So I was standing out on the bridgewing of the Nautilus Belle Amie this morning enjoying a cup of freshly ground coffee when I saw a super interesting sight.
The first thing I saw was a very nice 14 foot long great white shark slowly swimming down the side of the boat. Just below the surface. White shark in crystal clear blue water. Maybe 5 feet away from the boat. Swimming from the stern (back end) to the bow which is what we call the pointy end 🙂 I suspect that would have been a freaky experience on just about any kind of boat other than a dive boat. For me it was just plain and simply a beautiful sight with a beautiful shark and of course our beautiful Belle Amie. It’s quite common to see white sharks swimming on the surface around the boats at Guad but what made this so interesting were the large yellow fin tuna following behind the great white. HUH?? Tuna are delicious appetizers for sharkies and you have to wonder why these tuna would want to follow the shark around. What made this even more interesting was the large school of silver coloured mackerel following the tuna?? That makes no sense at all because mackerel make for a very pleasant snack for the tuna. I started wondering if our beautiful Belle might actually be turning into Noah’s Ark with all these critters living in harmony?? I don’t think so but still a memorable sight.
This is my first Guad trip this season and I have already seen some unusual behaviour. Never before in all the years that we have operated Guad trips have I ever seen so many large yellow fin tuna hanging around the cages!! Sure we had great sharking yesterday with 3 – 4 white sharks swimming around the cages on most dives. That’s really good. But what we also saw were 10 or more yellow fin tuna zooming back and forth between the cages all day long. These guys were close to 3 feet long and weighed maybe 75 pounds. BIG FISH!! The amazing thing was seeing pelagic tuna so close up for an extended period of time. They were feeding around the cages for sure. Their grace and manoeuvrability and speed are just plain awesome. My heart thumped pretty darned heavily when one of these guys came straight at me at full speed, pectoral fins tucked in tight to his body and then screeched into a 90 degree turn – pectoral fins extended as brakes??) – a couple of feet in front of me. I actually started wondering whether tuna have ever attacked a diver!!
Pic’s to follow. You know the old story that it’s not true if you don’t have the photos!
Safe diving
Mike
Holy heck. Is the Belle Amie turning into Noah's Ark?? What is going on with the number of tuna out at Guadalupe Island??
