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In July of last year, the World Surf League (WSL) made its way to South Africa’s world famous J-Bay for the Championship Tour’s Corona Open J-Bay competition. This brought the best competitive surfers in the world to J-Bay (Jeffreys Bay) for the event.
Hawaiian surfer Nathan Florence wasn’t in J-Bay to compete at the time. Though his brother John John Florence ws there for the competition and at the time he sat sits 6th in WSL Championship Tour standings. Brazil’s Filipe Toledo would go on to win the event.
At the time, with all of the high-profile surfers in the water there drones were flying. And one drone picked up Nathan Florence coming face-to-face with a curious juvenile great white shark. Nathan shared drone footage of the close encounter with the great white shark getting within feet of him.
Nathan also shared the footage on Instagram Reels:
Shark sightings at J-Bay aren’t uncommon at all. It was just a few years ago that Mick Fanning punched a shark DURING A HEAT of the competition, leading to a video that went viral all around the world:
White sharks call Jeffreys Bay in South Africa home all year long. But it is Winter there right now. In fact, it’s 59 degrees (Fahrenheit) at J-Bay right now. And while that is the air temperature, that’s certainly on the colder side of weather where great white sharks are found.
Conversely, it is peak shark spotting season right now in California where the temperatures are a bit warmer.
This video from San Onofre State Beach just south of San Clemente went viral last week. This is also drone footage showing great white sharks (4 or 5 of them) getting eerily close to the lineup of surfers. And like the video above, the close encounters do not mean anyone was in grave danger.
I was fortunate enough to surf that stretch of coast a few years back on a work trip with Big Wave surfer Greg Long. He is born and raised in the area and as a Floridian who grew up only surfing hurricane swells it was a cool experience. We didn’t see any sharks though!
This article first appeared on BroBible in July 2023 but has since been updated for timeliness and clarity.