White sharks aren't safe but our cages are…

I am often asked if diving with great white sharks of Guadalupe Island is safe.  My answer is  HECK NO!!!   You are diving with apex predators that are 18 feet long with the girth of a volkswagen van.   There is NOTHING safe about these animals. BUT our cages our safe.  They were engineered and certified by a naval architect. They were built in a shipyard and built strong like the Nautilus Explorer.  They are inspected and get an annual shipyard refit.  And they were designed with the idea of avoiding any possible injury to inquisitive white sharks by the use of schedule 80 aluminum pipe (which means the pipe is very thick), radiused corners, no sharp edges and very, very strong.  Our favourite whiteys are welcome to nudge and test the cages all day long and as the photo shows, there will be no ill effect to either the sharks or the divers.   Captain Mike.  ps.  check out the visibility in the photo. We typically see 125′ + vis on our Guadalupe Island trips.
—– crew blog entry below from Bayu, one of our hardest working deckhands ever —–
I am Bayu, deckhand on the Nautilus Explorer since may 2009 aiming for getting in future my engineer ticket.  Yesterday we have been at Roca Partida. It is a weird place but cool cause I never seen a rock like that in the middle of nowhere. First time I saw RP I was wondering what that white was on the rock and I did not it expect it was covered with , bird pop. Today I was driving the skiff with the divers again , but today was different cause I had several dolpins around my skiff. And when I cleaned off the algie of the Nautilus Explorer i saw Silkie sharks direct under the boat, that was cool.   Everything about working onboard the Nautilus is very cool.  I love it.
Photo credit: Eurisko Photography by Don Carpenter