The mushroom gummie wasn’t enough to really make me feel anything, it was barely a microdose. My buddy handed it to me as we were about to paddle out for a mid-afternoon session at San Onofre on the 4th of July. The surf had been solid 4-6ft and building all day and, although the wind had come up a few knots, conditions looked fun and the crowd was minimal.
It is ironic how, on the busiest beach day of the year, you can find yourself with a peak to yourself. Only a few other heads dotted the quarter mile stretch from the Dog Patch to the Point and by the time I reached the outside section of Old Man’s, I saw only one guy. We chatted for a few and he said, “”I’m just looking for my last wave, it’s about to be all yours.”
Tyler Huntley
Sure enough, he caught one and never returned. I looked around and there wasn’t another surfer for 100 feet in any direction, just some beginners way inside and my buddy and a few others paddling against the incoming swell to get back outside. That’s when I saw a shark breaching some 30 feet away from me. It didn’t seem huge, maybe 8 feet, and then another breached, this time, 20 feet away.
If at any point I felt the mushrooms it was right then as the shark emerged from the water. I got psychedelic pulses down my spine and uncomfortable giggles in my gut. I pulled my feet a bit closer to my board and focused on my breath. Tranquility over anxiety, ‘just stay calm, just stay calm’. When there’s plenty of people around, your odds feel good. When you’re all alone, the facts around shark attacks start to feel like a whimsical security blanket against one of nature’s most ancient apex predators. The JAWS music starts to play as you look around nervously…
Taking a step back, what are the facts? Ultimately, shark attacks are incredibly rare, even if you’re in the water alone with an adult Great White Shark, there’s plenty of drone footage that shows these encounters are fueled by curiosity, not aggression. Even long before drone footage, as we’ve long shared the seas, many had their own tales of non-violent close encounters.
One friend of mine almost scooped up a shark into his arms duck-diving a wave at San O, as he tells it, “I was paddling fast to get under a wave and right before I ducked I saw a shadow in the wave just a few feet from me. It was too late for me to stop so I carried on and ended up hitting it with my arms, like I almost could have grabbed it to my chest if I let go of my board. It didn’t seem too upset, just a bit surprised and then gave a big push away from me.”
We often talk about the numbers of visitors to the beaches but we don’t often talk about shark populations. Summertime in SoCal means there’s plenty of juvenile (12 feet or smaller) White Sharks swimming along our shores learning to hunt small prey before heading out to the deep ocean to continue their lives. This can be shocking information if you’re new to surfing or swimming in California but anyone who’s been around long enough will confirm that this is just part of the program.
Certain hot spots like San Onofre and Trestles, Torrey Pines and La Jolla, Del Mar and Solana Beach, are literally teeming with them and yet people swim, surf, and coexist with them everyday. They’re everywhere up and down the Pacific Coast from Baja on up to British Colombia. Some spots can feel more “sharky” than others and sometimes you just get that feeling at your local break where you normally always feel safe.
Our relationship with sharks is one of the most unique threads in this wild tapestry of surfing. For some, the relationship is more distant than others, for others, like surfers in California, Florida, New England, South Africa, and Australia, the relationship is very close to home. Yes, it can be scary, but it is also beautiful. No other sport has that. It would be like running, if only runners had to traverse wilderness areas with cheetahs. Hell, that may actually make running, cool.
If you’re keen to read more about shark behavior, check these guides by shark expert Madison Pip Stewart.
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