Shark Hunting

Eight hundred leopard sharks descended upon the beach in La Jolla last weekend. Apparently this happens every year. The sharks, mostly pregnant females and pups, come into the shallows to feed on shrimp and other little invertebrates. 

To a Minnesota native, this seems like good reason to stay the heck away from the beach! But news videos and pictures of people wading in the waves among the sharks got me curious about this strange phenomenon. Turns out that leopard sharks are harmless.

Leopard Sharks at beach in La Jolla on August 10, 2012
 (internet photo, not mine)

It took time to convince Braden and Fritz that the sharks don't bite and that we should go see them, but since  the videos were on the news Friday evening, and we couldn't go until Saturday I wasn't sure if the sharks would still be there. 

My shadow as I miss yet another pup swimming by...

Lucky for us, there were still leopard sharks at the beach, but, unlucky for us, there were only about eight left instead of eight hundred. Braden and I did manage to see four leopard shark pups darting around in the water. They would ride in on the tide and swim right by our legs in the shallows, then swim back out with the tide before returning a few minutes later on the tide again. The pups were only about twelve to eighteen inches long, and though there weren't any adult sharks and definitely not eight hundred sharks, it was still exciting to have the little shark pups swim around us. 

I tried to get photos with my iPhone by standing in the water, but I ended up with lots of photos of the sand under the water and nothing else. Out of all the pictures I took, only one captured a leopard shark pup in it, but you have too look really, really hard to see it. It's in the middle of the photo near the top...

I'll admit it's not a very good photo, but I swear I was really that close to a shark! (Ok, a harmless shark, but it was still a shark!)