- Messages
- 97,509
- Reaction score
- 98,618
- Location
- On the Fun Side of Trump's Wall
- # of dives
- 2500 - 4999
My friends Bob, Valerie, and I went out for a dive the other day at Redondo. We wanted to explore the navigation course and find the VW ... which we did ... eventually.
Shortly after dropping down, at about 45 fsw, we came upon a pile of what looks like some kind of aluminum cones, which were just chock full of little fish, gunnels, crabs, and all the other usual suspects. About a minute into this, Bob suddenly flashes his light in my direction and takes off like the proverbial bat out of hell. Now, I've done close to 100 dives with Bob and never known him to swim away from a dive buddy before. I figured, either somebody's in big trouble or ... nah ... it's the middle of the day and we're in less than 50 feet of water. Nonetheless, Valerie and I took off in hot pursuit. About 30 seconds later we caught up to Bob, and right there just a few feet in front of him was a large undulating tail ... attached to a really big fish.
At that point Valerie and I both discovered a higher gear ... she passed Bob on the right and I passed Bob on the left. I recall seeing Valerie's strobe flash as she passed the tail ... and again just a few seconds later. We quickly came up alongside the shark's head ... each of us on opposite sides of the shark just out of touching distance. It was a female, and judging it's size compared to Valerie I'd guess about 10 feet long.
We swam with it for roughly 1-1/2 to 2 minutes ... the shark turning it's head slightly from side to side to get a better look at these annoying humans. At one point I swam above the shark ... hovering at a distance of perhaps four feet above it. I was looking for markings, because the aquarium's been tagging sharks in the area lately to keep track of their movements. But didn't see any. This shark had no distinguishing features that I could tell. Just a beautiful silvery color and pitch black eyes ... it was as perfect as creation could make it.
After a couple of minutes, she decided she'd had enough of all this attention ... and with one powerful flick of the tail she disappeared ahead of us. At that point we commenced to hollering into our regs, pounding each other with high-fives, and generally acting like three very juvenile amphibians ... then we collected ourselves, swam back to our starting point, and proceeded to follow our dive plan.
We ended up finding the course, the VW, and all the other stuff we had talked about finding ... then we headed back to shore. Along the way we encountered a mysterious "wall" of brown water ... within a few seconds vis dropped from 15 feet to about 3 feet. So we decided to head up to do our safety stop ... and surfaced right in front of Salty's.
This was Valerie's first six-gill sighting ... and was she excited? Well, back at the car she proceeded to recount the entire encounter in a single sentence of epic proportions ... in fast-forward ... and on a single breath! Yep, she had a really good dive ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
Shortly after dropping down, at about 45 fsw, we came upon a pile of what looks like some kind of aluminum cones, which were just chock full of little fish, gunnels, crabs, and all the other usual suspects. About a minute into this, Bob suddenly flashes his light in my direction and takes off like the proverbial bat out of hell. Now, I've done close to 100 dives with Bob and never known him to swim away from a dive buddy before. I figured, either somebody's in big trouble or ... nah ... it's the middle of the day and we're in less than 50 feet of water. Nonetheless, Valerie and I took off in hot pursuit. About 30 seconds later we caught up to Bob, and right there just a few feet in front of him was a large undulating tail ... attached to a really big fish.
At that point Valerie and I both discovered a higher gear ... she passed Bob on the right and I passed Bob on the left. I recall seeing Valerie's strobe flash as she passed the tail ... and again just a few seconds later. We quickly came up alongside the shark's head ... each of us on opposite sides of the shark just out of touching distance. It was a female, and judging it's size compared to Valerie I'd guess about 10 feet long.
We swam with it for roughly 1-1/2 to 2 minutes ... the shark turning it's head slightly from side to side to get a better look at these annoying humans. At one point I swam above the shark ... hovering at a distance of perhaps four feet above it. I was looking for markings, because the aquarium's been tagging sharks in the area lately to keep track of their movements. But didn't see any. This shark had no distinguishing features that I could tell. Just a beautiful silvery color and pitch black eyes ... it was as perfect as creation could make it.
After a couple of minutes, she decided she'd had enough of all this attention ... and with one powerful flick of the tail she disappeared ahead of us. At that point we commenced to hollering into our regs, pounding each other with high-fives, and generally acting like three very juvenile amphibians ... then we collected ourselves, swam back to our starting point, and proceeded to follow our dive plan.
We ended up finding the course, the VW, and all the other stuff we had talked about finding ... then we headed back to shore. Along the way we encountered a mysterious "wall" of brown water ... within a few seconds vis dropped from 15 feet to about 3 feet. So we decided to head up to do our safety stop ... and surfaced right in front of Salty's.
This was Valerie's first six-gill sighting ... and was she excited? Well, back at the car she proceeded to recount the entire encounter in a single sentence of epic proportions ... in fast-forward ... and on a single breath! Yep, she had a really good dive ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
