there i was, just minding my own business, when all of a sudden...

total garbage. i am rarely, if ever, minding my own business. other people's lives seem more interesting, cause they ain't mine. ha.

i had been at the beach all afternoon, goggles locked into position, diving under the water to see what i could find. just the surf here is loaded full of tiny and sometimes surprisingly colorful fish believe it or not. tiny little fish, often no larger than an inch all bustling around riding the current flashing their reds and blues and staying just out of reach. they swim about by the thousands and i seriously can't get enough of them, but every so often you need a little rest. so there i was, staring into the ocean when all of a sudden larger fish started frantically coming to the top of the water right along the shore much closer than usual. by right along i mean about 10 feet out in the water - during high tide, it can be relatively deep that close to shore. by larger i mean not the tiny fish i just spoke of, but the much more sizable fish that swim out in the ocean, usually further away from the shore. 9 times out of 10 this surface splashing means something larger with an unending appetite is chasing them. if you pay attention you'll see this happen frequently about this time of year as a large number of fish are running right now. why do they call it running when fish don't have any feet? the fear of redundancy mayhap? the need to be clever and get bloggers to ask silly questions? regardless, i see it a lot when the sun first comes up and it's always awesome to see the disturbance. anyhoo... i continued asking sd what he thought was causing this ruckus in front of us - in my defense, he sometimes knows these things - and he finally gave up on simply saying he wasn't sure, sighed, and said i should go find out. i immediately strap my goggles on my face and head into the water to further investigate. i dove in towards the motion, went under once, saw some of the fish flash by but then they were gone. i surfaced where the water was just about chest level and asked sd over my shoulder if he saw where they went. he points to the right of me and when i turned to look where his finger is pointing to, a brownish colored shark about 5' - 6' long swims by me about 3' feet away. commence breaking every no when encountering a shark. i screamed, turned my back, made wild jerking movements, and thrashed my way back to shore as fast as humanly possible. in retrospect, i wasn't moving very quickly considering i was mostly underwater. ever run underwater? it's slow motion man! once back to shore, i was shaking violently, pacing around while screaming and stammering in excitement and very happy to be whole. scariness aside, i am psyched it happened. i'm also happy i had the wherewithal to keep myself from screaming shark over and over, frightening the throngs of people gathered on the beach that day. a large school broke the water that close to shore a few more times but as much as i ventured into the water in hopes to see it again, i didn't go past thigh level. i also didn't see the shark again. bummer. i mean, come on, as much as it was probably the most frightening thing i have yet to experience, it had its own long lasting brilliant magic to it. i want to say something like i wish i had my camera on me, but i think it's overly obvious that i wouldn't have gotten the picture as the sighting lasted about two seconds and i more than likely would have simply lost my camera in the mad scrabble back to land sweet land.

not that i necessarily agree, but in the words of g: that's ridiculous. i'm all set with the ocean.

i have completed my research and though it was a fleeting encounter, i'm pretty sure it was a sandbar shark. my other most logical assumption would be a bull shark but i remember the nose being pointier than that and i am 100% positive it was more brown than grey. i mean, this thing swam right by me, close to the surface, so i am sticking with the image that is forever burned into my brain...

seeing this shark has put the fear of god into me, making my other hobbies a little tougher to partake in comfortably. scuba diving was put off first due to my woman parts, then a smashed toe that bled with even the tiniest bit of friction and now this. yesterday i practiced surfing and by practiced i mean i ate shit and got beat to hell by the waves and current. there was a wee bit of a rip tide yesterday and i am embarrassed to say it meant i had serious trouble getting me and the board back out into the water once pushed to shore. talk about lame. i kept getting smashed down by the waves and it was frustrating but once out there i was on such high alert that practicing was difficult to say the least. how do you spot a surfable wave while looking around wildly for sharks? you don't really. that said, i am super excited that i not only rode a wave in, but kept the nose of my board from going under the water while dragging me behind it long enough to beat me off the sand for a while until i can get my bearing. i rode it in on my belly mind you, but whatever, it's something. it's incredibly frustrating to keep having my ass handed to me by water and i don't know how much longer i'll be practicing for. the waves here seriously suck. the logic i am using is this: if i can learn to surf here, once i hit larger barrel waves, i'll be able to surf them no issue right? right?

back to sharks

after hearing about "the big one" sd's response was let's go shark fishing. now i was tired with a slight sunburn, and wanted to give the dogs some fresh air time, so i promised i would catch up with him on the pier later that evening once the sun went down. true to my word, i joined him a little while later where he fished with his buddy and his buddies girl looked on like me. at night the end of the pier is loaded full of fishermen, and let me tell you, they are so serious about their fishing. some of these dudes have 3 and 4 poles set up while they use the extra to fish for bait. they are all there to catch something and eat it and it's not funny. at least not to them. i personally like to try and help by tickling sd while he sets up the line or making encouraging noises like wooooooo or yay whenever a line starts whining because it caught something. i am often handed the bait line just to give me something to do but that only lasts for so long until i am back to frolicking about finding something more interesting to do.

three sharks were caught that night and i am not proud to say, i handled it very poorly. the first catch was a little nurse shark that the victors - a family across from us - allowed to sit on the pier until it was almost dead but threw it back once everyone else started getting agitated about how unfair their actions were if they weren't going to keep it. next, sd's buddy, who was in charge of the bait pole caught good sized nurse, i'll guess about 3 feet long, that was to heavy to pull out of the water and over the rail of the pier relying on just the line. luckily sd always brings his version of a gaff hook, which is basically a huge gnarly three pronged hook attached to a rope. you lower the gaff down just below the animal, hook the body and drag it up without the inconvenient possibility of breaking your line and losing it altogether. once the shark was up there was debate about keeping it. sd said throw it back, buddy said he's keeping it. nurse sharks don't taste all that good. i have heard they taste like piss unless you soak them in milk overnight. as much as i can't help but wonder how everyone knows what piss tastes like, i would probably just throw it back because i don't relish the idea of finding out. it was finally decided he would keep it and he got a knife and started to gut it while it was still conscious and squirming. i had a really hard time with this. i'm a fisher, don't get me wrong, but i'll usually cut the head off or at the very least smash it's head on something to kill it before cutting into it. i mean, come on, wtf is that? i almost cried and made sure to keep myself looking in the opposite direction and just pretend the crunching noises were someone enjoying a carrot or what have you. i think this bothered me so much because nurse sharks are harmless. i have seen them scuba diving and free dove along side a baby the other day, touching it and just generally being in awe of the little dude. they won't hurt you.

the last shark to be caught was a decent sized - about two feet in length - black tipped shark. this was also brought up with the gaff and laid out for everyone to see. black tips are good eats so it was immediately decided that this was a keeper. he was a wild one and they almost couldn't get a hold of him as he kept flipping about trying to bite anyone who got close but they managed to grab him up after a bit. he still wouldn't chill out so the guy who caught him took him by his tail and swung him onto the wooden deck, hard, three times in order to kill him. again, not really into it. i felt better about this exchange as there was no messing around and it was done as fast and as hard as possible but there was still that wrong feeling in my gut. sharks have a certain magic to me personally so i will always feel badly when they die.

after the cutting open alive and splitting heads open ordeals, i didn't even want to manage the bait hook. i just wanted to go home. silly me didn't bring the dogs and i don't like to walk around alone at night. it's bad practice after all. so i stayed on, promising myself that from now on, the dogs go with so i can leave if i can't take any more. i now view shark hunting as rather brutal and barbaric which doesn't surprise me as killing has never really been my forte. i'm going to have to turn it into something neat, like a blog worthy escapade...