Walk along the coast of La Jolla and seals, seagulls and sea lions are abundant on the rocks and beaches of the Jewel. But if you want to experience something more exotic, such as close encounters with sharks, you need to ditch the flip flops for flippers, the sundress for a bikini, and sunglasses for a mask. That’s what certified scuba enthusiast and adventurer Tabitha Lipkin calls a typical afternoon. From July through December, next to The Marine Room restaurant at La Jolla Shores, leopard sharks converge in the warm shallows and snorkelers floating above get to watch these elegant swimmers search for food and socialize a few feet away. In September, during the peak season for the leopard sharks, Lipkin took the opportunity to swim with the sharks for her first time in La Jolla. “I have swam with sharks in other places in the world. But never in such a way that they are so abundant and they’re so docile,” she said. Lipkin, who is an anchor on One America News Network and contributes to Fox Sports San Diego, has dived in picturesque places throughout the globe – from Malaysia to the Maldives. But being able to have this experience right on the coast of La Jolla is one of the reasons the native Texan lives here. “It’s really amazing. There are few places in the world where you can see a creature in its natural habitat and interact with it and you both benefit from it,” Lipkin said. The visiting leopard sharks are mostly female and mostly pregnant and seek out the warm, calm water near La Jolla Shores. They have small mouths, feed mainly on crustaceans, and can grow up to six feet in length. They are also not big fans of aggressive humans. “They are very skittish – so you can’t touch them but just getting to see them just swimming and living is incredible,” Lipkin said. “I’ve swam with whitetip reef sharks in Malaysia. Also, I’ve seen little sharks off Catalina, but nothing too crazy.”
Lipkin’s love of underwater adventure began at University of Texas when she took a class to get scuba certified her junior year. She was hooked and headed to the coast after graduating with a degree in broadcast journalism. She worked as an intern on TV shows in LA and then moved to San Diego where she spent a summer in Mission Bay as a hydroflight instructor. “We have great dive spots in San Diego. The Yukon – a Canadian destroyer sunk off Mission Beach – and in La Jolla there’s a wall dive and people doing their first scuba dive get taken out there – it’s calm and fun and a good location,” she said. In between adventures as a bartender, zip line tour guide, and scuba diving off St Lucia and Costa Rica, Lipkin earned the title Miss SCUBA International 2014. “It was another incredible year that afforded me the ability to explore the world and share my knowledge of marine conservation.” Now that she’s got a desk job at One America News, she has all of Southern California to explore. “Here in California we’ve been blessed with a beautiful coastline, but that’s not the case everywhere in the U.S. and not everywhere in the world,” she said. “With something as exciting as snorkeling with leopard sharks, I think its important that we remember that our oceans do need protection and they are not in the best state right now. Where ever you are you should do your part to keep it clean and we can have a beautiful ocean together to explore.”