If you spot a shark while scuba diving, in most cases you would consider yourself fortunate. In the Pacific Northwest, they are usually in the distance, swimming away from you, and they are beautiful creatures to see. But if you see the so-called business end, that is, the toothy end, of a shark staring at you from a few feet away, you might think differently.

Night dive. The Salish Sea. The San Juan Archipelago is glacier cut and the passages between the islands can run deep, sometimes reaching down to a thousand feet or more. Many of the islands themselves plunge straight down into the abyss. Wall diving at its apex. Imagine Yosemite’s El Capitan, but underwater. When wall diving, the whole point is to look at the wall. Life abounds on the wall and there is usually not much else to hold the diver’s interest other than open water. On a night dive, that open water is black, like the blackness of space.

Some other divers experiencing dogfish. photos and artwork by Jan Kocian.

I had been looking so intently at the wall that I didn’t stop to think about what was in the water behind me. These waters are known as the Emerald Sea due to plankton and silt in the water, thus the visibility under the surface is not like it is in, say, Hawaii or Australia. Thirty-foot visibility is considered awesome. Fifteen to twenty is average, but the water is usually greenish and murky.

Spiny dogfish are not dangerous to SCUBA divers, but they are to their standard fare of fishes, jellyfish, shrimp, and crabs. They got their name, dogfish, because they have been observed hunting in packs, like a pack of dogs. They have been seen in huge packs of fifty, sometimes hundreds or more. They can live up to eighty years. They prefer to hunt along the bottom and have been recorded at depths exceeding 2000 feet. They grow to an average length of three to four feet, but can sometimes grow larger.

I estimated the ones staring at me were about four feet each. Of course, due to refraction underwater, everything looks bigger and closer (like a T-Rex in a Jeep’s side-view mirror). Spiny dogfish are grayish/brown and usually have two rows of white spots running the length of their slender body. The spines, as referenced in their name, are on their back situated just ahead of each of the two dorsal fins. These spines are sharp and can inject a mild venom. The dogfish uses them as defensive weapons if a larger fish tries to eat them.

Orcas sometimes prey on dogfish but the spines don’t offer much protection against the largest, baddest predator in the sea. Other predators of dogfish are other sharks, seals, larger fish, and man of course. A smart fisherman who has caught a dogfish wears gloves when handling it as protection against the spines. I’ve read that dogfish meat makes nice fish tacos.

I knew that the dogfish staring at me were not sharks, at least not the scary kind of shark, but sixty feet down in the dark, they sure as hell looked like the scary kind. They are, in fact, sharks of the genus Squalus, which is in the largest order of sharks. They can be aggressive when provoked. So, I didn’t provoke them. It was intimidating looking at them looking at me. Their large round eyes looked black in the beam of my flashlight. Occasionally their eyes flashed red like a coyote’s eyes in a car’s headlights. They did not swim away. They remained there, slowly circling, side by side. 

I perceived their presence as a confrontation, a challenge, like spectral soldiers guarding a castle. “Halt! Who goes there?” Had they come to the wall to find food, like hyenas to a feast, and found me instead? If dogfish prefer to hunt along the bottom, perhaps this wall was a substitute for the bottom. Perhaps it was a vertical bottom along which they were seeking food. I wondered how long they had been behind me. Scrutinizing me. Sizing me up. Was I in their way? Was this their turf, their hunting ground, and I was trespassing? Were there others of the pack lurking behind them in the shadows? Seeing spiny dogfish was not unusual. I had seen dogfish many times while scuba diving, usually only one at a time and usually on a night dive. They appear out of the darkness, like an apparition. They swim slowly nearby for a couple minutes and then fade back into the blackness.

Photo and artwork by Jan Kocian

When I reached the boat, I threw my fins up and over the gunwale and climbed the ladder as quickly as I could in my cumbersome dive gear. I took off my gloves and someone handed me a cup of hot chocolate and I warmed my hands on the cup. I took a sip and looked back over the side down into the void and thought about the pack of dogfish that had accompanied me. I imagined them, spectral, haunting, joining up with a larger pack and prowling through the gloom.

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Thanks so much for your interest and your support.