Growing up, I spent my days swimming, surfing, or playing at Del Mar beach—a short walk from my family’s house. At eight, I joined the Junior Lifeguards, and, at ten, I added beach camp counselor to my summer repertoire. At the camp, run by my Kindergarten teacher, I made games out of which camper could find the most trash, who could name the marine mammals in our part of the Pacific, and who could be the kindest. I helped to foster a sense of respect for others as well as a respect for the earth and sea.

When I turned 15, I applied for a job as a Del Mar Lifeguard. After 80+ hours of safety and medical training, I became an Ocean Lifeguard. I have logged over 70 rescues, assisted with countless medical aids, and reunited many lost children with their parents. Last June, during a period of large waves and strong currents, I spotted an elderly couple in distress. The man bobbed above and below the surface trying to keep the woman afloat. I paddled out and put them on my rescue board and caught a wave to shore. On the sand I rolled the man over and cleared his lungs. The woman through tears hugged me and thanked me profusely. At work the following week I received a letter from the couple’s grandchildren thanking me for saving Nana and Papa’s life.

As a lifeguard I also help my community in unquantifiable ways. During my day while on patrol, I stop to pick up trash on the beach and in the ocean. I take time to connect with beach patrons and had the pleasure of witnessing a woman from Oklahoma enjoying her first-ever dip in the ocean. Near the end of this summer, I heard a voice calling up to me. A boy I had rescued from a rip earlier in the year looked up at me with a huge grin and shouted, “Look what I did, Maile.” In his hand a bag of trash he had collected from the beach.

I sit on an old plastic chair: my red bikini, red shorts, and dark blue polo stand out against the tired beige cinder block behind me. Face sunburnt, hair stiff from salt, my eyes scan the water.

A young girl runs in a new-excited-puppy way up to 20^th St. Lifeguard tower. She wears an orange bikini. She hops from foot to foot and she squints up trying to see me through the midday sun.

“Excuse me? Excuse me.”

I hear her small squeaky voice fifteen feet below me. I stand up from my chair and peer over the metal railing to the sand beneath. She stares up and I can see her chest moving rapidly.

            “I was building breath a sand castle breath and I looked over and breath a seal breath was breath just lying there.” She points with her small finger five blocks south to a little brown lump on the sand.

            “I breath think it might breath be sick.” She looks at me and starts to cry, “Please help it.”

            “It’s gonna be okay, don’t worry.” I assure her, not certain I speak the truth.

I run inside the tower, grab a pair of binoculars and a portable radio. I slide down the pole onto the sand next to the little girl. She cries harder.

            “I bet it’s just tired, probably swam a lot and now is just trying to get some sleep.” I tell her and she glances up at me with her red puffy eyes.

            “Really?”

            “Yeah, totally. After a day at the beach do you ever need a nap?”

            She nods her head.

            “See, the seal is just like you, just tired.”

            She once again nods her head with a bit more enthusiasm.

I look through the binoculars at the brown lump. Magnified, I see it motionless as small waves slap its brown fur covered back. I watch for a few more seconds, no movement. I press the large button on the radio.

            “Station 3 from 20, we have a possible 905 D at 5. Will report on the 20 when I 10-97.” (Headquarters this 20^th street, there may be a dead animal at 25^th street. I will let you know how it looks when I get there.) Good thing I memorized my codes, 905D sounds a lot better than dead animal.

            The little girl has inched towards me and is now tugging on my shirt.

            “Can you come and look.”

            “Yes, of course.”

I start walking and she comes right next to me, grabs my free hand, and tries to wrap her tiny hand around mine.

*          *          *

I glance up from the book in my right hand – the jousts, kings, and jesters in yet another epic Magic Tree House saga fail to hold my attention. I need it to get my 1^st grade Readthon award. I search the water for my kayaking brothers. I look for the bright green kayak with the bold letters KAINALU painted across the side. I find it a few blocks south riding a wave. My oldest brother steers from the back and my other brother leans forward in the front. I watch them ride the wave and then capsize. Bored, I turn my gaze north; seagulls float over waves, a man attempts to stand up on his Wavestorm, and an old woman breast strokes with her head up trying ever so hard to not get her hair wet. SPLASH.

