Location: Shark Bay, Guadalupe Island, Baja California, Mexico
Well, we’re back on station at Shark Bay, Guadalupe Island. The good news is that this trip is a fund raiser for the Historical Diving Society (HDS). We are very lucky to have some industry icons onboard including Rodney and Kay Fox from Australia, Zale Parry who we all love dearly, Chuck Davis and Dan Orr and a whole cast of other individuals each of whom we are very glad to have with us. Many many thanks to Ed and Leslie for putting this trip together. Our toothy and very big great white friends showed up this morning for some very hot diving. I divemastered a couple of splashes in the submersible cage today and was struck by the contrast – and the serenity – of life as usual in the wonderful blue water of the ocean versus the chaos and all the bad news about the economy and crashing stock market shoreside. Couldn’t help but be struck by this as I watched very little and very BIG fish swim past me. The bad news was that we had our once-a-season bout of very bad weather on the last trip. The timing worked out well as we were able to hole up in fairly protected water in Shark Bay in company with the 130 foot submersible tender Argo from Costa Rica. I went onboard for a visit and it is a lovely ship. Kind of neat to see the Argo and the Nautilus side-by-side given the derivation of the vessels’ names. Argonauts were “men of the sea” in Homer and the Odyssey and Nautilus derives all the way down from “naut” via Jules Verne and a long list of interesting submarines. Funny how it all ties together. Anyways, once a season we seem to get very big waves and it was quite something to look at the north end of Guadalupe Island and see huge 20 foot (and bigger) rollers surfing around the point. I delayed our departure by 15 hours to hit the projected weather window and had a decent ride home after toughing out the first hour or so. Our voyage back to the island was very smooth and despite the delay (and because we ran at high power settings), our inbound divers missed less than 2 hours of diving in total. The excellent sharking more than made up for that with 4 – 5 sharks circling the submersible cage at one time today. Oh yeah. Fox and the white sharks?? Rodney Fox has been involved with over 100 film productions including one detailing the amazing story of how he was attacked by a great white, survived (550 stitches) and went on to champion and try to protect sharks. The name of that particular film is Fox and the White Sharks and I felt very privileged to watch it with him. Cheers all. Captain Mike.
Weather: Clear. calm seas, no wind. Beautiful and sunny and nice and hot..
Water: Visibility 125 feet in very blue water. Water temperature 69 degrees.
The Fox and the Great White Sharks
