Today the visibility was very bad. In the morning we couldn’t really see any of the five great white sharks that were surrounding the boat. After two hours from when we started our dives, the current picked up a little and improved the visibility within minutes. We had the crystal clear water from Guadalupe Island back.
The sharks are very inquisitive and curious today. We had a shark that swam to the cage very slowly and then rotated his pectoral fins out so that he could take a more vertical position. He then put his head out of the water to check out the wrangler and began to watch the people in the cage! After that, he swam to the other side of the boat to check out the second cage and wrangler. It was crazy! That was all out of curiosity or he really wanted to investigate the cages and the wrangler. The great white shark might even have realised that there is a more complex relation between bait and boat than just, “when the boat comes, the bait comes”.
There were very complex thoughts going through this great white shark and we were there to witness that. It’s very hard to make a comment about that without being anthropomorphic. We can’t explain a shark with words that qualifies human behavior or feelings, so I’m just going to leave it open for interpretation.
Observing that the great white shark kind of understood the entire scenario that we are creating and very calmly and cautiously checked out the different factors that could play a role in it. You could almost feel the curiosity of the shark. We could basically observe in the wild that this shark was having very complex thoughts – deducting and learning. I am amazed and speechless. It is absolutely mind blowing and I feel blessed that I could witness it.
Come to Guadalupe Island onboard the Belle Amie, check it out yourself and get blown away by the amazing range of different great white shark behaviour observable in this crystal clear water.
- Divemaster Pascal onboard the Nautilus Belle Amie
