A 6-to-8-foot shark was spotted off the shore of Manhattan Beach Friday afternoon, but the predator soon swam back out to sea without endangering anyone.
The man-sized fish was spotted just before 5 p.m. in the water near El Porto Beach by a lifeguard and two surfers, according to Jake Miller, an ocean lifeguard specialist with the Los Angeles County Fire Department Lifeguard Division.
No aggressive behavior was reported, and swimmers and surfers in the area were notified of the creature’s presence, according to Miller and the Lifeguard Division’s Twitter account.
The shark has since moved out of the area.
No information has been provided as to what type of shark it was — only about 30 out of the more than 500 types of sharks have ever been reported to bite people, and only a dozen or so of those are truly dangerous — or how far offshore it was.
Last year, 112 people were bitten by sharks, of which 11 people died, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File.