PALM BEACH, FL - It's every beachgoer's worst nightmare: thousands of sharks swimming around just several hundred feet from the shoreline in south Florida.

 

It's happening off the coast of Palm Beach county, where researchers from Florida Atlantic University estimate nearly 15,000 sharks are swimming just 200 yards off the coast. It's a spectacle that's caught many Floridian's attention, just as they get ready to make plans for Spring Break.

 

George Burgess of the Florida Museum of Natural History has been studying sharks for 40 years, and says it's all part of their annual migration, as they wait for the ocean to the north of Florida to warm up.

 

"What we're seeing here are those sharks are sort of aggregating, waiting to get that cue of warming water temperatures, and then they'll start boogying up the east coast of Florida," said Burgess.

 

Burgess says colder water off the northern part of the state is keeping the sharks huddled near south Florida. Only when the water begins to warm up will the sharks begin to travel further north.

 

Burgess says he expects the group of sharks to make it near the coast of Jacksonville in about a month.