Learn Hardcore Spanish (Latin America): El pescador dice que vio un tiburón y encontró su rastro en el agua. - The fisherman says he saw a shark and found its trail in the water.

In Spanish you can use dice que to report what someone says right now or habitually—this is called the “presentative” or historical present. If you said dijo que, you’d be placing the entire report firmly in the past, as in “the fisherman said (then) that he saw a shark.” Using dice keeps it more immediate.

What role does que play after dice?

The conjunction que is required after verbs of saying, thinking or believing to introduce a subordinate clause in Spanish—equivalent to English that. Unlike English, you can’t drop it in Spanish, so dice que vio un tiburón literally means “he says that he saw a shark.”

Why are vio and encontró in the preterite rather than the imperfect?

The preterite (pretérito) is used for actions viewed as completed, one-off events at specific moments. Here, “saw the shark” and “found its trail” are single, finished actions. The imperfect (veía, encontraba) would imply ongoing or habitual background actions.

What exactly does rastro mean, and how is it different from huella?

Rastro means “track,” “trace,” or “trail” and can refer to any sign left by something (e.g. scent, ripples, or footprints in a trail of water). Huella is more specific to a footprint or imprint left in a solid medium (like mud or sand). In water you’d almost always say rastro.

Does su rastro refer to the shark’s trail or the fisherman’s?

In context, su refers back to un tiburón, so it’s “the shark’s trail.” Although su can be ambiguous (it could mean his/her/their), the natural reading is that the fisherman found the shark’s trail in the water.

Why is it en el agua instead of just en agua or sobre el agua?

Spanish usually requires a definite article before body-of-water nouns: el agua, la playa, el río, etc. En agua without the article sounds odd. Sobre el agua would mean “on top of the water,” as if floating—whereas en el agua means “in the water,” submerged or within it.

Could you use avistó instead of vio for “he saw a shark”?

Yes. Avistar means “to spot” or “to sight,” often used in wildlife or maritime contexts (“avistó un barco,” “avistó un pájaro”). It’s a bit more formal or specific. Vio is the everyday verb “saw.”

Why do we say un tiburón with un? Can you drop the article?

In Spanish, countable singular nouns generally need an article or another determiner. You cannot say vio tiburón by itself; it must be vio un tiburón (saw a shark), vio el tiburón (saw the shark), vio mi tío, etc. The article marks it as one unspecified shark.