Drone Lens Turns One Man's Life Into a Mission to Track Great Whites

A man named Carlos Gauna spends hours watching the ocean from hidden beaches along Southern California. His eyes stay glued to the water. Above him, a drone floats in the sky. It is locked onto a great white shark. He watches the animal try to bite a buoy. He talks about the kelp. He talks about the shark's fins. He calls the scene fascinating.

Gauna has spent years filming these big sharks. His work started by accident in 2019. He was at Point Dume near Malibu. He was trying to film whales. His drone battery died. Right then, a great white showed up. The shark was chasing a sea lion. He thought he had missed his one chance. He wrote about it online. He didn't know that moment would change everything. He now has thousands of hours of footage of great whites.

In 2021, Gauna quit his office job. He wanted to film them full time. He is 46 years old. He runs a YouTube channel called The Malibu Artist. More than 300,000 people follow it. Some of his videos get millions of views. He shares clips of sharks eating sea lions. He shows them swimming near dolphins. He films them close to surfers and swimmers. He never tells people where the footage comes from. He worries someone might hurt the sharks.

His work has reached a lot of people. Major TV networks have used his videos. The BBC has shown them. So has Shark Week. He has even traveled to film sharks in Brazil, South Africa, and the Guadalupe Islands. The Guadalupe spot is his favorite so far. He works with scientists too. Researchers at the Shark Lab use his footage. He helped with research on a baby great white. That shark may have been only hours old. It still had a white layer on its body.

Gauna will join a panel about sharks on Saturday, September 5 at 3 p.m. The event is at Sports Basement Long Beach. Cal State Long Beach Shark Lab Director Chris Lowe will also be there. The group Shark Stewards is hosting the talk. The event is a fundraiser. It helps protect sharks and the ocean. It also marks the group's 20th year. It is also 10 years since Maria Korcsmaros was bitten by a shark near Newport Beach. She survived and now fights for sharks. David McGuire runs Shark Stewards. He says the goal is to teach people about sharks and how to stay safe near them.