Although conditions weren’t ideal, there were a few fleeting moments that offered crystal clear views of the sharks. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
As the man who runs the popular YouTube channel “The Malibu Artist,” Carlos Gauna is dedicated to creating content that his subscribers subscribe for. If you are one of the quarter-million people who have, in YouTuber parlance, “smashed that subscribe button,” you know that content is all about sea life. Sea life with a heavy focus on great white sharks. This year, however, Gauna has had a bit of a hard time fulfilling that obligation, but not for lack of trying.
“I’ve driven countless miles in search of my first great white shark of the year,” he says at the beginning of the video you see here. “But last week, I finally found some… and more.”
Water temperatures off the California coastline have been unseasonably cold since the calendar flipped over. This is the first time in five years that Gauna hasn’t had a great white sighting in January or February.
“Determined to change that,” he continued, “I travelled further south to Huntington Beach to find my first great white of 2025.”
Huntington Beach calls itself Surf City USA (although Santa Cruz had a few words to say about that), so it might be a little disconcerting to hear that great whites frequent the area. It shouldn’t be, though — despite their fearsome reputation, great whites near shore in places like Huntington are often juveniles moving northward from their nurseries. It’s a common occurrence to share the lineup with them, but we often underestimate the sneakiness of the great white.
Anyway, Gauna had heard from surfers and fishermen in the Huntington Beach area that a handful of great whites had been spotted, so he packed up his drone and headed from Malibu to Huntington. And his search was successful when he spotted a few smaller great whites cruising by the pier.
“Encounters like this highlight an unavoidable reality,” Gauna said. “Sharks and humans share the same waters.”
