A Shark induced trip down memory lane
I come to this blog for the Michigan Football and to lesser extent, basketball. But I also love some of the off topic threads. So I thought that I'd share this with you all even if it's very OT.
I saw this article and it made me remember probably the happiest days of my life when I first moved to the Bay Area, married my wife and had my first kids.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/great-white-sharks-found-near-185030896.html
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I used to surf when I lived in CA. My mind told me that statistically, sharks are not a big threat and that surfing was pretty safe. Although, I did get held under for two waves once and had a real survival moment. The power of the waves can rip you like a rag doll if you fall at the wrong time. The power of the water alone is what makes it dangerous, not the sharks.
But I could never quite shake that creepy feeling that something was lurking right below me. So it was in those days that I became fascinated with sharks. Jaws became one of my favorite movies. Still is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO60RohuARY
Maybe there was actually something real going on with that creepy feeling!
My fascination with Sharks started in about 2000. After graduating UM and serving my 4 years in the Army, I took a job in Palo Alto where I was fortunate enough to work on the Space Station. But I lived in town called La Honda, about 45 minutes West of the Bay Area and just south of Half Moon Bay.
La Honda is a story on its own. It is isolated in the Redwoods about 10 miles from the Pacific. Despite only having 500 people, it has quite a history. It was known to be a hangout for the Grateful Dead. Ken Kesey wrote his books there. Neil Young lives somewhere close. The town has it's own private Redwood hiking trails. You had to go to the post office to get your mail.
La Honda is also a great place to be a surfer. I was in my prime so of course I had to try the surfing hobby... I went all in....bought the equipment.....and of course I had a VW van. It was ugly, but it had all the maintenance records and ran well so it was a steal for $2K. As a disclaimer, I never quite became a great surfer. It was in this time of my life that I also started skiing which became the love of my life.... but I digress, back to the surfing with sharks.
La Honda is only 20 minutes to a famous spot called Mavericks. Mavericks doesn't break too often, but when it does, it is supposedly 20+ feet overhead (I never saw it break). It actually became famous while I was living there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mSsvcx_8wI
But that whole area is ALSO known to a be a breeding ground for Great Whites...I'm sure you've all heard of the Red Triangle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Triangle_(Pacific_Ocean)
All the surfers knew what was below. Hell, there is a place nearby (Ano Nuevo) where you can hike and see 100's of elephant seals. These impressive pinnipeds are scary enough in their own right, yet they are mere food for Great Whites.
http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=523
We all knew that the Great Whites were there......
But 97% !!
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/great-white-sharks-found-near-185030896.html
i have been around plenty of sharks at different times, but i never would want to knowingly surf with sharks. last time we went shark fishing there were so many sharks around my boat that we had them literally biting the swim deck.
no likey mr. shark. leave them to shark lovers.
I think if you dock their tails it makes them more friendly. If only we could find a farmhand with some experience to test this theory?
cootchie, cootchie…coo!
I didn't put it in the post, but I happened to be stationed in a place called Sharm El Sheik Egypt. We were right on the beach. It's supposedly the second best coral reef in the world (great barrier reef). Unbelievable amount of marine life.
There is a horrific video from yesterday of a guy getting eaten by a tiger shark and caught on camera.... google it, I didn't think it was in good taste (no pun intended) to post.
I think one of the big reasons for increased attacks are the scuba tours where people feed sharks
saw that headline. good choice not to post.
dove and fished the great barrier. some shark stories from there, for sure.
I just clicked for the photos of Jim McElwain, and, frankly, I'm disappointed. 
Disappointed
Have we finally jumped the shark?
[Though my comment suggests snark about the shark post, mostly it's because I couldn't resist a good line.]
could have also done something about Jim Mcelwain!
ha ha!!!
WesternWolverine96, we may have crossed paths around the turn of the century. I lived in Menlo Park around then and frequently passed through La Honda on cycling runs. Beautiful area, good memories.
that stretch of road on 84 and also 35 and HWY 1 was amazing for cycling and motorcycles
let's just say I had the best commute in the world.... didn't mind the 45 minute drive... felt like there were 12 seasons.... and the views as I descended upon the Bay were always changing. Those first few years in the Bay Area during the dot com boom significantly altered my life perspective.
