"There's a bear in there" are the words we all wanted to hear as children as we settled in to get ready to pick the round window, but it is not the words you want to hear while sunning yourself on a Florida beach contemplating going for a swim.

But that is what beachgoers in Destin were confronted with over the weekend when a black bear decided he had had enough swimming for one afternoon and came back on shore.

At first, no one knew what it was, a dog, a furry shark, a Dad who didn't have time to get a back wax, but once more and more swimmers returned to shore, local man Chris Barron, who filmed the incident, realised what he was witnessing.

"At this point, I realised it was a bear and started videoing. It kept swimming in. He got to shore, shook off, and ran into the brush in the sand dunes," Barron said, who was there with his 12-year-old son. "I think most people were shocked instead of being scared. No one expected to see a bear in the Gulf of Mexico."

Floridian Jennifer Majors Smith told AI.com of the occurrence, “Never have I ever… seen a black bear swim up out of the Gulf Coast and onto the beach.”

“A man was yelling out ‘Bear!’ You would expect ‘Shark’ or ‘Dolphin’ but not ‘Bear’. It came out of the Gulf and looked tired but relieved. We were all shocked and amazed to see what we saw.”

“We were all glad to see him safe from the water,” she explained.

Charter boat captain, Chris Kirby, told AI.com that this is not an uncommon occurrence for bears to swim in the Gulf.

“There are a lot of bears at Eglin Air Force Base. They swim across the bay. Sometimes they go for a joy swim. Everybody’s just got cellphones now and they get pictures.”

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates that there are approximately 4,000 black bears in Florida.