After North Carolina shark attacks, lifeguards turn to drones to spot sharks

Following two shark attacks in Oak Island, North Carolina, last weekend, lifeguards across the nation have begun using drones to track sharks from the air.

"We launched the drone, and in about five minutes, we'd spotted five or six sharks, so we went down and zoomed in and filmed them, then we cruised the whole area, and I think we probably saw about 10 sharks total this morning," Seal Beach Marine Safety Chief Joe Bailey told ABC7.com.

The process of searching for sharks used to be done on jet skis, and could take two hours to complete. GPS tags historically don't work well on sharks either, because the tag's antenna needs to be out of the water to work. But with the introduction of shark-seeking drones (not to be confused with the Navy's shark drones), it now takes minutes to identify where potentially aggressive sea critters might be lurking.

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"If we get bigger sharks or we get sharks that are aggressive, we're actually going to close the water," Bailey said. "But right now, we have sharks that are 5- to 6-feet long, non-aggressive, acting like normal sharks, feeding on bottom fish, doing exactly what we would expect them to do."