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Sharks are congregating at a California beach. AI is trying to keep swimmers safe 

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On summer mornings, local kids like to gather at Padaro Beach in California to learn to surf in gentle whitewater waves. A few years ago, the beach also became a popular hangout for juvenile great white sharks.

That led to the launch of SharkEye, an initiative at the University of California Santa Barbara’s Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory (BOSL), which uses drones to monitor what’s happening beneath the waves.

If a shark is spotted, SharkEye sends a text to the 80-or-so people who have signed up for alerts, including local lifeguards, surf shop owners, and the parents of children who take lessons.

In recent years, other initiatives have seen officials and lifeguards from New York to Sydney using drones to keep beachgoers safe, monitoring video streamed from a camera. That requires a pilot to stay focused on a screen, contending with choppy water and glare from the sun, to differentiate sharks from paddleboarders, seals, and undulating kelp strands. One study found that human-monitored drones only detect sharks about 60% of the time.