Don’t Panic, it’s only a darn seal.

by admin on February 10, 2010

In many cases when me and my dive buddies are doing our thing, we are in what is locally referred to the “Blood Triangle or Red Triangle” which is a roughly triangle-shaped region off the coast of northern California, extending from Bodega Bay, north of San Francisco, out slightly beyond the Farallon Islands, and down to the Big Sur region, south of Monterey. It is called this because about 30% of the world’s great white shark attacks to humans happen in this area. It is because of the high concentration of what great white shark like to eat happens to make this area their home and the fact that humans also like to frolic in the water and behave like a seal as well (Surfers and Divers)

Anyway, again, I am at one of my favorite abalone hunting grounds along the Sonoma Coast free diving and you know when you are splashing about on the surface, sharks really just love that….it means lunch time to them. I am happily swimming around in about 25ft of water and I am on my way down and all of a sudden I catch something out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t really catch the full outline, but the color and speed where of great concern. Let’s just say my heart started to race. I came up for a breath, contemplating my next move, so I decided to move into a kelp bed near some large rocks hoping that would be some kind of deterrent of whatever was cruising around near me.

I decided to go back down and take a look as it wasn’t very comfortable waiting around for what could have been a shark stalking me. I went down to around 15ft and suddenly felt a sharp tug on my leg and looked back up to notice that I still had a leg for which I was grateful for and looked around, but didn’t see anything…then the next second I about had a heart attack when something brushed up against me and loudly barked in my ear under water….it was a damn Seal! I was relieved and scared out of my wits in the span of 10 seconds. It was just wanting to play, but I didn’t want to participate at that point because it was so unnerving. So, I decided to move to a different area and the seal lost interest, but man, it was enough to get your ticker going, let me tell you.

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Tagged as: abalone, dive buddies, free diving, kelp, rocks, water

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