Jordan Glenn, age 13: Shark Diver
“Last year, when I was just starting seventh grade, my friends asked my why I didn’t go on my school’s overnight trip to Camp Mason. They wanted to know where I’d been all week. When I told them I was diving with great white sharks, they started laughing. At first, they didn’t believe me.”
On Earth Day, 2009, Jordan Glenn wrote an essay about white sharks. His grandmother had told him about an international contest for kids run by the folks on the Nautilus Explorer, a diving adventure outfit. The winner would get to go on a weeklong boating expedition off Guadalupe Island, Mexico that included cage diving to observe Great White Sharks. Jordan won the contest, and so in early September 2009, he, his younger brother Gordon, and his grandmother (a veteran diver) took off on their adventure.
How He Prepared
Jordan says there wasn’t that much training involved in the cage diving. “We had to wear regulators to breath, and they taught us how to do that. But otherwise, they just told us not to put our hands outside the cage. Which was pretty much common sense.” He had read some books about sharks and done some research in order to write his essay, and learned some “interesting stuff. When you pet a shark from head to tail, it’s smooth,” he told us. “But if you rub him in the opposite direction, it feels like sharp teeth cutting into your hand.” (This was a fact that he discovered reading; there was no shark petting on the voyage.)
In addition to seeing lots of sharks, the expedition also spent time snorkeling with sealions and elephant seals at San Benitos Island and kayaking in the giant kelp forests there . “I was so crazy about sharks to start off with,” says Jordan, “but I love the ocean. When I heard about this contest, it seemed like a once in a lifetime experience. So I went for it. The guys on the Nautilus Explorer were just amazing in what they showed me.”
Kids getting in the water with Great white sharks at Guadalupe Island 2010
