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A great white shark was caught on video launching itself out of the water just yards behind a boogie boarder at Newport Beach — creating a shocking scene at the popular Southern California destination.
The family behind the camera had no idea what they had captured until they reviewed the footage hours later.
“We were praying on the beach, and we were like, ‘Hopefully a miracle happens. That’d be super-cool [if] a miracle happens,'” Soaren Stevenson, a California-based college ministry leader who filmed the video, told Fox News Digital in an interview Tuesday.
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As the family replayed the footage, Stevenson said he wasn’t sure what he was seeing.
Then he zoomed in. “I was like, ‘That’s not even a dolphin — that’s a shark.'”
No one else on the beach appeared to notice the shark, Stevenson said.
“He definitely didn’t know how close it was,” Stevenson said of his brother-in-law, who was boogie boarding just ahead of the breaching shark.
“I was like, ‘That’s not even a dolphin, that’s a shark.'”
Although he grew up in Hawaii and has encountered sharks before, the brother-in-law viewed the whole incident as “a once-in-a-lifetime-type experience,” Stevenson said.
The encounter left Stevenson with a new appreciation for animals that share the ocean with surfers and swimmers.
“It’s kind of surreal to think that the shark is in the same waters as my [brother-in-law], and he didn’t even know it,” Stevenson said.
“It just makes me realize that when you go out there to surf, you can come way closer to such a beast than you ever think you [would].”
Despite the close encounter, Stevenson said he doesn’t plan to stay out of the water.
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“I don’t think they want to eat us,” he said — adding that beachgoers should still remain alert and stay safe.
The breaching happened just as Shark Week 2026 kicked off, which Stevenson called “a funny little coincidence.”
While the footage appears alarming, shark incidents involving people remain rare.
Fewer than 250 documented shark incidents involving all shark species have occurred in the state since 1950, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
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The department also notes that shark incidents have not increased proportionally despite growing beach attendance and the rising popularity of activities such as surfing, swimming and scuba diving.
Fox News Digital recently reported that a Georgia man in his early 20s was hospitalized after suffering a shark bite while helping his pregnant fiancée get to safety at a Florida beach.
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Volusia County Beach Safety officials said the man was wading in waist-deep water near the Dunlawton Beach Approach in Daytona Beach Shores when a shark estimated to be about 4 feet long bit his left foot and ankle.
He was treated at the scene before being transported to a nearby hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
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