Shark in Aquatic Park

Mike Silva and Kim Chambers
assess the danger

Joe Mannion stood waist-deep in the translucent green waters of Aquatic Park and contemplated the shark as it languidly prowled the shoreline.  The dark dorsal fin sliced slowly through the water leaving a tiny wake.  The water was clear enough to easily see the distinctive dark upper body and white underside--coloring reminiscent of the infamous great white.  The shark made no aggressive moves although it was obvious that a quick flick of its tail could propel it across the six feet separating bather from fish with potentially disastrous results.  Joe discussed the latent threat with his shore-side companion for a couple of minutes.  As the shark progressed slowly east with the flood current, Joe gave a phlegmatic shrug of his shoulders and plowed into the water with his characteristic brawny freestyle stroke.  Swimming to the end of the Dolphin Club pier with his head buried in the bay, Joe was oblivious when the shark changed course and began undulating west and headed straight toward his churning feet.  Passing within inches, the shark turned and followed the swimmer for a couple of terrifying yards before resuming its slow eastward glide with the current.

It seemed that the shark was investigating any movement in the shallows.  At one point Mike Silva stuck a splayed hand in the water and swished it back and forth.  The fish immediately turned towards his hand and moved in the direction of the agitated water.  In the following video, it's clear that the shark is following the movements of the wader who is not eager to get too close.  A member of the Pelagic Shark Foundation later surmised that the shark was probably suffering from blindness due to a bacterial infection.

Afterwards in the sauna Joe Marenda, an avid surfer, offered his wholly credible expertise on sharks.  "That was a salmon shark," he said with authority.  "It has similar coloring to the great white and when a seven or eight-footer swims by your board it can scare the hell out of you.  But they're not dangerous to humans unless provoked."  Pressed on the similarity, he pointed out, "You can tell it's a salmon shark because only the dorsal fin sticks up from the water.  On a great white, you'd see both the dorsal and the tail fin."  Subsequent marine wildlife experts confirmed his identification.  Apparently, these sharks make long oceanic migrations and are not uncommon in the San Francisco during "pupping" season.  Regardless of how "common" they might be, more than one person has been swimming in the bay for twenty-five years without seeing or even hearing about this type of shark.

Sadly, a couple of people spotted the shark the next day being attacked by seagulls.  The gulls were pecking at the fish's eyes and generally putting on a display of nature's brutality.

Salmon shark

More than half a dozen shark species prowl San Francisco Bay.  Leopard, seven gill, spiny dogfish, and soupfin sharks are quite common.  They comprise the bulk of the 1,000s of sharks that inhabit the Bay.  While increasingly popular with local fisher people, these sharks are rarely visible in the murky green water.  In addition, they generally patrol the muddy bottom feeding on clams, crabs, small fish and fish eggs remaining out of sight of swimmers as they go about their business.  The seven gill shark is a little more ferocious.  It attacks other young shark species as well as the occasional harbor seal but leaves humans alone. 

Some years ago, Bill Powning was participating in a Gas House Cove swim.  Intrepid but slow, the flood tide swept him past the pilings of the Municipal Pier and under the lines of fishermen congregated on the bay side.  Just as Bill was about to make the turn at the Roundhouse and return to Aquatic Park Cove, a man on the pier reeled a writhing, four-foot leopard shark straight over the swimmer and hauled it onto the pier.  Bill remained completely unaware of his close encounter of the toothy kind.  His pilot in the kayak had a ringside view, though, and thrilled to the evidence of locally based sharks.

Two questions dominate those asked of bay swimmers.  Isn't it cold?  What about sharks?  Even with the unexpected addition of salmon shark to the Bay list, the answer to the second question remains, "Nothing that will eat you on purpose."

Eight Man Stack at Night

Ivan in five-man stack

Extraordinary characters abound at both swim clubs in Aquatic Park.  Of course, the setting is a magnet for marathon cold-water swimmers.  But some of the outsized personalities have chalked up notable achievements out of the water.  Ivan Balarin is a charter member of this group.  He has compiled more than 5,000 parachute jumps from planes and promontories.  Had he access to today's modern technology, that number could be well north of 10,000.  However, in the days of round, relatively un-guidable chutes, Ivan spent many days in Livermore sitting and waiting out weather that wouldn't deter a well-equipped jumper today.