What is that? Too small to be a buoy. A piece of trash? No. A seal? Seals don’t move like that. Not a dolphin, not a shark – the fin doesn’t match the toy in my bath tub. Huh? A whale? I have never seen one so close. I’ll ask Mom, she’ll know, she always knows.

“Mom, what’s that?” I point with my finger.

“What’s what?” She looks puzzled trying to follow the line from the edge of my finger into the water.

“Look, there.” Once again, I point and I move my face right next to hers. I extend my arm a little more.

“Ohh, It’s probably a seal.” She goes back to reading

“No, It’s a whale!” I squint my eyes, trying to get a clearer look.

“A whale would not be on the inside and it’s May. All the whales have gone by now. Most likely a seal” She keeps reading.

“I’m just gonna go look.”

I jog to the spot and try to stand on my tippy toes. Too many waves. Too short.  I run up the beach through the high sand that burns my feet. I push myself up onto the cement sea wall. Now I can see the black object bobbing. It goes down for a few seconds then comes back up. Its big eye stares at me then submerges. I hop off the wall and head back down the beach to my Mom.

“Mommy, Mommy!” I yell as I get close.

She pulls down her glasses and gives me that why-are-you-so-loud eyebrow.

“Mom, it’s a baby whale.”

“Are you sure it is not a seal?” She folds the page of her book.

“Mom, I am positive it is a whale.”

“Sometimes seals can look bigger in the water.” She puts the book onto the sand beside her chair.

“No Mommy. Listen. It looked at me. It’s a baby whale. Like the ones in Hawaii.”

My Mom smiles.

“Well that’s awesome. I told you it’s your Aumakua.”

“Come on, come on, come and see..” I grab her hand and drag her to the spot.

My Mom using the there’s-a–telemarketer-on-the-phone voice. “I think it’s playing.”

All of a sudden, five, straight-pointy fins surround the whale. They swim around in a circle growing tighter with each rotation. I can’t see the whale.

“The sharks are eating it. Mommy! It’s dying!”

“It’s okay, those are just dolphins. They are just playing with it.”

“No they are sharks trying to eat it. Mommy we have to save it.” I begin to cry.

“It is not hurt, don’t worry, don’t you remember the book we read? Dolphins take care of whales in the ocean.”

I grab her hand tighter. We stand at the waterline watching the big, black head bob up and down and the fins circle it and the waves roll past it and the tears flow down my face.

My Mom’s hand squeezes mine harder, “What if we call SeaWorld so they can check on the whale.”

I let go of my Mom’s hand.

“No Mom, no Mom. It can’t spend its life in a bathtub. No Mommy please. No.”

“But maybe they can just help the whale get back out past the waves.” She does not sound as sure as she looks.

My hands ball into fists at my sides and my knees lock. “No Mommy. They are gonna take it. No please no.”

“Okay. I won’t.”

“They will just hurt it. I hate SeaWorld. Please no.”

“I said I would not.”

I squat down with my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands.

“How about if I call the lifeguards.” My Mom says.

I look up at her, nod my head in agreement, and use the sleeve of my shirt to wipe my face.

She turns her back to me “Hi, no this is not an emergency. There is a whale around 18^th street. It is stuck on the inside. My 6 year old is concerned that there are sharks circling it.” She listens then replies, “They might be, it could be hurt yes. Could you please come?”

She turns back towards me, “They are coming to help it.”

I stand up and look at her.

“Come here, it is going to be okay.”

I walk towards her and she wraps her arms around me. I look down the beach in-between her arm and her side and I see a red truck coming towards us.

“Mom, they’re coming.”

It takes a few minutes until we can make out the white writing on the side of the truck. My mom waves at it and it stops.

A tall man wearing red board shorts and a blue polo steps out of the truck. He has a portable radio attached to his waistband and sunglasses propped on top of his head.

“Hi my name is Mark and I am a Del Mar Lifeguard.” He says while towering over my mom and me.

“Hi Mark, the whale is right there.” My Mom points and he follows the line from her finger out to the whale.

“Ohh yeah. Looks like a baby Gray.”

“The whale is going to be alright. Right?” More of a statement than a question from my mother.

“Yeah of course, we see this all the time. The baby whales like to come into the inshore holes and rub their backs.” He lowers himself to his knees and looks me in the eye, “We see this all the time, I have a ton of photos hanging up in the tower if you would like me to show you.”

