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Sharks in the slough! 

As documented in the video above, local TV/film location scout/manager Rowdy Kelley was walking his dogs at the end of Lanphere Road last week when he noticed a surface disturbance on an arm of the Mad River Slough.

“At first, I thought it was just small fishes,” he recounted in a social media post. “As I watched, though, I saw larger dorsal fins breaching the surface. As I moved further down the shoreline, I got a better angle with less glare and got the view of the leopard sharks under water.”

While it may seem incongruous to see shark fins snaking through such placid waters, the leopard shark, or Triakis semifasciata, is actually right at home in Humboldt Bay, as you can tell from the number of documented sightings in Humboldt Life (via iNaturalist).

Three years ago, Humboldt State University (as it was still known at the time) posted its own video of sharks swimming in the bay near the Arcata Marsh, with a note explaining that they eat small fishes and invertebrates and are a common catch by recreational anglers in Arcata and Eureka.

Once Kelley saw the leopard sharks for what they were he says he understood why the nearby mallard ducks were less than excited about getting in the water.