Close Encounters
A few years ago, I was in Moss Landing to join Sanctuary Cruises in for an exciting trip. Our goal was to see one of the ocean’s oldest, most efficient predators: the great white shark.
The morning fog was slowly lifting as we left the harbor and followed the coastline toward Capitola. Our destination was an area known as “Shark Park,” so called because juvenile white sharks regularly spend the summer months there, relaxing in warm water. I had no expectations of breaches or blood in the water, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see such an iconic species so close to home.
Remarkably, we spotted a shark almost as soon as we arrived at the cove. It cruised right alongside our boat, and I immediately began taking photos.
My inclination was to fill the frame with the shark, but seeing how close they were to people safely enjoying the beach, I realized that an environmental shot told a more interesting story. With guidance from our naturalist, I was ready with a wide lens and a polarizer to cut through the surface reflections.
Over the next couple of hours, we were fortunate to see multiple sharks enjoying the warm water. It didn’t feel real, though, until I put the camera down and looked directly at them with my own eyes. As soon as I did that, I was hooked.
Since then, I’ve returned to Capitola twice, and each time we’ve failed to see any sharks. The weather was just too cold, the sky too overcast, or the water too rough. The sharks were likely still there, but swimming just deep enough to remain invisible.
For a while, I tried to put the idea of another shark encounter to the back of my mind, but their image is hard to avoid. They’re everywhere in pop culture.
Eventually, though, I stumbled upon one when I didn’t expected it. I was driving alongside Bolinas Lagoon when a fin caught my eye. Three of them, to be precise. A leopard shark!
It was fun to watch this smaller predator winding back and forth in the shallow water, but watching its gentle movements made me realize that another visit to the shark park wasn’t what I was looking for. Don’t get me wrong, those sharks are wild, but there was a place in the back of my mind that epitomized the word. A place famed for white sharks, but to get there, I was going to need a bigger boat. The Farallon Islands.
As long as I’ve lived here, the these rocky outposts have been on the periphery of my vision, literally and figuratively. In the Bay Area, our coastline is regularly obscured with a thick fog rolling off the Pacific. It can be hard to see anything, never mind the Farallones, which sit thirty or so miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge.
That air of mystery is part of what finally drew me out there. That, and Susan Casey’s book The Devil’s Teeth, which chronicles the lives of biologists working on the islands and helped make sharks synonymous with the place.
Last summer, I joined a day-long expedition with the Oceanic Society, a nonprofit dedicated to ocean conservation through research and ecotourism. They’ve been running trips out to the islands for decades, and I appreciated their mission to inspire conservation by connecting people with marine life.
We departed from San Francisco aboard the Salty Lady with expert naturalists who would help us spot and understand the region’s wildlife. We passed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge and immediately began to see harbor seals lounging on rocks while gulls wheeled overhead. As the coastline shrank behind us, a few humpback whales surfaced. We were off to a good start.
Gradually, the Farallones emerged from the fog. Their serrated silhouette was unmistakable, and even from a distance, it was clear the place was alive with birds. Common murres, sooty shearwaters, and many more filled the air. It was hard to know where to point my camera.
As the islands are protected, visitors aren’t allowed to land, but we had a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staffer onboard who would spend the next eight days on the islands, so we got a rare glimpse of someone being transferred to shore. With that side-quest complete, we began to circle Southeast Farallon Island.
The amount of wildlife crowding the rocks was astounding, and the naturalists called out three species of seals. Photographing them from the boat was tricky, but it was fun to see such diversity in one place.
The cliffs heaved with life: murres, cormorants, shearwaters, and a lonely northern gannet known as Morris. Somewhere in the crowd were tufted puffins, but I couldn’t pick them out on the densely packed ledges. As we circled the jagged rock formations, I could see where the name The Devil’s Teeth came from.
Later, we ventured into deeper water where whale sightings picked up again. We saw multiple humpbacks, a gray whale, and some northern white-sided dolphins. An albatross soared in wide arcs around the boat before landing beside us.
The highlight of the day, though, was a tufted puffin floating on the surface of the water, bobbing gently with the swell, before three more zipped across the bow. I’d been hoping to photograph a puffin in California for years.
