Shark kills triathlete off Solana Beach

cause that’s when you attract sharks, when you do a big splash.”

Justin Sturgeon, 34, of Del Mar was bodyboarding with a couple of others. Of the beach closures, he said: “It’s an advisory. It’s not mandatory… . How many times would the same shark attack twice on the same day?”

Martin’s ex-wife, Robin, and other family members and friends converged on the Solana Beach home where the couple had raised four sons and a daughter. Martin was a pilot, loved to visit Mexico and was “a farmer at heart” who grew vegetables, Robin Martin said.

He had begun competing in triathlons about four years ago and was a “big outdoorsman” with a “dry sense of humor, she added.

Martin had formerly been a part-owner of All Creatures Animal Hospital in Del Mar. “He was a very compassionate, nice guy,” said Brenda Zito, who took her cat to Martin for treatment.

In Del Mar, Michael Mulvany, owner of All Creatures, said Martin was “never a high-stress individual. That’s why people enjoyed working with him.”

“He always had a smile on his face, never seemed to get down,” Mulvany said. “That’s what I’ll miss.”

Daniel Rock, manager of B&L Bike and Sports in Solana Beach, a store specializing in gear for triathletes, said Martin pushed himself hard during training and remained a trim 185 pounds.

“He enjoyed it as a way to keep up his fitness and compete,” Rock said. “He enjoyed the training and the camaraderie. He was a gentleman in a classic sense. A real nice guy.”

Martin had lived in Solana Beach since 1970. Chris Tatum, owner of Do It Yourself Dog Wash, a block from the beach, said Martin often gave free advice on keeping pets healthy.

“He was very young at heart,” Tatum said.

The waters off Southern California are well-known as a white shark nursery, the place were baby whites are born and then hang around catching fish until they grow bigger and stronger. Only after they get much larger do their diets switch to larger prey: marine mammals.

Yet adult great whites rarely venture into Southern California’s near-shore waters, according to the ongoing Tagging of Pacific Predators – www.topp.org – at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey.

Most of the great white shark attacks off California occur in what has been dubbed “the bloody triangle,” those waters between Monterey Bay, Bodega Bay and the Farallon Islands. The last fatal attack off California was in 2004 in Mendocino County. The victim was a man diving for abalone.

laura.nott@latimes.com

gil.reza@latimes.com

molly.hennessy-fiske

@latimes.com

Times staff writers Tony Perry, Kenneth R. Weiss, William Lobdell and Richard Marosi contributed to this report.