“Does something feel different to you? Me too.” Photo: Screenshot
We’ve all said it, “it feels sharky here.” Is it an unconscious spidey sense, or are you just spooking yourself?
Personally, my spidey sense seems to fail me. On the three occasions I’ve seen a shark clear as day while surfing, I was just enjoying the lineup. Then there’s the other dozen times I’ve gotten that sharky vibe and left the water. I may have missed out on a session due to mental weakness, or perhaps my instincts were trying to warn me of imminent danger.
If you stop and think, there’s a laundry list of real factors that come together to contribute to the feeling. Let’s rewind the clock back a year to a Halloween surf session I had in Northern California that checks a few of the sharky vibe boxes:
After last night’s rain, it’s dawn patrol at a remote break close to a river mouth. The fog sits low to the water as I scramble to the jump-off rock. There’s a strong fishy smell in the air. It’s quiet, dark, and I’m alone, not a soul in sight… that is until I make the jump into the water. As I prepare to belly ride into the back of the crashing wave from the three-foot drop, I see a headless seal roll towards me. I know I can’t scramble back up the rocks, so I paddle out. On the outside I shiver in the cold, deep water as I wait for a wave. I do my best to push out any negative thoughts of Fred the pinniped with no head. Then the hair on the back of my neck stands up. I cannot quite see anything yet because the water is murky and metallic. That’s when I notice the morning baitball. At this point there’s no point, it’s time to go in. I catch a lovely left and begrudgingly do not do a single turn. I exit the water safely.
There’s maybe a dozen sharky factors that exist outside of my head.
The first is pretty common knowledge: dawn patrol. Sharks are reported to feed at dusk and dawn. It’s a feeding hour. Then there’s the post-rain river mouth. Rain washes nutrients into the ocean via the river. Shark prey comes to feed, and where there’s shark food, there’s sharks. The fishy smell in the air could be from the rain, presence of fish, the dead seal under me, or more likely all of the above.
The fog, cold, and general murkiness of the water are meaningful. Lack of light and visibility make the surfer’s silhouette, which is already mistakable as a seal from the shark’s eye view, more indistinguishable. Plus there’s a limited chance of spotting a shark. Cold(er) water can indicate deep water, which means you are further out. Just the idea of a longer paddle from the safety of shore adds to tension…what might lurk in the deep?
At this point my body sends me a signal by standing the hairs on my neck up. I’m alone in a remote surf area in the Red Triangle, where encounters with whites happen. Some settings have a sharky energy because the landlord frequents the area.
Next I identify what’s immediately near me as a bait ball. Fish school up as a defense mechanism against larger prey. Again, where there’s shark prey, there’s sharks. And that’s it. Given all of the factors — that I may or may not have been consciously aware of at that moment — I decide that the sharky feeling is justified and exit the water.
That’s when the vibe is there. You might wonder about the times where there is no vibe at all, and then an encounter does happen. Like the day I encountered a feeding white shark at Huntington Beach, and my spidey sense decided to chuck a sickie. That day was sunny, the water was clear, the air smelled of fresh sea breeze, and I was with two other surfers. Perhaps my brain was distracted by the sun and the beauty of it all. Maybe there’s safety in numbers.
Or, in all likelihood, there’s always sharks around. It’s the ocean; their domain. Whether or not you get the feeling doesn’t change the fact that they’re under us. But that won’t ever stop me from listening to my limbic brain when it tells me that, “it feels sharky here.”