*          *          *

She holds my hand all the way there. As we approach, I notice a group has congregated around the seal. They clear a path for me. The little girl lets go of my hand. She wanders over to a woman on the inside of the circle and the woman sweeps the little girl into her arms.

The woman says to me, “Is the seal going to be okay? My daughter is quite worried.”

I assure her, “Sometimes the young seals just like to lie on the sand to warm-up because the water can get kinda cold after a while.”

“The seal is going to be alright though. Right?” She looks at me and raises her eyebrows.

“Yes, of course. We see this same thing all the time.”

She looks at the little girl in her arms, “See I told you it would be okay. Now we can go home” She looks back at me and mouths “Thank you.”

I return to my tower rinse of my feet in the bucket and climb the ladder. I turn on the radio.

“Station 3, from 20. Confirmed 905D at 5. 912 to contact public works.”

The radio cracks, “10-4”

I hang up the radio and look around the tower. I look at the rusty railing, the box of bandages that has tipped over, and the walls. I look at the four blank walls of the tower. No pictures.

When I ski, the steeper the slope the better. When I surf, the bigger the wave the greater the thrill. When I scuba, the deeper I dive the bigger the kick, when I cliff jump, the higher I go superior the drop and when I sail I can never seem to go fast enough. Most things don’t scare me, but I am not fearless. The elevator on the Eifel Tower made my palms sweat. Getting up close and personal with an eel makes my heart race. Bugs make me squirm. But buoys freak me out the most.

There is something about a buoy that has always scared me. Maybe it’s the fact that the algae growing on the chain attracts small fish which attracts bigger fish who eat those fish, which are then eaten by seals, which in turn draws in the very big fish. Maybe it’s the sound the buoy makes when the wind hits it and it rattles. Maybe it’s the ominous flashing light on top. Maybe it’s the panic on my mom’s face whenever she gets near one. Maybe it’s the superstition that it’s unlucky to touch one. Maybe it’s my own made-up reality that beyond the buoy, sharks feast.

            Whatever the reason, I always feel uneasy. As an ocean lifeguard the quarter and half mile buoys play central roles in all physical tests and trainings. No matter how many times I swim around them, my heart rate soars, my strokes quicken, and my mind races. The minute I have left the buoy in my wake my feet stop kicking like a wood chipper, my heart slows to normal, and my mind returns to the task at hand.

            This summer in Del Mar, California, my hometown and the beach I work at, had a huge influx of juvenile and some not so juvenile Great White Shark sightings. We saw them mostly a quarter mile out right next to that little white buoy. As a department we filed so many shark-sighting reports that our small town caught the attention of Cal State Long Beach’s renowned shark lab. Researchers from the lab contacted us and started tagging sharks in early August.

            They tagged 20 sharks. With the smallest measuring about seven feet and the largest at just over sixteen. Whenever one of these twenty-tagged sharks swims by the buoy, the lab gets an alert. In one month, 30 days, the lab received 6,400 alerts.

            My fear might be valid after all.  

The child, her hair bleached white from the ocean and her skin darkened by the sun, waddles on the hot, thick Hawaiian sand. Small waves lap against the shore. The sun illuminates the water and makes it evermore so clear. The little girl finally makes her way down the steep berm and into the water. The water kaleidoscopic with colored coral heads of green, blue and purple feels soft and warm on the girl’s stomach. The little girl wallows in the water and stares down past her bright yellow bikini and her painted toes. Parrot fish, trigger fish, box fish. All visible with the naked eye. Above the water feels deserted, below a city buzzes. Turtles graze and sleep on the reef’s shelf, fish dart this way and that, eels hide in their holes with motionless eyes, urchins wiggle their spines. The girl dives down and the silence of the bay soon transforms to the songs of humpbacks and the clicks of nearby dolphins. The girl emerges and floats on her back. The girl relaxed and refreshed, the bay calm and clean.

Thirty years pass. Air travel, tourism, skin cancer awareness all boom.

