Thresher shark @ Vets

[textilet]

My brother and I had just pulled in to the parking lot at Vet's in Redondo today, and I was scoping the surf situation when I spotted something...weird. It looked like a large kelp frond protruding from the water and being flopped from one side to the other...then i saw the dorsal fin. The shark was in maybe 6 feet of water, swimming parallel to the beach and away from the pier. Even though it appeared to be cruising at a leisurely pace, it was clear the shark would be past the stairs and gone before we could gear up and go see it up close. Given the time crunch, we took the only reasonable course of action--we grabbed the video camera (still in the housing our morning dive) and our masks and ran down the stairs. We left our shirts and shoes on the beach and went in the water with our pants on to try and get some footage. Unfortunately the viz was pea soup-crappy, and the shark was moving pretty purposefully down the beach, so we only got to spend a few seconds near the animal and the video is pretty useless. You can briefly see the dorsal and caudal fins above water though and there is one fleeting, out of focus shot of the shark's silhouette underwater. I will post a link when the footage is up loaded. From dorsal fin to tip of the tail was about 5 feet, so the shark was big enough to make me a little nervous when it meandered to within 2 feet of my chest, then submerged only to reappear behind me. At that point a lifeguard appeared and told us to get out of the water, probably wondering what these to idiots in street clothes were doing in the water and swimming toward a shark. We obeyed, and they shadowed the shark with the lifeguard boat and on land in an SUV all the way down the beach to the rock jetty where it turned out to sea and I didn't see it again. Anyway for a few seconds today I was about 2-3 feet away from a really cool animal--it made my week. I love the way the ocean seems to always provide something new, as if to help me justify my obsession. Just thought I'd share.

Edit: re-reviewed footage; its a thresher

 

[Dracunos]

Too bad about the vis.. I had just finished my fourth OW cert dive and my instructor asked if anyone wanted to go down again; two of us did. So we wander around, go a little deeper, see some dead stuff, couple crabs.

We ascend near the shoreline and walk onto the beach and I see all these people standing around talking about the shark, looking for a fin to pop up, hehe.

 

[Ross-O]

Huevos. You got 'em. Very nice work! Thanks for sharing the experience.

Cheers,
Ross-O

 

[fnfalman]

Awesome!!!

Dracunos, just being in the vicinity of a thresher was a privilege.

 

[Rainer]

Nice encounter!

The only "big" shark I've seen in that area (well, down the coast a bit at Malaga) was a soupfin. They have a "similar" shape to a thresher. Any chance that's what you saw?

In any case, well done to get the UW snap you did.

 

[ligersandtions]

Can't watch the video at work, but that's very cool!!

Jen and I did a night dive there a week and a half ago and saw a big angel shark....we were both excited to see something different than the baby horn sharks. A thresher would have been even cooler

 

[Richard_T]

At least the thresher didn't think that you might be tasty! Great shot, even if the vis was poor. We should all be so lucky as to see a nice size pelagic that close to shore.

 

[textilet]

@ Rainer--the picture from above water, if you click it and view it large, shows the dorsal fin and freakishly long top lobe of the caudal. You can also see the fin tapers smoothly to a point without the notched end that a soupfin or a seven gill would have had. The picture looks like its from far away because at the time we had the extreme wide angle lens on the camera. (The underwater shot was with the wide angle too, so Pete actually had the camera approx. 1ft from the caudal peduncle!) From as close as we were we could see the fish was a distinct ruddy brown color, had the distinctive dorsal shape of the thresher, and of course the crazy tail. I tried to get a look at the head by putting my face under about 2 ft from the shark as it swam toward me but all I could see was pea soup--but from the fins it could only be a thresher. Sooooooo cool. See ya saturday by the way.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Probably my favorite underwater animal encounter was a thresher shark at Pt. Vicente. It cruised slowly over the reef, its silver side glistening in the light. I had only seen one other thresher shark, and it was at the surface, also at Pt. Vicente.

 

[Rainer]

Hadn't seen the caudal tail tip in the linked photo. Definitely would appear to be a thresher. That's really too cool!

See you Saturday!

@ Rainer--the picture from above water, if you click it and view it large, shows the dorsal fin and freakishly long top lobe of the caudal. You can also see the fin tapers smoothly to a point without the notched end that a soupfin or a seven gill would have had. The picture looks like its from far away because at the time we had the extreme wide angle lens on the camera. (The underwater shot was with the wide angle too, so Pete actually had the camera approx. 1ft from the caudal peduncle!) From as close as we were we could see the fish was a distinct ruddy brown color, had the distinctive dorsal shape of the thresher, and of course the crazy tail. I tried to get a look at the head by putting my face under about 2 ft from the shark as it swam toward me but all I could see was pea soup--but from the fins it could only be a thresher. Sooooooo cool. See ya saturday by the way.