Close encounters of the shark kind

A few days before we left for San Diego there was a shark attack reported off the SoCal coast (there are more great white attacks off the Cali coast than anywhere else on earth - 70+ over the last 5 decades, compared to around 40 off Australia and South Africa - however, the majority of these occur in a triangle from just north of San Fransisco to Monterrey and are not deadly- the sharks are just "curious" apparently... [most] humans don't have enough fat to be worth eating. Unfortunately, this attack was fatal). As soon as my parents heard they immediately banned us from swimming, surfing, or walking within 20ft of the ocean in our new home. Luckily, by the time they came to visit and saw that the ocean here is as beautiful and rejuvenating as anywhere else, their staunch opposition faded to a more reasonable level of general parental warning.

So, I hope they will read this post till the end before phoning us in a panic asking if we're in one piece, or booking the next emergency flight south.

Yesterday Brent and I got to swim with Leopard sharks. We had bought some snorkeling gear Friday night as our attempt at snorkeling last weekend had been thwarted by a lack of available rentals in La Jolla. La Jolla cove (pictured right) is a tiny cove in San Diego's swankiest neighbourhood, and part of a protected marine park, making it a prime snorkeling destination - hopefully now a regular pastime of ours.

We set off early yesterday morning to make it there in time to snag the most valuable resource of all - a parking spot. As soon as we got into the crowded cove, we could see why it was so popular. At shin-deep there were already schools of tropical fish - iridescent striped, fluorescent orange and silver-blue with bright aquamarine "eyes" on their tales. We swam out to get away from the crowd, but the visibility got worse and the fish disappeared. We kept swimming deeper, along the steep cliffs where pelicans seem to spend the day, hoping to find a more remote cove to explore. However, when we saw a group of young seals on the shore a few meters away I decided we should give them some room, remembering the aggressive warnings of the massive sea-lions off Trial Island when our kayaks would venture too close to the moms and pups. I was not in the mood to encounter a 500lb over-protective papa seal ramming us in the water!

We were crossing the large bay in I-don't-want-to-imagine-how-deep water, and were just about to turn back when an old man swimming towards us stopped to ask if we were strong swimmers. Um, generally speaking, sure...? He recommended we keep swimming the remaining 3/4 of a mile across the bay to the shallow shores in front of a swanky restaurant where a once a year phenomenon had arrived early - hundreds of Leopard sharks had arrived in the bay for who-knows-what. They are 4-5 ft long and harmless to humans, so a real diving/snorkeling treat. So, we hunkered down and started a looong front crawl through big swells trying to keep our heads up to watch for big seaweed beds and the throngs of inexperienced recreational kayakers transversing the bay.
As we finally approached the opposite shore, it struck us that at some point soon we would have to put our heads back in the water, and that we would likely come face to face with a shark. This of course was a bad time to realise we were terrified of what we had come all this way to see. So, we tried to calm ourselves, stay steady in the now crashing waves and look down into the shallow water. The visibility was still poor, but as the water was only about 6ft deep we could see the bottom clearly. It only took us a second before a large brown-black mottled shape snaked underneath us. Then another...and another. Coming three or four at a time, the 4-5ft long sharks would swim deftly along the bottom, only occasionally rolling over to reveal their silver-white bellies. They took no notice of us as long as we stayed still. However, this meant going with the rise and fall of the huge swells above, which brought us from our birds-eye view of the Leopard sharks, to descend rapidly to within a foot of rubbing our bellies on their dorsal fins!

After we'd had our voyeur's fill, the chilly water and proximity to noon convinced us to get out and walk the mile back to the cove rather than turn around and repeat the swim. Walking in a bikini (me), swim trunks (B), barefoot and carrying snorkeling gear, alongside La Jolla's exclusive, multi-million dollar real estate and highways turned out to be a bit of a sight for the locals. Though they were often more interested in from where we'd appeared than how we were attired.

Well that's all for me. Another weekend has flown by with too-little rest, and the Sunday night bustle of getting lunches and gym bags ready for 5:45am is already upon us.

Hope you're all well, and for those of you (Erika, Aiden, Tim? and Cat) who are heading to Victoria for a bit this month, I wish I was there to see you.

Buenos noches,

Jen

p.s. this photo shows you the bay we swam across. The cove is out of the frame in the lower right side of the photo, and the sharks were along the shore by the buildings in the upper left part of the photo.