…was almost certainly a dolphin, so the mother wasn’t lying to her kids.
We saw a pod of them cavorting and spouting a couple hundred yards off shore in Hermosa on Christmas Day, a few hundred yards south of where that picture was taken. Probably common or bottlenose, but hard to tell from that blurry shape in the wave.
While it’s hard to be certain, it looks like the tail fin is horizontal which means it’s a dolphin. If the tail is vertical, it’s a shark.
Looks like a school shark to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shark#Behaviour
There’s really no way to tell from that shadowy image. But my money would be on dolphin. We see those a lot more here in the surf than sharks, especially a shark of that size (they’re mostly small leopards).
The dolphin was probably trying to score some drugs after it ran out of puffer fish.
Puff, puff, pass dolphin story.
The PFEA is losing the war on puffer fish…
Yes, looks like a dolphin. They swim up and down the South Bay beaches every day.
Sharks are not completely rare in the region, though. I’m pretty sure I recall back in the 80’s, a UCLA prof and his girlfriend went out ocean kayaking, and the only things found later were the pieces of the kayaks with big bite marks taken out.
Here’s a photo of the same two boys and the mystery animal.
http://resources2.news.com.au/images/2011/03/30/1226031/011826-hawks-nest-sharks.jpg
And another:
http://www.ultimate-animals.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Mozambique-GWS-4.jpg
Their mother didn’t put enough sun block on them…