Just last week, I submitted a piece for this column titled “Great and not so great sharks terrorize Cardiff.” The story was about sharks I had seen in Australian and Northern Californian waters and the juvenile great white that buzzed me while spear fishing on a remote La Jolla reef.

The whole thing was meant to be a joke, complete with a photo of a plastic shark fin, a toy that bobbed in my pool. Winding up the toy one day, I released it in the shallow waters of Cardiff and watched tourists come up to see the great predator. All in the name of April Fool’s.

Things had become a bit more serious with the sighting of a baby great white at Cardiff. Speculation was that where there were babies, there would be parents. I remained unconvinced, however, telling anyone I spoke to about the subject that I had never heard of a shark attack in our area, to which my friend Todd Adam replied that there was one at Moonlight Beach in the mid 1960s.

It was a stellar Friday morning and I sat working in my home/office when I heard the sound of a helicopter and a voice booming out saying, “Clear the water; there has been a shark attack.” Still, my mind wouldn’t accept that fact and I continued working until the chopper came by again with the same message.

My neighbor Dennis, who is a photographer for AP, cruised by and I hitched a ride with him to Solana Beach’s Pillbox, aka Fletcher Cover, where lifeguards met media of all sorts and it was confirmed that a swimmer’s lifeless body was returned to shore with severe lacerations. David Martin, a retired veterinarian and local triathlete, was out swimming with some friends, only about 150 yards from shore, when a 12- to 17-foot-great white came up from deep water.

I was saddened by the loss of what everyone described as a good man, and thought of the numerous times I must have paddled or swam over great whites in my 48 years as a surfer. I quickly recalled my last shark encounter, swimming far from shore with a halibut I had speared. I was in deep water with a bloody fish when a torpedo shaped object of about 7 feet in length cruised up for a look at easy prey. I didn’t think much about it at the time and the shark swam slowly away, presumably to find something even easier to eat than that fish or me.

Seeing that nothing happened to me, it was easy to be philosophical about the incident and I reasoned that the shark was doing the same thing that I was doing, looking for food. Still, I was glad that sharks and seals had not been hunted to extinction, in a fearful reaction that has been repeated for thousands of years.

But a man’s life has been lost and I am sad. Not sad for a man who died in his element, but for those who were with him and those who saw him that morning, believing that he would be home after his morning swim.

The ocean is a dangerous place filled with wild animals that don’t obey our rules. That doesn’t make me feel any better, any safer or at all whimsical about sharks. Not anymore.