A Lifeguard Watched the Ocean Rise Under a Dozen Swimmers at Huntington Beach. Then the Water Drained Backward
A Huntington Beach sea creature story: a lifeguard filmed a spined gray back rise between swimmers, then the shoreline drained toward it. What was it?
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This Huntington Beach sea creature story comes from the one person on the sand whose whole job is to watch the water. Tyler, 24, was working a mid-season shift in his tower on a hazy, crowded weekday in Southern California. Umbrellas were packed shoulder to shoulder, a little girl was building a sandcastle at the foot of his ramp, and about a dozen swimmers were bobbing out near the yellow buoys.
He had his phone out because a friend had asked for a quick video of how busy the beach was. That’s the only reason this footage exists.
The Ocean Rose Up Like a Hill
In the first second of the video, something is already wrong. The water out past the break, right where the swimmers are, bulges upward. Not a wave. A wave travels toward shore. This was a slow, rounded hill of water rising in place, lifting a dozen people several feet into the air.
Then they slid off it. You can hear the screams all the way from the tower.
“My brain just said rip current, then it said no, rip currents don’t do that,” Tyler said. “I’ve never seen water move like that in my life. I grabbed my tube before I even knew what I was doing.”
The Thing That Broke the Surface
Tyler grabbed his red rescue tube and ran down the ramp, still holding his phone. That’s when the part of the video everyone talks about happens.
Between two swimmers, an enormous dark gray back rolled out of the water. It was scaly and ridged, studded with barnacles, with a row of jagged spines running down its center. It was longer than a school bus. It rose, turned slightly, and slid back under, leaving a swirling trench of churned water where it had been.
People on the sand started screaming and running backward. Tyler ran forward.
“I wasn’t brave, I was trained,” he said later. “When people are in the water, you go. You don’t think about what’s in there with them. If I’d thought about it, I’d probably still be standing on that ramp.”
The Water Started Draining Backward
The final seconds of the clip are the most unsettling. Tyler reaches the wet sand at the shoreline, and the water around his ankles suddenly starts rushing the wrong way. It drains backward, out to sea, toward the place where the creature went under. A little girl’s plastic sand bucket gets dragged along with it.
And there are still swimmers out there.
You hear Tyler blasting his whistle and shouting: “Everybody out! Out of the water now!” Then the video cuts.
What Happened to the Swimmers
Tyler dropped the phone on the sand and went in. Here is what the people on the beach saw next.
The pull of the water, the backward rush, lasted about twenty seconds. Witnesses said it felt like someone had pulled a plug. It dragged a boy on a boogie board almost forty feet farther out before it stopped. That boy, a 12-year-old visiting from Arizona, was the first person Tyler reached.
“He was just holding the board and staring at me,” Tyler said. “He didn’t scream. He just kept saying, ‘It touched my feet. It touched my feet.'”
Two more lifeguards from neighboring towers came in on a rescue board within a minute, and a lifeguard truck drove down to the shoreline with its siren on. Over the next six minutes, they brought every swimmer back to the sand. Eleven people were pulled out. Two were treated for exhaustion, and one woman had a long, shallow scrape on her calf that doctors said looked like it came from something rough, like barnacles or coral.
There is no coral reef at Huntington Beach.
What Was It?
The beach was closed for the rest of the day. A harbor patrol boat and a drone spent the afternoon scanning the area and found nothing. Officials later said the most likely explanation was a large whale, possibly a gray or a fin whale, that had become disoriented in shallow water. Whales have been spotted unusually close to Southern California beaches in recent years.
Tyler doesn’t argue with them publicly. Privately, he’ll tell you what he saw.
“I’ve seen whales. I’ve seen a lot of whales,” he said. “Whales don’t have spines. And whales don’t pull the ocean backward.”
A marine biologist who reviewed the footage said the backward rush of water was the strangest part. A large animal diving quickly can create a strong local current, she explained, but she had never seen one strong enough to drain water from the shoreline. She also said she could not identify the animal from the video.
The Sandcastle Girl
There is one more detail that didn’t make it into the clip. The little girl whose bucket got swept out to sea, a five-year-old named Lucy, stood at the foot of the tower the whole time, holding her mom’s hand and watching Tyler bring people in.
When the last swimmer was out, she walked up to him and handed him her shovel. It was the only toy she had left.
“She said, ‘You can have it, because you’re a hero,'” Tyler said. “I still have it. It’s in my tower.”
The beach reopened the next morning. The water was calm and flat, and a lot of regulars stayed on the sand that day. Tyler was back on shift.
He says he looks at the buoys differently now.
Would you have gone back in the water the next day? Tell us below, and share this with someone who swears the ocean is safe.
