RECognition: Jakob Tallman, Aquatics
Recreation's monthly series to highlight and celebrate our staff
By Shawn Cyr
Assistant Marketing Director
Jakob Tallman spends about as much time under the water as he does above it.
When he’s not managing Recreation’s swim lessons at Canyonview Aquatic Center, you can often find him spearfishing, scuba diving, snorkeling, free diving — you get the idea.
“It allows me to fully disassociate with outside stress and become entrenched in another world,” Jakob says of spearfishing, which he’s been doing for about five years, mostly in Hawaii.“I can't say I have ever caught a large enough fish to write home about, but I have had some close encounters with sharks while out in Hawaii. One time, I had a large tiger shark circle my buddy and me for about 15 minutes, where it was within 5 feet of me pretty consistently. It was jealous of my stringer of small fish, I guess.”
A marine biology major from Sixth College slated to graduate this June, Jakob has also served as a field tech for Semmens Lab (a part of Scripps Institute of Oceanography) for the past three years.
“My job as a field tech entails running fisheries surveys of marine protected areas in San Diego, where we go out with volunteer fishermen and tag/measure all caught fish to attain community abundances for target species,” Jakob says.
But that’s not all. He’s also been doing scientific diving for Scripps for the better part of a year.
“My diving is part of the project I am on for research of juvenile white shark coastal ecology, and primarily consists of deployed equipment upkeep and equipment deployment,” he says.
His post-graduation plans include continuing that work while aiming to get into a Master’s program at UC San Diego this fall to do a kelp forest ecology project.
All that said, it won’t shock you to hear Jakob has always been fascinated with water. He grew up a swimmer and the captain of his high school’s water polo team. He says he joined REC, “so I could help share the thing I love,” he says. Coming aboard in the fall of 2023, Jakob has risen to Head Swim Instructor, where he manages instructor-led swim classes, handles hiring and instructor relations, and helps run the Swim Instructor Certification Course.
He’s made quite the splash.
“Jakob has contributed a lot of time and energy to our swim lessons program, and it shows,” Aquatrics Director Jason Dillon says. “He excels at developing systems to stay organized, solving problems, and being innovative. He is proof that students can make long-lasting positive impacts on Rec programs and coworkers.
“Aquatics is lucky to have Jakob on the team and thankful for his hard work and dedication to Recreation.”
