TheKeeneroo:
I'm sure there will be some opinions on this post, but Matt encouraged me to let everyone know.
Andrew37 and I were diving for Halibut at Del Montey Beach, Monterey this morning. I was in the water by 7:45a. I knew the Halibut were being caught and I started in 15-20fow. Visibility was about 7ft at best but on my third drop I found what looked like a bat ray but had no tail.
Sand Dollar beds were everywhere, so I was staying to the inside of them for the first 15 drops or so. Andrew decided to swim North toward the pier and stayed shallow and I decided to swim deeper. I went out to what I hoped was beyond 30' depth (it was pretty far from shore). My first drop was great, visibility went to about 10 feet, and I saw the biggest anemone on a random rock
There was decent sand between structures, low laying kelp on the floor, and bait fish. A recipe for halibut territory. Dropped my gun to mark the spot, came back up to breath up. Now, I only press record on the GoPro if I think I'm going to pop a fish, or if I find one, mark it, and swim back down to my gun (it's an older model and loses battery quickly). For whatever reason, I didn't turn it on yet. I dive back down to 31', Im on the bottom for only about 30 seconds, scanning back and forth for a hali tail or eyes under the sand, and as my head scanned to my right, I see there is a 8-10' great white swimming parallel to me about 8 feet away. When I saw it, it took one swim toward me, got about 5 feet from my shoulder, (we literally had a stare down for what seemed longer than it was), I jolted to get my gun up and pointed at it, and when I did, it casually turned and slowly swam away. As it turned from me, I tried to turn on my gopro but was too nervous to successfully push the button. I know you're supposed to swim slow... but I didn't. I got to the surface, grabbed my boogie float by the nose, pulled it to my left hip, gun down the length of my right leg and swam as fast as I possibly could. I turned on the gopro to capture any sweet carnage that might be coming my way. Swimming fast was a Bad idea in hindsight but thankfully he didn't return. I got to shallower water, swam to Andrew and called him in. We opted out of further diving.
I'm expecting some gnarly dreams tonight!
SOOOOOOOO this leads me to my next question... who has a shark shield for sale???
p.s. this encounter was reported to the shark research committee of northern pacific - even though I doubt it will serve much purpose/help.
Wldrnshntr:
thank you for the report glad you made it out safe without incidence
IslandYak:
Thanks for sharing your ordeal with the landlord and thank god you made it out safely.
DG:
Glad you are okay. Be careful buying older shark shields as the amount of charges are less than newer ones. They are hard to wear while Halibut hunting but still nice to have.
NowhereMan:
Wow! Thanks for posting and glad you out-stared him...