In 1987, he took the soloist position in the docking of eight parachute canopies in flight.  This YouTube video of the SkyHawks in action shows how the stack is formed.  The difference is that Ivan's group built their eight man stack in the dead of night.  Here's how Ivan tells the story:

"When we used to do stacks, it was a big thing.  It's a delicate maneuver because it's easy to 'birdcage' yourself.  You usually build the stacks from the top down.  The one on the top is the pilot.  He steadies his hands next to his chest so there's not too much movement of the lower members of the stack.  You approach the stack from the back.  Never get in the front because you destroy the air flow and the stack will collapse and that's a very difficult situation.  The hardest position to get in was the last on the bottom. Because as the stack forms, it travels very fast, like a biplane.  So, you have to be in position to close into the butt or the back of the lowest man.  And then you start applying brakes and you float up and then he grabs your canopy and locks his legs in the line number one and line number two which is right in the middle of the front of your chute.  If you come last into the stack on the bottom, the United States Parachute Association recognizes you as a 'soloist' and assigns a number representing the number of people that have accomplished this before. We had done a couple of practice jumps earlier in the day and slapped one behind the other; boom-boom-boom-boom-boom; perfect!"

Beechcraft D-18

When night fell, the Beechcraft D-18 taxied down the runway for the final flight, gathered speed, and lifted off under the light of a rising full moon.  Ivan's wife, Kathleen sat in the copilot seat.  Her job was "illuminator."  When the pilot nudged her foot with his, she would briefly shine her flashlight on the instrument panel and then switch it off.  In these days before sophisticated dashboard lighting, this was the accepted protocol for preserving night vision.

As they ascended to jump altitude, one of the parachutists made a point of telling everyone that it was important that they all open their chutes at the same time, immediately after exiting the plane.  Ivan was not comfortable with this idea.  As the soloist, he was to join the stack last and approach from the bottom.  In the daylight practice jumps, he had delayed the pull of his ripcord for about 3 seconds in order to give the stack time to form and approach it from the bottom.

Ivan Balarin

For anyone who knows Ivan at all, the notion that he would subjugate his own judgement in favor of that of someone else seems ludicrous.  He was fourteen the first time he ran away from home in Peru.  His previous sport obsessions had been competitive fencing and weight lifting--both relatively solitary and self-directed.   Ivan is not one to capitulate easily.  But he was also an astute observer and quickly discovered that parachuting is a group activity with the mind of a small village.  Planes were scarce, shared resources and the obstinate or reckless were quickly and permanently ostracized.  His love of jumping forced him to control his independent streak.  With this in mind, he decided to practice going with the flow.

When the time came, the jumpers worked their way through the black tunnel of the fuselage two abreast and flung themselves into the dark sky.  As Ivan relates, "They built up the stack so fast, they caught me with my pants down!  And here, I'm following the stack almost right in the middle in the back of the third man down.  No way I can close like that.  I have to be under the bottom man and then work my way up like an elevator."  Although he was incredibly strong from his weight training, it would have taken a superman to pull the front risers down enough to descend at the required speed.  In order to avoid crashing into the middle of the stack, he veered to the left.  "When I went to the side, they all looked at me terrorized because they thought I was going to go in the front.  You don't want to do that because your airflow will disturb everything.  I told them 'I'm aware' and peeled off the left, cursing myself for not following my intuition and giving myself the three second delay."

Yanking on the left riser alone, he corkscrewed himself down into the blackness until he was dizzy and disoriented.  He had lost contact with the seven other parachutists in the dark.  "And here I am, in the middle of nowhere, feeling sorry for myself because I knew that I could do the job. I'm sitting in the darkness, listening to the farm dogs bark and thinking about where I am over the Livermore vineyards.  If you land in those cut vines, it will tear you to pieces."  About this time, Ivan saw a black shadow floating past the full moon.  At first he thought it was a cloud.  But it was a cloudless night and clouds don't move that fast.  As he looked closer, it appeared to be a flying clipper ship getting larger and larger as it approached.  "I saw the stack coming in right in front of me.  As soon as it went by, I turned and flew parallel and started climbing.  I could hear the voices from above, 'Ivan come in!  Come in!  Ivan, you can do it! Come in!'  I put on the brakes and started floating right up.  About 4,500 feet off the ground, I made contact--right on the bottom man's legs and the stack was complete.  What a satisfaction."