I was very fortunate to be selected to rent that 800 square foot cabin, there were like 50 candidates, but I think they chose us because we were a young married couple and my wife was expecting so they knew we'd take care of the property. As I recall, we had like 5 different fruit trees growing and even had our own Redwoods in the yard. Just an amazingly beautiful area of the world! I had the opportunity to purchase it.... but I didn't want to take a "liars" loan or stated income loan.... I wanted a fixed interest loan and so I couldn't afford it. In retrospect, that was a huge blunder.
A wildly misleading headline based on the article, imo.
This is the quote from the research: “At aggregation sites, water users were found in proximity to sharks 97% of the days surveyed". I read this to mean that on 97% of the days, a user was found in proximity to a shark. The headline suggests that 97% of the people were in proximity to a shark. Oops.
Dunno how you interpreted the headline's "97% of the time" as being 97% of the people, but you do you.
Surfing's the source, man. Change your life, swear to God.
I'm a Long Island boy and an avowed ocean lover (never got much into surfing but bodysurfing is literally my favorite thing to do). Waves are decent but typically manageable where I grew up. It can be flat sometimes but if there are any Atlantic hurricanes brewing, there are great waves and can get extremely dangerous. Sharks have been showing up out there much more often lately - I don't ever remember shark sightings when I was a kid or even in the last 15 years.
But from what I know, the Bay Area is rough. Very unruly. I wouldn't even dip a toe in in the area around Mavericks.
Mavericks is actually pretty placid most of the time....great place to walk out and explore the tidepools and for the more adventurous snorkel. It only gets huge when a very specific set of conditions cause the waves to break over an underwater channel that focuses/magnifies the breaking waves....I have seen them and those I would NEVER even think of getting into.
that's how I feel too..... I liken surfing a place like Mavericks when it's on to the some of those extreme ski videos by Warren Miller. At some point the adrenalin rush just isn't worth the risk
at this point I have disclose that Point Break is my favorite surfing movie... although the Endless Summer is pretty entertaining too
La Honda rocks, but like everything else out here is being slowly ruined by hyper-capitalism.
Mavericks can get much higher than 20' but not often. OB in the city can get to 20 and it is the messiest/hairiest 20 you would never go out in. I wouldn't even think about it. I actually wouldn't go out in 20 anywhere...lol.
I dive with sharks all the time, but it is completely different when you can see them and read their body language. Typically they completely ignore you. I dropped into a huge school of large hammerheads in the Galapagos where they had gathered to mate and you could hardly get their attention, we were kneeling and pushing them around by their noses, though when the really big ones came through they would just run you over.
Surfing is completely different though. Sharks really only attack humans for two reasons, one is during a feeding frenzy where there is a food source and a lot of competition, the other is when they mistake you for something else....in cloudy water near waves, the silhouette of a surfer from below appears like a wounded seal...aka easy meal. I have still never gotten over that feeling of WTF is beneath me when I surf here. You can interpret that 97% number 2 ways, one is you can freak out b/c you know they are nearby and stay out of the water, or you can look at it like millions of people have been in the water near them for hundreds of years and still a tiny amount of actual attacks. I convince myself with the numbers/probability game, but never completely shake the thought of what is nearby.
I agree that it's sensational article... I haven't been back to La Honda in years, didn't know it had become commercialized
when I do go back to Cali it's to Nevada City in the Sierras, I owned a home there for about a decade prior to moving up to Portland....
As I recall, Hammerheads are in the top 5 species that attack humans (generally by accident), after Great Whites, Bull Sharks and Tiger sharks.... that must have been an amazing experience!
I moved to the Bay area in 1983. Met my wife here. Remember that we were walking on the beach at Point Reyes and the sign said "swim at your own risk-there are drownings here every year ". Now being from Michigan and knowing that this sign appears on a lot of Beaches where there are never any waves, and having a couple glasses of nice Cabernet, I went swimming. My wife, girlfriend at the time, was walking down the beach chasing me as I tried to swim ashore. I was swimming to prove that this sign did not apply to me.. It took me about 10 or 15 minutes to swim about 20 feet and get to the point where I could stand up and walk in. I never tried swimming on the Pacific since. I go swimming in San Francisco Bay regularly. Never in the ocean.Likewise there are lots of roads here with sheardrop-offs and have no guard rails. Lots of things out here you have to pay attention to and take seriously.
never was caught in rip tide, they always say go parallel to the beach if you are ever in one, then swim in..... the Pacific is absolutely brutal.
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