Otter finds himself in a tense confrontation with young surfers off the coast of California

An otter may have been picking a fight with a group of young surfers at Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz.

The aquatic creature approached the group and climbed onto a surfer’s board in late September.

A witness filmed the interaction and told ABC 7 that the otter appeared to want to attack the surfers — although, of course, what the otter was actually thinking remains unclear.

Before things got bad, one of the surfers rushed towards the otter to scare it, creating some distance between the animal and the group.

No injuries were reported during this interaction, but it is part of a growing list of encounters involving these types of sea creatures along the California coast.

In September, Heather Gray, a woman paddleboarding off the coast of Santa Cruz, experienced a nightmarish encounter with an overzealous sea lion that sent her straight into the water, according to reports.

Gray was attacked around 8am while he was paddleboarding between Capitola Wharf and Privates Beach, near Pleasure Point.

“I was like ‘what, what’s happening,’ it was like a horror movie,” she told KNTV.

Gray was bitten on the arm, hand and feet before she was able to fight off the sea lion.

Video of the incident captured by website Surfline shows the moment Gray was knocked off her board.

“The weirdest thing was that it grabbed my hair,” she said.

After the attack, she managed to get back on her board and headed straight for shore, but the sea lion followed her, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“We’re so used to them being really comfortable with them, and I knew that wasn’t really normal,” Gray told KNTV.

A friend eventually took Gray to urgent care for treatment, where she received tetanus and rabies shots from the bites.

“I know there are a lot of sea lions that are sick right now, so my first thought was, ‘Oh my God, that was one of those sick sea lions,'” Gray told the station.

This year, the Marine Mammal Center said sea lions and fur seals around Monterey Bay were suffering from domoic acid poisoning. Researchers still don’t know why the number of affected animals increased.

The center said the toxin can cause animals to behave unpredictably.

“Domoic acid poisoning is caused by harmful algal blooms,” the center said. “The neurotoxin accumulates in small fish eaten by marine mammals, including sea lions.”

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