They flew the required minute together until they reached the airport runway.  Then, starting from the bottom, each member yelled "Flare!" in turn to signal the person on top to release the lines.  This way, they landed one after another on the deserted tarmac.  They were the 103rd team in the world at that time to accomplish this feat.

This is only one of Ivan's many striking exploits and he is only one of the remarkable people who belong to the two clubs.  Together, their stories add a significant and spicy ingredient to the composition of the endorphin cocktail.

A History of Aquatic Park

The Japanese have a word for appreciating transient moments of natural beauty.  According to Wikipedia, the word Yugen "suggests [something] beyond what can be said but is not an allusion to another world.  It is about this world, this experience .... The exact translation of the word depends upon context."  Zeami Motokiyo suggests these as examples of Yugen:

"To watch the sun sink behind a flower clad hill

To wander on in a huge forest without thought of return

To stand upon the shore and gaze upon a boat that disappears in the distance

To contemplate a flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds"

Yugen experiences abound at Aquatic Park.  They provide one of the five sources for the endorphin cocktail that makes the club experience so addictive.  It is easy today to take these experiences for granted.  However, the creation of an "aquatic park" on the site of Black Point Cove was a complicated and combative process.  At one time the location was the setting for foundries and smelters.  Real estate development interests saw the area as a potential extension of the Fisherman's Wharf area:  a paved-over site for more restaurants and T-shirt shops.

Book Cover

Bill Pickelhaupt, in his book San Francisco's Aquatic Park, tells the story of the evolution of this site.  Rich with pictures and detailed captions, Mr. Pickehaupt's meticulously researched prose spins a tale fascinating to anyone who treasures this particular corner of the world.  He has kindly granted me permission to reprint the introduction to his book here:

"San Franciso's Aquatic Park is unique in San Francisco as one of the city's very few underappreciated spots of great beauty.  Located just to the west of the hustle and bustle of Fisherman's Wharf, Aquatic Park's daytime serenity is surpassed only by the thrilling glitter of Tiburon and Belveder's lights, reflected in San Francisco Bay as one stands on the Promenade of the park at night.  An even better view of the bay from Marin and Contra Costa counties can be gained from Muni Pier.  The people of San Francisco and the Bay Area in general were almost robbed of this wonderful park, as the conflict between development and recreation raged from more than a century in the little cove.

Pioneer Woolen Mills

"Known as Black Point Cove because of the dark shade of the trees in Fort Mason (the cove's westerly boundary), the location was isolated from the settlement of Yerba Buena and Mission Dolores during the gold rush.  Even as these settlements became San Francisco in the 1850s and 1860s, Black Point Cove was considered remote enough to allow establishment of the Pioneer Woolen Mills and the Selby Smelter, and far enough away from the reach of the law to host several highly illegal bare-knuckled boxing matches in post-Civil War San Francisco.  Yet the commercial interests shared the cove with a hearty breed: swimmers flocked to the shores of Black Point Cove and many small swim houses catered to the needs of these men and women, boys and girls.

"The San Francisco Daily Alta noted in 1869 that a man named William Lenz had drowned while swimming from 'Charley's' swim house in the cove and that the cove had been a popular beach for those fond of saltwater swimming 'for a long time.'  Around 1867, Carleton Watkins took a stereoview of a group of four young boys, naked as the day they were born, letting the surf break over their feet, as the boldest among them moves hesitantly into the chilly water (even after a long warm spell in summer, the temperature of the bay usually does not exceed 65 degrees Fahrenheit).  The most famous victim of the waters of Black Point Cove was banker William C. Ralston, who perished in the cove on a line with Tonquin Street the day he lost control of and was booted out of the Bank of California.

