Sharks are not something you typically worry about while out running, which made one experience all the more surreal for me. This summer has seen a number of shark incidences out in the oceans, so now seems like a fitting time to share my story.

It was the early 1990s, I was living in San Francisco. The afternoon was pleasant and warm along the California coast—a perfect day for surfing, except that the waves were flat. So I decided to go for a run instead. A long run. A long run across the Golden Gate Bridge and out along the pristine coastline north of the city.

As I ran on this distant shoreline, I noticed what appeared to be the hull of a capsized boat beached in a small, empty cove. With my curiosity heightened, I decided to run over and check it out.

Approaching the scene, I saw that it wasn’t a ship at all, but a huge, partially beached whale carcass, half its body laying strewn upon the sand and the other half still floating out in the water.

“Amazing,” I thought to myself, “what an incredible sight to behold!”

As I’m standing there taking this in, I suddenly see this gigantic mouth slowly rising out of the water. It moves in closer to the whale and then proceeds to bite down on it, tearing off a massive, wheelbarrow-sized chunk of meat from the side of its body.

As you can well imagine, a number of expletives were racing through my mind. But what to do? How do I capture this moment?

If this had been today, I would have whipped out my phone, recorded the episode, and become an instant YouTube sensation. But this was a long time ago, so I did the next best thing; I pulled out my trusty Motorola flip phone and called my brother, Kraig, a fellow surfer living in Southern California.

“Bro, you’re not going to believe what I’m looking at. I’m standing 10 feet away from a great white shark that’s fully gorging itself on a dead whale carcass!”

I’m screaming and yelling at him, freaking out about the scene taking place in front of me. He got a bit excited, but the man’s sitting behind a desk at his office in Orange County, clad in suit and tie. (Yes, people used to actually wear ties to work back then.)

Given the juxtaposition of settings, I think some of the guttural emotional impact was lost in translation. He also had a client sitting in front of him wondering what the heck I was droning on and on about.

“Okay Deano, sounds rad, but I gotta go. Besides, I’m supposed to surf tonight and you’re kinda giving me second thoughts. Enjoy your run.” Click.

I spent a few more minutes viewing the feasting and then decided that witnessing such a gruesome display could actually be dampening my appetite for surfing, too. So off I dashed to watch the sunset, quite thankful I was using my feet to run over land rather than my arms to paddle over sea.