The little girl, still with bleached hair and tanned skin, now a woman carries a little girl with slightly less blonde hair on her hip. The woman trudges through the sand past women furiously rubbing sunscreen on their pale children, past men blowing up every imaginable variation of a floatie, past trash wrappers and cigarette butts. The air with its synthetic smells appears foggy and fills with the clatter of foreign tongues, screaming children, and the Pshhh of spray sunscreen. The woman plops down her bag on the first available patch of sand. The girl wiggles out of the woman’s arms and fishes out her snorkel and mask. The woman grabs hers, yellowing with age, and they run to where the waves hit shore. A film rests on top of the water, and beneath it a cloudy soup. The woman holds her daughters hand as they swim out towards the edge of the bay. The water becomes clearer with every stroke. The once colorful, lively reef now gray and motionless. As the two reach the edge of the bay, life returns. The little girl lets go of her mom’s hand and they both dive down. The woman follows a turtle as it tucks under a shelf for its afternoon nap. The little girl swims towards shore slightly as she tries to touch a parrot fish and then she suddenly stops. She pops her head out of the water and yells, “Mommy come look at this there’s a shark! It’s so cute, it’s a baby hammerhead shark.”

In a matter of minutes the slick with sunscreen snorkelers have hustled out of the water – the word shark incites panic even to non-English speakers, the fog dissipates, the din disappears, the water clears. The woman and the girl follow the shark as it heads in towards shore then back out again. It swims by trigger fish chewing on coral bits, past clown fish popping in and out of their guarded homes, and past puffer fish on the verge of puffing. They watch it for hours until it swims off into the blue expanse beyond the reef.

The woman, the girl, the bay full energy.

15^th Street Del Mar California – Calm

The waves break between the train signal just behind the green expanse of Powerhouse Park and the tallest palm 30 feet south. The waves max out at six feet. Never too steep or too mushy, always ride-able. The wind stays below 7 knts. The rip out front of the park pulls you straight to the line-up if you time it right. The wave becomes visible as it passes the quarter mile buoy and, as it gets closer, splits in two, forming both a left and right. The right will close out in 15-20 seconds but the left continues and just when it seems complete, a new section forms. The left keeps going for at least 30 seconds. The water feels cold but in the heart of winter it might drop to 62 degrees.

From the line-up you can watch the sun rise and see it clearly even on somewhat hazy days. The old geezers on their yellowing long boards get out there before me no matter how early I get out of bed. They sit way out and soak up retirement. Groms wearing fluorescent colored suits dominate the inside while their mothers film them from the beach.  They all go in around 9. Then there’s the morning lull. A few people rush out on their lunch break and try to snag a few before type, type, typing away at their desk. Then Middle School PE comes out at 3 and takes over the break for an hour. Another lull. The post work rush happens around six and the line up stays pretty packed until sunset. The sun sets directly over the horizon. Someone always yells, “I saw the green flash.” Who knows if they ever do. The couples on the beach take photos of the sunset like it won’t happen again tomorrow.  The Lifeguards make their closing announcements. Some stragglers stay out squinting in the dark to find their last wave.

The same thing happened yesterday and it will happen again tomorrow.

Ocean Beach California – Chaos.

The wave comes from what seems like every direction. It breaks past the outside then mushes then reforms. The wave breaks three times before it hits the shore or twice or once, it moves with no rhyme or reason. The word interval does not exist in this beach’s vocabulary. Sets in the ocean usually build with the largest wave coming last. Not here. The Ocean Beach wave is steep. A sheer wall of water rushing towards shore. It can get steeper or mush out, closeout or hold up, barrel or crumble.

The inside current either rips to the north or the south. Sometimes it pulls to the north closest to shore then to the south then back again to the north. Sometimes it’s the other way around. There is no pattern. The rip pulls hard and fast sometimes pulling just past the inside and other times to right before the big outside set crashes. The line-up faces west and the sunrises, barely noticeable because the fog bank sits low and heavy. The fog and lack of visibility the only consistent at this beach.

The people are covered in layers, upon layers, of neoprene. Too cold to talk. The line-up non-existent some days depending on weather or work. Other days the line-up is packed with homesick college kids and crusty old men.  The civil air sirens blare without a regular schedule, fire trucks blaze by their alarms firing, a helicopter buzzes overhead and practices rescue swimmer pickups, a submarine emerges like a steel, grey whale fifty feet away.

The tide will shift. Some people will head in saying, “Tide shift. More like Tide shit.” Some people will stay out telling themselves, “Gotta make the hour car ride worth it.” The sun will set in a couple hours and anyone remaining will head in shivering. Hypothermia, always a possibility.  

Yesterday was a different beast and tomorrow will be a whole new puzzle.