Arroyo Quemado and IV Kelp Forest LTER Sites

Santa Barbara Channel, Long-Term Ecological Research Site Scientific Diving

2021-06-21

Written 2021-06-26 on memory

This is going to be a bit of a short log--just writing down the highlights.

After getting back that evening, I went online to check out which kind of shark it might have been. A white shark seemed unlikely; it hadn't seemed particularly binary colored, and the tail seemed wrong. Checking out additional pictures confirmed that; the tail was too elongated to have been a white. Per Clint's suggestion, I did take a look into the sevengill shark. This seems like the most likely candidate--mature sharks are the right size, the coloring is about right, and the asymmetric elongated tail is right in line with what I saw. So, yeah. First big shark underwater, and all things considered, not the worst way to see one. Here's hoping it stays that way :)