Diving with Sharks? 5-18-2008

FirstBrode, JohnT, Nakediver and his newbie friend, and myself drove up really early sunday morning to hit up what we call Hookie Cove, but what is also known as The Caulderon to most; just south of Ocean Cove. When we arrived, the conditions were terrible, with huge waves crashing on the shore and larger ones continously coming in. Firstbrode and I said hell no and we decided to go further north to another cove John, Nakediver and I dove on my birthday last year that had a nice rock barrier to the waves.

The second cove is near "the long walk" or "red barn" depending on who you talk to, though, if you have seen that barn lately, it should be called half-gone-barn since the last storm season seems to have done quite a number on it.

We parked and walked all the way down to our "secret" cove near it only to discover similar conditions as the Caulderon we just left. So screw it, we said, lets just south along the shore until we find something diveable. So with four people in tow, i walked south looking at one nasty cove after another. JohnT and I separated from the crew and found a cove that actually looked quite diveable. The waves were crashing on a shelf of rocks in front of it and the vis actually looked pretty good from the cliffs above.. which was surprising considering the red tide was going on that day.

we all hiked down to the beach below and saw a few seals bathing on the rocks in the corner and a few others in the water. I love diving with seals, but respect their innate natural want to protect their young, so we decided to watch them for awhile, before getting in to see where they were hanging out, since there seemed to be more coming in.

Then Firstbrode says that he sees a couple seals booking it really quickly into the protection of the cove and that usually happens when something is after them...which of course starts to freak us all out.. no one actually saw a shark, but once the idea was planted it was hard to shake it... and then we saw a fin.

it was just on the outside of the rocks, pretty much where we all wanted to dive. It was bobbing up, as clear as we could make it out.. yup a fin.. only a couple people saw it at first, cause it would disappear and then .. poof.. .there is was again.. near the same area and pretty distinctly a fin... or we thought.

so i finally decided to clamber over some rocks that stretched out into the ocean, about 30 feet from it and take a closer look... i stood on those rocks knowing that i was either going to 100% confirm it was a shark and we would obviously not dive there, or 100% figure out i couldnt figure it out, and again not dive there.. or see if it was soemthing else altogether.

i watched that damn fin looking thing for nearly 15 minutes..watching it bob up and down.. move around, but only the fin.. it looked strange.. the lines werent as clean as i would think it would be on a fin, so i kept thinking it was some sort of garbage floating around, or kelp or something... finally after all that staring, i saw a seal move up and then dive just below the surface.. his two fins sticking out of the water, but then shifting slightly to the side so only one fin was sticking out.. THE SHARK FIN.. lol.. apparently he was trying to get at something in the rocks but only one of his fins were barely sticking out making it seem like a dorsel fin or something.

estatic i went back to my fellow divers and confirmed it was nothing.. though i am just not sure they believed me.

and that was only half the story..

actually diving in that water was like diving in a washing machine with 10' vis.. we could clearly see the rocks as we were hurdled at them with great force. The waves were crashign all over us, and firstbrode and i had to dive in 20-30' of water just to get under it all.

but i got one greenling and three very nice abs, and no one got hurt... so a good day nonetheless.

-bigfoot