You’re gonna need a bigger boat — eventually.

Two men shooting drone footage off the central coast of California may have accidentally captured the first-ever sighting of newborn great white shark.

Wildlife filmmaker Carlos Gauna and Phillip Sternes, an organismal biologist at UC Riverside, were filming the coastal waters near Santa Barbara on July 9, 2023 when the pair made a striking discovery on the viewfinder of Gauna’s drone camera: a pure white, nearly 5-foot-long shark pup.

Great white sharks, which scientists call simply white sharks, are actually two-toned with gray on top and a white underbelly, according to UC Riverside.

Upon noticing the fish’s unusually chalky complexion, and what appeared to be hints of gray skin peeking out from underneath a seemingly gummy white substance, the duo knew they had to investigate further.

“We enlarged the images, put them in slow motion, and realized the white layer was being shed from the body as it was swimming,” Sternes said. “I believe it was a newborn white shark shedding its embryonic layer.”

The duo’s footage and observations were published in a new paper in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes. Their findings could finally provide the scientific community with some clues on the elusive birthing grounds of great whites, which have long been shrouded in mystery.

“Where white sharks give birth is one of the holy grails of shark science. No one has ever been able to pinpoint where they are born, nor has anyone seen a newborn baby shark alive,” Gauna said. “There have been dead white sharks found inside deceased pregnant mothers. But nothing like this.”

Tobey Curtis, Fishery Management Specialist within NOAA Fisheries’ Atlantic Highly Migratory Species Management Division, acknowledged the rarity of the findings in an email to The Post.

“Observations of free-swimming newborn white sharks are extremely rare, and any new video or photographic evidence may be very valuable,” he said.

“As the use of drones becomes more widely accessible to the public we are likely to document more unique or unusual wildlife behaviors, including where many shark species mate and give birth. Such observations can help us better conserve these species and their essential habitats.”

According to Science.org, the study’s co-authors believe the milky white substance may have been just that: the remains of uterine milk which pregnant great whites produce to feed their young during the gestational phase.

Sternes and Gauna both acknowledge the possibility that the white substance might have been merely a skin condition, but consider the chances of that remote.

“If that is what we saw, then that too is monumental because no such condition has ever been reported for these sharks,” Gauna said.

Great white sharks have fascinated, and terrified, humans for centuries. Their aggressive nature and gaping mouths filled with some 300 razor-sharp teeth make them the perfect nightmare fuel.

The 1975 Steven Spielberg film “Jaws” cemented the great white’s place in popular culture, and fed the paranoia ofmany ocean swimmers about what might be lurking in the depths below.

In reality, great white attacks are exceedingly rare, with an average of just 70 each year. According to Field & Stream, a person is seven times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be attacked by a great white.

The largest great whites can reach 21 feet in length, with most weighing between 1,500-4,000 pounds, according to Britannica.