Lifeguards in Seal Beach, California are using drones to monitor the beaches they’re responsible for more efficiently. They’re using drones to spot sharks swimming near shore, and it turns out there are a lot more than you might think.
“This morning, we launched it and 10 minutes later, we knew there were 10 to 12 sharks all in the Surfside [Beach] area,” said Chief Joe Bailey, a Seal Beach lifeguard. The Orange County lifeguards are flying the drone high over the water then zooming in on potential sharks when they spot shadows from far away. Bailey says monitoring the sharks this way will allow them to watch their behavior. “If we get bigger sharks or we get sharks that are aggressive, we’re actually going to close the water. But right now, we have sharks that are 5- to 6-feet long, non-aggressive, acting like normal sharks, feeding on bottom fish, doing exactly what we would expect them to do.”
