There’s critters lurking beneath the water…          by Janice L. Green

When the first ray of light rose up from the dark night sky, I made a snap decision to try out some of my new fishing lures, so I put together my gear and headed out the door down to Alamitos Bay, located in Belmont Shores. On the way down, I couldn’t tell whether the sun would come out, or whether it would remain cloudy and overcastted all morning.

Even with a dry suit and a nylon wind suit on, the air temperature was pretty nippy, and the water was so cold, my feet turned a bright shade of pink, within a matter of a few seconds, it took for me to shove off from Mother’s Beach, located off of Ocean Blvd. and Bay Shore, near the gondola rentals. 

I decided to paddle hard until my body temperature warmed up a few degrees.  After paddling a short distance, I stopped to put on gloves and booties, to try to get the feeling back in my hands and feet. While stopped, I heard a noise which I couldn’t recall ever hearing before. The closest thing to describing it would be a release of steam.

As I neared my “fishing spot”, I stopped to take a couple of “Kodak Moments” of a life size pirate statue standing at the edge of the water. When I went to resume paddling, as I swept my paddle blade into the water, it hit something, which struck me as rather odd.  “Why in the heck wouldn’t my blade sink into the water more than a couple of inches?” I asked myself. I noticed I was near by where a large sailboat had sunk a while back.  My first thought was perhaps I hit the sail mast, but I figured I was too far away. Plus, they probably already removed it by now. My next reaction was fear; when I felt the backend of my kayak rise and I saw this huge mass, twice the width of my kayak, swim underneath me which I must have hit with my blade.

I immediately became alert in a split second. As my heart started pounding a mile a minute, back in the cobwebs of my mind, I swear the music of the opening scene of JAWS began to play. There are some things that just stick with you like glue, (like the scene of the girl in the movie JAWS being eradicated by a shark), which was one of those things that had a lasting impact on me.

It didn’t help matters when a woman fishing off of her kayak for the first time, landed a 5’ shark in the Alamitos Bay recently and when a life guard who told me a couple of weeks prior, “What makes you think sharks don’t swim in the harbor?” Or when I told my friend about the shark they just caught in the bay, he replied, “Oh, I  saw two fins cutting through the water, when I was paddling outside the bay last month”… Two fins—one behind the other—is usually a shark, with its back and tail fins rising above the water surface.  What’s the matter are you a chicken you must be thinking? No, I am not a chicken of the sea, but I must admit I got a quick reality check, that there are creatures lurking beneath the water in the bays and harbors, that could make mince meat of me.

I picked up my pace a tad and decided to move to another location. Ok I lied. At that moment I was Chicken of the Sea and I paddled like I had a fire lit under my a_s.  A hundred yards further it happened once again, but this time it felt as though the whole back end half of my kayak was lifted out of the water.  Talk about feeling like a sitting duck!  It didn’t help matters much when I saw a large wave pattern on the water surface just a few yards ahead of me.

Having paddled in Virginia for a year, I got accustom to watching the water surface for movement.  The water moccasins are abundant, and very AGGRESSIVE in Virginia.   If you see an ”S” pattern on the  water surface,  that looks like a short stick moving in the water at the point, you can bet your bottom dollar, it is a head of a snake. Unfortunately, the size of the pattern on the water would be comparable to the size a small boat would make, and not some dinky snake. Gulp….

The good thing about paddling when not a ripple mars the water surface is sometimes you get a forewarning some thing’s coming. What exactly is coming may not be known, as it was in this instance. With that thought fresh in my mind, I didn’t know whether I should be grateful (or concerned), about gliding through the murky water in the bay. Grateful because ignorance is blitz if you don’t have a clue what’s swimming a few feet beneath you – concerned because I can’t see it coming.

I didn’t see any dorsal fin breaking the water surface thank God, but my experience about being attacked by a shark was close to nil. Do sharks swim around you in a circle, and give you a heads up they are going to attack, or do they sneak up from behind out-of-sight underwater and bite you in the behind without any fore warning? Beats me baby.  All I knew is, I wanted to get the heck out of there and not wait around to find out, so I made my way to the nearest shore like I was Speedy Gonzales, (a cartoon character who was the fastest mouse in all of Mexico), which was exactly what I felt like at that moment: A scared mouse running for cover …except of course I was paddling instead of running….

While paddling, I flashed back to this past June when I teasingly asked a man fishing in a floating inner tube if he was concerned about losing a leg or two to a shark. The visual image made me chuckle, when he didn’t appear to have a worry in the world. Then I had another flashback to all those photos in the kayak fishing trip reports of men dangling their legs over the sides of their kayaks….which might look enticing, like a giant size worm to a shark, saying, “Come eat me!”

Being attacked by a shark is a common fear, despite the fact that you’re more likely to get harpooned by a swordfish hurling through the air, or getting struck by lightning, then you are getting attacked by a shark.  In an average year, fewer than 100 people worldwide are attacked by sharks. But is this suppose to be comforting, especially to kayak anglers who break rule number one about how not to attract a shark?:  “Don’t carry dead fish on your kayak.” 

I heard that release of steam noise I heard earlier, and then I spied what looked like a massive sea lion poking its head out of the water with two huge teeth like a walrus has about 30 feet in front of from me. Well, not quite that big, but they had to be several inches long on order for me to see them from so far away.  It had a really odd shaped head too, not round like a cute little sea lion, rather it had a hump shaped head. I swore it smiled at me with its big toothy grin, and then dove beneath the water.

I didn’t know whether to be relieved quite yet or not. I did a quick search through my brain, for data on how to handle the situation if the sea lion had an inkling to climb on board my kayak. I figured hitting it with my paddle might piss it off and make it want to sink those monstrous pearly whites into me so I nixed that idea.  Besides if a big old sea lion climbed on board my kayak I’d sink in a heart beat, considering my kayak only has a maximum weight capacity of 500 pounds.

While paddling in Newport Beach Harbor, I came across at least seven rather large sea lions that had to weigh close to 500 pounds at least, of which two trailed behind me for about one half-of-a-mile, most likely waiting for me to throw out a fishing line. Sea lions in the harbors have learned to trail behind kayaks and pluck off the bait when the fisherman casts out his line, or they’ll steal the fish right off the hook when you’re reeling a fish in. I also read a news article about a lone sea lion that charged and tipped over a mother and her child in their kayak in the Newport Beach Harbor and pulled the mother under water and took a chunk out of her leg.

All I know is a long time ago I learned to respect the laws of nature:  wind, water, fire and critters that can eat you for breakfast. Hummmmm, speaking of breakfast, that sounded like a lot better plan than fishing at the moment…..I decided to call it a day and go have some breakfast…instead of being breakfast for some hungry critter looking for something to eat. 

© 2005 Janice L. Green  All Rights Reserved.