It had been a fantastic trip, but unfortunately, there were no sharks that day. Still, as we docked, one of our guides offered encouragement. White sharks he said, were more common in the fall. It was a long shot, but I held onto some hope.
When October rolled around, I was back. Our naturalist reminded us to leave our expectations on the dock, as every trip is unique. He was right. The conditions were different for a start. It was brighter, and while the early part of the journey was calm, out through the bay and past the Marin Headlands, the ocean gradually felt rougher. We watched a humpback whale roll-feeding, and I even spotted a few ochre sea stars clinging to the cliffs near Point Bonita.
There were fewer birds, though. Don’t get me wrong—there were still plenty on the islands—but this wasn’t breeding season, so the skies weren’t alive with the same frenzied activity I’d witnessed earlier in the year.
The trip was less productive in terms of photography, but it was a good learning experience and full of interesting encounters. We watched Steller sea lions and northern fur seals on the rocks. We saw the water erupt with anchovies as humpbacks drove them to the surface, and we encountered a couple of tufted puffins now stripped of their breeding plumage.
What we didn’t see—at least not knowingly—was a shark.
Later, when I was processing photos in Lightroom, I paused on an image of Saddle Rock where I noticed a small dark triangle cutting through the water. Scanning through the sequence, I watched it slicing through the waves over multiple shots, before dipping under the surface. It looked like a shark fin, but the more I examined it, the more it took on the shape of a seal’s flipper. Either way, I was hooked once again and eager to return.
In my search for another opportunity, I learned about Shark Stewards, a wonderful nonprofit founded by marine biologist David McGuire. Their mission is to protect vulnerable sharks and rays by tackling overfishing and the fin trade, while also helping preserve the marine habitats these animals depend on. And amazingly, David himself was running wildlife expeditions to the Farallones in support of their work.
It was an opportunity to learn about shark biology and conservation, but the Pacific is vast, and for decades, white sharks were heavily targeted by humans. That made the odds of actually seeing one feel slim, but thanks to the work of people like David, there was always a chance.
We met early in the morning, at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. The weather was perfect as we boarded the Amigo. The ocean was calm, the air warm, the sky clear of the usual fog. Our trip out of the Bay and into the Pacific was as stunning as ever, but I was anxious to reach our destination.
It took us around three hours to reach the Farallones. Sea lions crowded the rocks. Common murres lined the ledges in numbers I hadn’t expected. Brandt’s cormorants and brown pelicans completed the scene, and the bright light made long-lens photography far easier than on previous trips.
The real anticipation began as we rounded Saddle Rock to a cove on the southeastern side of the island. Mirounga Bay is a hotspot for white sharks. They migrate here in the fall to prey on, amongst other pinnipeds, the elephant seals the bay is named for. Waiting deep below, the sharks strike from the depths with astonishing speed and precision.
Our captain eased the Amigo to a stop near ‘Shark Alley,’ one of the best-known feeding areas in the sanctuary. David prepared a seal decoy: a floating, seal-shaped object approved under a special permit, with a GoPro attached. They set it adrift behind the boat, hoping to draw the curiosity of any sharks nearby. And then we waited…
Just when it felt like nothing would ever happen, someone called, “Shark,” and everyone raced to look. It didn’t lunge, or thrash, or show that famous dorsal fin to catch the eye, but when I saw it’s faint silhouette, it took my breath away: a huge, ghostly shape cruising slowly past the boat. A white shark.
I reached for my camera, but the light and surface glare made it nearly impossible to focus. The shark was too close and the water too reflective. I switched to my phone and started filming instead. I’m glad I did.
Over the next hour, we were visited twice more, and each time was subtle, but arresting; a sudden, haunting presence, then gone again into the blue. Fleeting encounters, but we’d seen them, alive, well, and wild.
On the return trip, David shared footage from the decoy’s camera. On screen, a shark appeared momentarily — smooth, powerful, and unmistakable — circling before fading back into the depths.
By the time we passed back under the Golden Gate Bridge, it was dark. I hadn’t returned with a recognizable shark photo, but I’d returned with something better: the experience itself. And of course, you know I’ll want to try again.
If you’re interested to learn more about protecting sharks and our oceans, you’ll find links to Shark Stewards and the Oceanic Society below.
