Leopard Sharks are still here - Marine Room 10/12/16

[thez_yo]

I'm still bumming around town with nothing to do, so I thought to myself, you know, I haven't been to the tide pools in a couple years. I decided to go poke around the walls at Marine Room first before heading over and found the usual critters -

Mmmm tasty sea grass.

ugh mouth full of sand:

...and then when I turned around, I decided... no, I don't actually want to spend the rest of the day at the tide pools. I'd actually like to be *in* the water instead. Poking around holes and crevices topside is fun, but maybe I'll get more of that in once the leopards are gone.

So I decided to go grab my snorkling stuff (dive buddy's still outta town, and leopards spook at the sound of reg exhaust anyway) and head down to the beach to go for another snorkle last night. On my way in, a diver told me there were 7-gills and some angel sharks in the grassy part, so I got pretty excited!

It was pretty calm as I was getting in, I'd say about 4:20pm lake La Jolla, but conditions got choppier as I kept going. I made plans to head down about 4-4:30 and get out at sunset about 6:20. So I headed over to the green part of Marine Room and it was a bit worse over the grass. I've made the mistake of thinking skates and some other cartilaginous critters were actually angel sharks before, so I figured maybe the guy just made the same mistake as me because I did see a nice shovel-nose guitarfish, a couple round rays, and a nice big bat ray. Or maybe he did see angel sharks and they'd left already?

The leopards are definitely still here...

They don't usually go directly underneath me because somehow I'm completely frightening to go underneath (maybe the all-black gear?):

The thing about Leopard Sharks is that they love the surf zone. Not like, "around" the surf zone but quite literally directly where the waves are breaking over your head. And they're quite skittish too, so as I got bounced around by the ocean, my body smashing back into the water would scare them and they'd take off like a cat that got its tail a little too close to a rocking chair. I guess I'm saying this as an apology for the fact that I have grainy (sandy) pics, and that my video is motion-sickness inducing and also very sandy. One to two foot chop with one to two foot occasional surf sets isn't too much fun at the surface in snorkle gear, is why I'm guessing there weren't more people out.

This is very much all taking place in the surf zone:

See how this one just completed turning to swim in front of me?

I don't usually think sharks have a neck that can bend, but this one is going to extreme lengths to avoid going underneath me:

Shovel-nose Guitarfish - also in the surf zone. I tried to take video too, but sand-coloured fish on sand in the surf zone doesn't work too well:

I don't get seasick, but the chop was annoying me so I made my way back over to Leopard Shark party...

 

[thez_yo]

So the sharks spook a little less if I'm in a grass/kelp mat sort of ghillie-suit. There's a shot of my fins tangled up in the stuff:

Here's the depth at the deepest I found them - when I stood up later, the water was about waist-deep in the middle of the shark party:

This shadow is the stuff nightmares are made out of-

Luckily the worst thing that'll most likely happen to you is you get the evil eye - I got a good set of photos to make a gif outta:

Just look at that eye following me:

hahaha...

But mostly likely they'll just flee (I poked my head up to see what would scare sharks at that ~45sec mark because, uh oh even the sharks are scared? Tourist-guy was diving down trying to touch them...)

So I got out of the area and just swam around a bit, found that shovelnose guitarfish again, took some more unsuccessful video, found a nice big bat ray, etc.

Then I headed back over to where the tourist guy and his kids were hanging out in front of the hotel just standing in the water, because they had all these seagulls flying at them topside:

...so I decided to swim over and take a look around again. In the surf zone, of course.


...Right, so, I ended up shoving that one out of my face. It's a cute face, but I'm just not that into it being in *my* face. I stood up and saw all sorts of shark fins poking around the tourists on the surface. I decided to get back to snorkling because that must look super interested from the underside, and had a shark run its fins up my belly. Also not sure how I feel about that, but maybe it just ran out of clearance because I was in maybe 3' of water (we'll pretend).

So I turned around and started to head back around the other way in slightly deeper waters. Another ghillie-suit clump of kelp? Nope, a shark decided to swim fin-to-elbow in tandem with me for a little while. Looking over and seeing a smiling shark, about my size, swimming along with me is just a little bit too much so I decided that was enough for one day seeing as how the sun was setting anyway.

Maybe I'll go out again tonight. I guess I'll find out if the tourists got eaten too. (more likely by the seagulls, but maybe by the sharks too)

 

[Dizzi Lizzi]

Quite a day!

 

[thez_yo]

Here's a bit more from last night:

Nice and flat on entry!

And tons of sharks still

In fact, so many they have to go over each other

There are the fish that are always hanging out in the surf zone. Viz was good enough I could actually see them last night-

I went to go see the shovelnose, but it was super sandy again where it was hanging out. Oh well... back to the sharks

They've all got interesting spot patterns

And what night is complete without a look of disapproval?

(hahahaha.... best timed shot of this year)

 

[Killerflyingbugs]

That's so cool, seems like you had a great time

 

[thez_yo]

It was this much fun:

 

[elubes]

Cool pics and video! I'm taking a class in SD next month, and hope to see this stuff!