A surfer was attacked last Saturday by a great white shark while sitting in the sparsely crowded lineup at Dillon Beach, just north of Tomales Bay in Northern California.
Mark Quirt, 22, of Tomales was bitten severely on his left leg, helped out of the water by fellow surfers and airlifted to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, where he is currently listed in stable condition.
Reaction: Surfing anywhere near Tomales Bay this time of year is about as smart as jumping into a pit full of rattlesnakes. Great whites predictably migrate into the region every fall and travel between the Farallon Islands and the mainland feeding on elephant seals.
And if Quirt, silhouetted by the sun as he sat on his board, happened to look like an elephant seal through the eyes of the shark, he is lucky to be alive. Great white attacks on seals are generally swift, violent and decisive.
Reached Monday at Santa Rosa Memorial, Quirt said, "The bite was pretty bad," that he suffered one severed tendon and took "some 160-170-odd staples" in his left leg."
"But they said there is nothing permanently damaged," he said.
Asked to describe the attack, he said there wasn't much to tell. "I was sitting on my board when the shark, about a 15-footer, came up from below and grabbed me by my left leg and flipped me over," he said. "I was face to face with him, and all I remember is looking into this big black eye. I only saw one eye, but it looked vicious, mean. . . ."
But the shark apparently prefers seals to surfers; it swam off, and for that Quirt is grateful. Just how grateful remains to be seen.
He said he knew that the area, referred to by locals as the "white triangle," was notorious for shark sightings, and acknowledged that one was sighted nearby by surfers only a week earlier. Yet he paddled out anyway.
"But I had never seen one and I'd been surfing there for 10 years," he said. "And yes, I am still going to surf, but it's going to be a while before I paddle back out at Dillon Beach."
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Hundreds of scuba divers celebrated the opening of lobster season last week with a midnight plunge into a black ocean, and a bug-eyed hunt-till-dawn, with dive lights, for the biggest "bugs" in the bay.
It's an annual event, the Monster Lobster Contest, the brainchild of Robbie Meistrel of the family-owned Dive 'N Surf in Redondo Beach.
In an interview with Easy Reader, a Hermosa Beach weekly, Meistrel said he started the contest in an effort to encourage people who are afraid to dive at night.
He then recalled his most memorable night dive, at a local reef he and his friends had enhanced with toilet bowls to provide added lobster habitat.
"I had two lobsters in my hand when all of a sudden the water got real cloudy and something spun me around, like a sudden change in the current," he said. "I planned to hit one more toilet bowl, but after the water cleared I saw a seven-foot thresher shark with its head bit off. I realized I'd just had a close encounter with a really big shark, and raced to the surface."
Some encouragement.
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Add lobsters: Those with a taste for the popular crustaceans, but not for diving in a dark and scary ocean to catch them, can don a mask and snorkel and try their luck in shark-free Seaside Lagoon during this weekend's Redondo Beach Lobster Festival.
The lagoon will be stocked with lobsters, and Dive 'N Surf instructors will be on hand to assist. Those with less of a sense of adventure can stay dry and shell out $8.95 for a Maine lobster meal.
Also featured in the Friday-through-Sunday event are a lobster-calling contest (Friday), the state chowder championships (Sunday), crafts booths, games and live entertainment. Cost is $6 for adults, free for children. Details: (310) 543-6187.
SALTWATER FISHING REPORT
At a time when the tuna bite south of the border should be waning, it keeps getting stronger.
Last Friday the San Diego fleet posted its biggest single-day catch of the season--nearly 2,000 tuna caught only 18-24 miles from Point Loma. Jackpots are being won with 60- to 80-pound yellowfin and bigeye. Farther south, off Cabo San Lucas, giant yellowfin continue to impress tourists at the marina scale. It was there the other day that Dennis Hughes of Grass Valley, fishing aboard Gaviota VI, weighed in Volkswagen-sized tuna at 250 and 260 pounds. Baja catch of the week: a 710-pound blue marlin, the largest billfish of the year, by Clyde Scott of Texas aboard Miss Budweiser. Non-Baja catch of the week: a 60-pound albacore by Henry Shipley of Fillmore aboard the Princess out of Virg's Landing in Morro Bay. Eight trips from Virg's this past week produced 169 of the longfins.
The Times accepts and publishes the catch count as a public service. Any responsibility for accuracy is that of the landing operator.
SAN SIMEON--11 anglers (1 boat): 4 ling cod, 15 red snapper, 85 red rock cod, 65 assorted rockfish.
MORRO BAY (Virg's Landing)--18 anglers (1 boat): 27 albacore. (Bob's Sportfishing)--18 anglers (1 boat): 2 ling cod, 95 rock cod, 175 assorted bass.
