Add in a Great White shark staring into my eyes as it passes by only a few meters away easily makes it my number one favorite place to be. This week was my first trip back to Guadalupe after our 8 month season at the Socorro Islands, but it almost feels like I never left. Even when there are no sharks around, the anticipation and feeling of knowing that at any moment you could see the toothy smile of a 4 meter white shark materialize out of the blue is enough to keep my adrenaline flowing.
For the past three days we’ve been cage diving at the north east part of Guadalupe, where we have a large bay sheltered from the prevailing north west winds, a large number of Guadalupe fur seals, clear blue water and most importantly a healthy white shark population. This week we spotted around 6 different individual male whities at various times. On our first day we had an afternoon full of intense action, with two males both circling the cages repeatedly and in a tight circle, round and round, on a couple occasions nosing the cage gently. Throughout the remainder of this expedition we enjoyed lots more great diving with various male white sharks circling close and approaching from all directions. On several occasions we got to watch the behaviour between a cheeky young sea lion as she danced around the white shark, teasing and antagonizing, just for the fun of it so it seemed.
During one dive some lucky guests got to see a big mola mola cruising by the cages.
We are now heading back towards Ensenada for a quick turnaround tomorrow in preparation for a 10 day combo expedition including more white shark diving as well as the beautiful kelp forests of San Benitos and Cedros Islands.
Talk again soon,
Captain Gordon Kipp
Surface conditions: mostly sunny, light winds, 18-25C Diving conditions: visibility 80-100ft, water temp 19C
One of my favorite places on earth to be is sitting on top of a cage suspended 10 metres beneath the surface of the waters surrounding Guadalupe Island.
