An incredible video has emerged of millions of sardines shoaling off the coast of California.

The footage, shot near Solana beach, captures the enormous shoal of fish swimming near the shore.

"They first gathered at Scripps Pier in la Jolla, and then disappeared, and nobody knew where they go, and we found them up north in the Solana Beach and Encinitas area," the filmer explained online.

Music: "Jelly Fish in Space" by Kevin MacLeod

As per the story behind, Dr. Mario Lebrato basically worked for Scripps Institution of Oceanography (San Diego) for 1.5 years and he was in charge of several projects in the San Diego area and also in Hawaii and Bermuda. In San Diego, we had two projects:

- One project going monthly to all the major beaches, surfing spots, and harbours and sampling seawater to study CO2, pH, oxygen and nutrients to understand seawater quality and the CO2 problem in San Diego over time (1-year study). We hve data from all major surfing spots in San Diego.

- One project was to study the chemistry dynamics of the seagrass ecosystem of Seaside Reef and Table Tops reefs in Solana Beach and Encinitas. They are major surf spots in the area, where Rip Curl team trains, and also championships are run. Most San Diego and California surfing spots have seagrass on the rocks that make the wavem smoothing it, so our data are applicable everywhere. So basically, we study during 24 h cycles the chemistry of the seagrass and surfing spots, for CO2, pH, light, oxygen, nutrients...


Since we were all months, some days, during an entire year in the coast, we were lucky to see and film the anchovies... They first gathered at Scripps Pier in la Jolla, and then dissappeared, and nobody knew where they go, and we found them up north in the Solana Beach and Encinitas area.. so we filmed them underwater and with our own drones. This happened at the same time we sampled and conducted our projects