CORONADO, Calif. (KGTV) -- A Coronado man is sharing his story after his close encounter with a shark last week.
On Wednesday, Dec. 30, Phil Garn was going on his second swim of the day, around 4 p.m. During his swim, Garn describes feeling a tug in the water and then everything stopped.
Garn says he rolled over and came face to face with a juvenile shark. He swam to shore and alerted lifeguards, who cleared the beach.
Fortunately, Garn was wearing a fin, and once on shore, he realized the shark bit the fin, narrowly missing his foot. The experienced swimmer was wearing a longer fin than usual because he says he recently had lost the mate to his usual, shorter fins. If he'd been wearing the shorter fin, Garn thinks he would have been seriously injured.
Garn is now hoping his close call will encourage the city to look into installing a suite of buoys to help track the sharks.
The fin was sent to the Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach to be examined.
