Fatal shark attack stirs fears and memories

I was 300 miles from the ocean last Friday morning, awaiting Saturday's opening of the Eastern Sierra trout-fishing season, when the phone rang.

A large shark, the caller said, had fatally attacked a swimmer off Solana Beach.

The news spread through the region as if carried by wind. Thousands of little fish became an afterthought, replaced by one enormous fish that killed a man with a single bite.

Gradually, though, the focus returned to trout, and when the first little fish began flopping on banks, big sharks became a distant memory.

But something so sensational is not easily forgotten. Many of those anglers are from the Southland and will soon visit the beach, and as they venture into the ocean an image may form in their minds . . .

. . . Colossal gray predator with dagger-like teeth . . . silent as the stillest night . . . savagely strong and swift. . . . On Sunday I drove home to sweltering Redondo Beach and went for an afternoon swim.

Then I watched children splash in the shallows and ride small waves.

Lifeguards were on extreme alert.

Beyond the breakers, a man in a green kayak fiddled with his paddle and I flashed back to the movie "Jaws," and half expected that evil mechanical shark to bite the kayak in two, then return to devour its pilot.

I dived back in to reclaim my senses.

Sure, this past week was vaguely "Jaws"-like. The attack on Dave Martin, 66, occurred just weeks before the busy Memorial Day weekend.

It prompted a beach closure and helicopter search, and produced considerable hysteria.

But comparisons end there. This was only the eighth fatal attack off California since 1926. Only two occurred off Southern California, where thousands of surfers, swimmers and kayakers enter the water almost every day.

White sharks do not seek human flesh. Their chief roles, as adults, are to subsist on elephant seals and make baby sharks.

Their primary haunts, when they're not mingling in the mid-Pacific each winter and spring, are elephant seal rookeries off Northern California and Mexico's Guadalupe Island.

On the other hand, says Chris Lowe, a shark specialist at Long Beach State, "This is not a Disneyland ride. People have to assume the risks when they go into the ocean."

Obvious questions were raised.

Did the 15- to 18-foot white shark mistake Martin, who was wearing a wetsuit, for a seal?

Was the shark a pregnant female here to give birth, since Southland coastal waters are an important nursery ground and this is believed to be the start of pupping season?

Nobody knows.