There have been an unusually high number of shark sightings by scuba divers at La Jolla Cove this spring, with soupfins and sevengills the most visible.
In fact, even when visibility is extremely poor, fairly large sharks can be seen.
Bethy Driscoll proved that on Wednesday when she videotaped a close encounter with a sevengill shark.
She posted a 32-second clip to her Bethy Scuba Facebook page , in which a large sevengill appears immediately beneath the veteran diver.
Driscoll titled the post "Bumped by a Shark" and explained that visibility was only three feet and that she initially thought the shark was another diver swimming too closely.
"Then I realized it was a sevengill," she wrote. "I think we both startled each other."
(It's not clear what caused the wound to the shark's tail--perhaps a cookiecutter shark ?)
Earlier this spring Rod Watkins of Scuba San Diego told a local news station that he had seen more sharks at La Jolla Cove this season than during "any year in my 45 years of diving here."
Soupfin sharks are considered harmless to humans because of their small size. Sevengills, according to the International Shark Attack File , have been implicated in only five unprovoked attacks on humans since the 16th century.
--Pete Thomas
