Death from Below: Northern California surfers reel under new horror as scientists reveal just as many lyme-carrying ticks around area’s beaches as woods!

First Great Whites, now this.

Surfers have long been the focus of many, many terrifying natural phenomena from man-eating sharks to scary riptides to reef bashes, drownings, angry seals, clueless VALs, the World Surf League CEO Erik “ELo” Logan.

Yikes.

Lyme-carrying ticks, though, provided no worry.

Those nasty critters were for our woodland hiking friends to deal with and nasty is an understatement.

Lyme disease is one of the very worst plagues, very difficult to diagnose and causing fevers, rashes, aching joints, sleeplessness, semi-lucid hell.

Well, according to a new scientific study just released, there are just as many lyme-carrying ticks around Northern California beaches as there are in its woods.

Lead author Daniel Salkeld, a research scientist at Colorado State University, told NBC News, “We went into new habitats and found them in numbers we didn’t expect. A few years ago I would have said the ticks there wouldn’t have been infected because there aren’t any grey squirrels, which are the source for Lyme in California. I think they’ve been under our noses all along. We just haven’t thought to look very closely.”

Grey squirrels are, of course, thought to carry the ticks but a working theory suggests that northern California’s rabbits are transporting the li’l bastards around.

“This is a great study,” said Laura Goodman, an assistant research professor at the Baker Institute for Animal Health at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. “There is a bias in this country where people think they are only at risk when they go into the woods. But really, prevention and vigilance should be practiced everywhere outdoors, and we should be vigilant year-round.”

Great study my ass.

Lyme disease.

Ugh.