When I was surfing one gray morning near Malibu, CA, I saw something in the water about 40 feet away from me.  It’s not unusual to see harbor seals or dolphins out there, so I assumed it was a cuddly marine mammal.  A few minutes later, I looked back to the same spot and saw 3 inches of gray, shiny triangle sticking out of the water.  My only thought was some form of no way.

The 3-inch triangle made a half circle and started traveling in a straight line toward me.  I was sitting up on my board with my legs dangling in the water, so I leaned forward to lie completely on top of the board.  I propped my head up on my wrists and watched the triangle close in on me.  I just stared at it thinking to myself, “I thought this was just in the movies.  I can’t believe they swim close enough to the surface to expose their fin like this. Weird.”

The ocean surface was a mirror from my perspective, so I saw nothing of the animal this triangle belonged to.  When the triangle got within 2 feet of me, it slowly fell below the water’s surface, and I never saw it again.

I kept any limbs out of the water for about a minute after that.  I stayed in the water for another 20 minutes or so before I paddled back to shore to start the half-hour process of removing a damp wetsuit and tying the surf board to the top of the car.

I later found out from a nearby paddle boarder, who had a much better perspective for under-water viewing since paddle boarders are always standing up on their enormous flotation devices, that the shark was about 10′ long–perhaps a tiger shark, maybe a great white.

I might have freaked out about the situation had I not seen Sharkwater.  This documentary about sharks (and shark finning–ick) is amazing.

It makes some excellent points about our overactive fear of sharks.  Animals like bears and tigers kill dozens of people each year, but somehow that doesn’t result in deep-seated hatred and irrational fear of them.  But sharks, who kill maybe 3 people each year somehow become monsters–a swimming symbol of violence and blood.  The movie examines what it is about sharks that hits a nerve with us humans.  (The rows of teeth don’t help much.  Let’s be honest.)

The fact is that sharks rarely attack, and when they do, they don’t swallow people whole, they take a nibble and usually want nothing more to do with us.  And we are the ones that encroach on their space–not the other way around.  As Rob Stewart (the director, narrator, main man) points out, you wouldn’t go for a morning jog in front of a pride of lions, but we swim and surf in sharks’ hunting grounds every day.  For bites to be as rare as they are shows just how disinterested they are in us.

The best statistic from the movie: “Each year, vending machines kill more people than sharks do.”  If I ever see a vending machine while I’m surfing, I don’t know what I’ll do.