Snorkeling

The night before plunging into dark green ocean waters to swim with the sea lions, Aram Kadish had a lot to think about. Armed with nothing more than a snorkel, a wet suit and a sense of curiosity, he would be cavorting with hordes of the quarter-ton sea mammals. "I get up and go to work every day and I see these guys who can't even walk," said Kadish, 32, an occupational therapist at the Cerebral Palsy / Spastic Children's Foundation in Van Nuys.

The ocean was smooth enough for water-skiing early one October morning when my husband, Paul, and I boarded the sleek, 90-foot Catalina Express speedboat in San Pedro. Our destination was Two Harbors, an isolated spot on the isthmus of Catalina, where the two coasts of the island narrow to a mere half-mile apart.

A sudden rain shower sends 9-year-old Lauren Boynton running into some nearby stables, seeking cover on a midsummer day after berry-picking and a romp through a lawn sprinkler. She carries one crutch--bright pink, her favorite color--but doesn't really use it. Eighteen months ago, Lauren could barely sit upright in a chair because of cerebral palsy. She used a walker or two crutches.

In various spots along the Southern California coastline, and especially here in the Eden of tourism and surfing, the beach is slowly vanishing. Waves and man-made intrusions are interrupting the yin and yang of sand movement and eroding the depth and length of beaches. In Oceanside, 50 miles north of San Diego, one man remembers being able to walk on the sand toward the ocean for 300 feet before getting wet. Now, he says, at high tide, he can't even walk on the beach.

Cassie Parham recalls the panic as she raced in and out of her Laguna Beach home, frantically telling herself that above all else, she had to remember the computer that contained her short stories. "I kept saying as I was running up and down, 'I'm going to grab that, I'm going to grab that,' and I forgot it and I want to scream," Parham, 22, said Thursday as she and her parents returned to the remains of their fire-ravaged home on Skyline Drive.

Two teen-age snorkelers were shocked in an electrical accident that authorities said apparently was caused by a rodent that had chewed through insulation on nearby wiring. The girls jumped off a dock into the St. Lawrence River on Monday and immediately screamed for help, witnesses said. Investigators concluded that the exposed wire in a storage shed electrified metal railings on a boat ramp next to the dock, said Charles E. Childs, a maintenance manager for Niagara Mohawk Power Corp.

A swarm of black surgeonfish jumped out of the water like a pack of piranhas to attack a piece of a bagel I'd thrown overboard. Right behind them came a gang of silvery-gray rudderfish intent on the scraps, and with this the sea erupted into fish mayhem.

While Hawaii's shark problem appears genuine, attacks on surfers are not unique to the tropical islands, and in fact seem to be on the rise elsewhere. Incidents in California, Oregon, Australia and Florida over the past few years prompted Surfing Magazine, in its March issue, to seek answers as to why "more and more surfers are being attacked by sharks worldwide."

A man in a wet suit whose body washed ashore here Friday has been identified as Glenn Conone, 29, of San Clemente, the Orange County coroner's office reported Saturday. After an autopsy Saturday, the coroner's office ruled that Conone accidentally drowned. Coroner's deputies said Conone had been snorkeling in the ocean when he apparently encountered trouble and drowned. Conone's body washed ashore shortly before 7 p.m.

John Mark Regan believes that, in his all-black wet suit, he was mistaken for a seal. That's the only way he can explain being bitten on the leg by a six-foot Mako shark just 100 feet off the surf line near San Onofre on Sunday afternoon. It was the first reported shark attack in Southern California waters since 1989.