State Belt Railroad Fort Mason Tunnel

"The little swim houses and woolen mill fell into decline as the 1880s came to an end, but the decision of the Dolphin Swimming and Boat Club to move from the foot of Montgomery Street (now known as Columbus Avenue) to build a new boathouse at the foot of Van Ness Avenue held enormous importance for Black Point Cove.  Even though the contemporary Sanborn Insurance Map described Van Ness Avenue as 'impassible by (horse) teams,' visionaries at the club saw a water park for the recreation of the citizens of San Francisco.  In 1908, the Dolphins were joined by the South End Rowing Club and the Ariel Rowing Club, both driven from a short stay in Central Basin (near Mission Rock at the foot of Sixteenth Street) by the State Board of Harbor Commissioners.  San Francisco's development interests, particularly along the waterfront, saw the catastrophe of the 1906 earthquake and fire as a great opportunity to fill in shallow parts of the waterfront.  After Long Bridge and Mission Bay (the north side of which would be where Pac Bell Park is now situated) were filled in and disappeared forever, the northern waterfront next fell in the sights of developers.

"The State Belt Line Railroad was built across the cove in 1913, and the clubs had to continually fight to prevent the Harbor Commissioners from dumping the borings from the Fort Mason Tunnel in front of the docks of the clubs.  If the clubs' access to the water were cut off, that would be the death knell of the clubs and public access to the cove.  The harbor commissioners went so far as to remove part of the South End dock at one juncture.

"Young Mitchell"

"Ed Scully, a South End member since the early 1890s, led a fight to protect the site as a park and to get the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to commit the city to conversion of the cove to an aquatic park.  Scully and others forged an alliance with organizations interested in public health, welfare, and recreation.  Old-time South Ender John L. Herget, a member of the board supervisors and well-known as 'Young Mitchell' from his days as a championship boxer, helped on the political front.  Beginning in 1909, the clubs held a series of Aquatic Park Days to publicize successive ballot propositions to finance park construction.  (Several striking photographs survive from these events).  Although all ballot measures fell short of the two-thirds approval needed for passage, the board of supervisors, in 1918, went on record in favor of an aquatic park for the citizens of San Francisco.  The city spent the next decade acquiring the property necessary for the park.  Then the Great Depression hit.

"The city was able to build Municipal Pier (known as Muni Pier) in 1931, but funds ran out.  The State of California did some work in 1932 and 1933, but also lacked the funds to carry the project through to completion.  The federal government took on the construction of Aquatic Park as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project in late 1935.  We not only have the park, but posterity also benefits from the fact that the WPA had a photographer come through the park nearly every month from 1936 to 1938 to provide a graphic record of progress on construction.

Maritime Museum Building

"What is now the Maritime Museum Building was intended to be the home of the Dolphin, South End, and Ariel clubs.  The South Enders did not like the building, because there were no handball courts; Dolphin Club members wanted their own clubhouse.  The streamline Moderne building, with its Benny Bufano murals, basically sat empty until Karl Kortum, a chicken farmer from Petaluma, approached the board of supervisors with the notion of a Maritime Museum for San Francisco, and the Aquatic Park building as the museum.  Alma Spreckels was Kortum's financial backer.

Fort Sutter Riverboat

"Kortum brought several vessels into the park, but the situation came to a head in 1953, when the Fort Sutter, an old riverboat that had made the run from Sacramento to San Francisco, was brought into the cove by Kortum associate Barney Gould.  The intent of Kortum and Gould was to turn the decrepit hulk into 'high-tone' restaurant, bar, and gambling casino.  The hulk was run up on the beach right next to the eastern comfort station.  The rowing clubs, just next door and dwarfed by the decayed vessel, complained on numerous counts, and the old tub was moved to the western side of the park in late 1953.  It sat there and decayed even further over the next six years.  Finally, a group of four young men, rumored to be South End Rowing Club members, doused the deck with gasoline and set the tub ablaze.  It is said the flames could be seen from Berkeley."

The members of the Dolphin and South End clubs regularly tell one another how fortunate we feel to have access to such a sublime and magical realm.  We can thank the pioneering members of the clubs for fighting to create a public haven.  We can also thank the successive members whose continuing vigilance preserved our distinctive niche.  We can now add Bill Pickehaupt to our "thank you" list as someone who has captured and preserved the history of the creation of Aquatic Park.