Saturday, October 18, 2008

Open Water Live!

I am going to let Curt Storlazzi, my dive buddy on some dive's yesterday to check some oceanographic instrumentation, describe it:

"So today we were diving off Santa Cruz today to check on some oceanographic moorings and a tripod we deployed yesterday. As my dive buddy Ian Miller and I get to the surface, our comrades (Jamie Grover, our boat captain and Amy Draut, another diver) on the boat are swinging it around trying to follow what Jamie is saying is a mola mola (sunfish). As the boat turns, Ian and I see a fin that looks nothing like a mola mola but rather something a little more threatening. Jamie and Amy are pretty interested in it, and Ian and I are sort of laughing as we get out of the water and into the boat. We swing the boat around and what do we see? Check out the attached photos.

I would like to say it was huge and threatening, and from eye level in the water it's fin sure looked it, but it was just a baby....that was probably thinking, "In a year, you're TOAST!""

Despite our initial excitement that we were watching a juvenile white shark glide effortlessly next to our boat, I've come to the conclusion that this is a salmon shark. Still, its the first time I've seen a true pelagic shark in the wild (and shared space in the water with one), and it was exhilarating.



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