Swimming with Sharks

Yeah hey. So I had this amazing experience a week and a half ago--it already seems longer than that!--and I haven't had a lick of time to tell you all how great it was until now. I took Jesse's husband snorkeling in the middle of a bunch of sharks to distract him from the sadness of seeing her fly off to another continent for a whole year. He had never gone snorkeling before, and was just trying to get the breathing with your face in the water thing down--and I had to go make him swim with leopard sharks. IT WAS SO COOL!!

They swim into the shallows near La Jolla Shores beach to lay eggs every year--and I mean the shallows. You can stand in the water when it's only up to your mid-thigh and they will be swimming right around your feet. It's incredible. Of course, you can see them much better once you stick your face under the water. We swam a little further out toward the reef and saw the occasional spotty big fishy zipping away through the water, which was pretty thrilling, but then all of a sudden there were dozens of them underneath us. When there are a large number of them, they are much less wary of the humans floating around above them. They just swam lazily back and forth under us--dozens of them, mind you--and it was just mesmerizing, watching layers and layers of these large elegant fishes weave themselves into sinuous sharky patterns in the water. They were so close I could see the beautiful mottled pattern on their skin, and if I had stretched my fingers out another four inches, I could easily have touched them. It was hard not to yell. I was very excited. But of course, if one yells with a snorkel in one’s mouth, one will find oneself with a mouthful of blechy salt water very quickly. Bleah!

So, Kyle only inhaled a moderate amount of ocean, and everything was okay. It was better than okay. It was exhilarating! And I forgot to mention the guitar fish! As if the sharks weren't cool enough for one day, there were also several gigantimous guitar fish out there. They are basically a species of skate or ray--or are skates and rays the same thing? I truly do not know. Anyhow, guitar fish are really BIG! They were much longer than the sharks, which averaged about 5-6 feet long, I'm guessing. Guitar fish look like stretched-out rays; they have rather pointy diamond-shaped front ends that taper down to a very long back end, and are vaguely reminiscent of a guitar if you happen to have already heard that that's what they look like. At any rate, it was super cool to see them suddenly explode into existence from the sea floor beneath me and swim away. They are exactly the same color as sand, with a few slightly darker spots. Which is probably why they wait until you are directly over them and then suddenly swim away when they think you might have noticed them despite their clever camouflage. They needn't have worried... There were also several other garden-variety skatey/ray-ey things, too. Not quite as exciting as the guitar fishes, but any fishy thing swimming around in the ocean at the same time that you are is a treat.

And I didn't have a camera. I am going to try to go out again sometime in the next week or two, provided the sharks are still there, and buy an underwater disposable camera. The photos won't be anything like the slick ones you see in National Geo or anything, so don't be disappointed. The water out at La Jolla is notoriously murky; 10-foot visibility is a treat! Well, good night all. Sleep well and dream of large fishes.