby Santa Claus Beach have been identified as juvenile great white shark nursery habitat. A 2023 Shark Lab study found juvenile white sharks aggregate in Carpinteria and Del Mar.

In April 2026, Ron Takeda and Tavis Boise said a shark followed Takeda for at least five minutes while they were hydrofoiling off Carpinteria Beach. The two made it back to shore safely, and Boise said, “We can encounter them all we want, but really it’s their ocean and we’re just small primates.”

On June 12, the Santa Barbara County Fire Department posted drone video showing five juvenile great white sharks near the shoreline of Santa Claus Beach. In 2021, another drone clip showed five juvenile great white sharks in the same general area, and in 2024, a small, nearly solid white shark off the Santa Barbara coast was flagged as a possible newborn great white shark.