The Cove Swim: A Swimmy Story

PHOENIX, Arizona, December 15. Today we are proud to present an essay written by 11-year-old swimmer Diego Majewski about his first major swim in the La Jolla Cove. To preserve the integrity of the tale, Swimming World has chosen to publish it without edits.

The Cove Swim: A Swimmy Story

There I was, on a sunny March morning in the La Jolla Cove, in the small and rocky beach. I have been happily playing near the shoreline, where fish thrive and seaweed gleams. But where there is paradise, there must be wasteland.

In the deeper ocean there is a gap, where almost no animals live and the waters go down for miles. My father was asking me to go swimming, to the quarter mile buoy!!!

"Please?" my dad persuaded.

"But Dad!" I proclaimed, "the water is so deep!"

"You probably couldn't do it anyway," taunted my brother. That did it. I was going to the quarter mile buoy.

The first part of the swim wasn't so bad. This was the place I talked about before, the place I usually liked to swim. Fish swam everywhere. I even saw the elusive orange Garibaldi. The Garibaldi has blue spots next to their gills when they are babies. When they mature, these spots shrink down and orange scales replace them. These fish are plentiful in the Cove. They are hard to find anywhere else.

This aquatic bliss did not last for long. In fact, it lasted only about ten minutes. We were headed for the wastelands. The water turned murky, as if a fog rolled in. The wastelands are peaceful, in a way. But then I guess everything would be peaceful if you eliminated life. Then there wouldn't be any noise. Every so often a cloud of dead, rotting seaweed would float around like lazy buffalo in a watery plain. This bleak landscape lasted for about twenty minutes. Then, out of the blue (literally, I'm in the ocean! It is blue there, people!), the biggest column of sea weed I have ever seen rose out of the depths. It was about three feet wide and I don't even WANT to know how long this behemoth was!

These teetering columns became numerous, so I guessed we were at the edge of a kelp forest. There were signs of life again as I saw schools of baby Garibaldi. This forest must have been their nursing grounds. I looked up to see how far away the buoy was. We were only about fifty feet away! But before I tried to go up in a final frenzy of speed, I leaned on my dad to recharge my tired batteries. Then I was ready.

It seemed to take forever to get to the buoy, but I managed to get to it. The trip back seemed easier, for some reason. I knew I was spending too much time in the water. Besides, I was hungry, tired, and the water currents were getting chilly. I wasn't that afraid of the sea that much anymore.

We finally got to the shoreline. I decided to explore a bit longer. It was fun playing around. My brother was furious that I did the swim, and I think he was a little jealous. I even saw a sting ray and a sea urchin! I almost stepped on a flounder, a fish with one eye on each of its pancake-flat sides. It was really slippery! I tricked my brother into thinking a sea urchin was an underwater spider. He freaks whenever he hears the word spider. He started splashing around like a crazed dancer. After an hour of fooling around, it was time to have lunch.

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