Great White Sharks Decide to Stay Deep

By on October 10th, 2007 in Archive, Guadalupe

We made a slow bell north and tucked into the island – the drop in the swell was immediately noticeable and within a few minutes our brave and hardy guests were back in the comfort of cages. Whilst the action on the surface was a little less frantic than previous trips, our guests all seemed to exit the cages with a big smile with very good white shark sightings very close to the cages. Hopefully the big smiles weren’t simply because the sparkling clear hot tub was waiting for them along with a lovely hostess and her drink tray!!

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Captain Dave is Taking Over

By on October 10th, 2007 in Archive, Captain Mike, Guadalupe

Our transit from Guadalupe Island back to Ensenada was uneventful with mild 6ft seas yesterday evening, mellowing out overnight to just a low swell for the morning. This was truly a lovely trip with a group of exceptionally warm and nice people onboard. The great white sharks weren’t bad either!!

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Historical Diving Society Gets Wet With Great White Sharks

By on October 7th, 2007 in Archive, Captain Mike, Guadalupe

We typically pull the shark cages out of the water at 4:30 p.m. on the last dive day but somehow, these darned white sharks must have figured out that timing (or one of them had a quick peak at the whiteboard in the main salon) because 3 of them showed up in force just before cage pulling time and made pass after pass. Our photographers were going nuts with the photo opportunities.

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Water Temperature Significantly Lower at 68˚F, Visibility 75ft

By on October 5th, 2007 in Archive, Captain Mike, Guadalupe

Interesting note from Mauricio Hoyos, our very, very excited Mexican shark scientist friend on station on Guadalupe: for only the second time in four years, a predatory white shark event was witnessed. It happened just before we arrived. Chicka, a huge and beautiful female great white shark, captured an elephant seal and literally bit it’s head off. This apparently started quite a sequence of events including some very aggressive fighting over the carcass between the sharks (maybe that’s why we are not seeing many sharks today?). Mauricio was quite close to the event in his panga (skiff) and was able to capture everything on video. In fact on two different occasions during the feeding, sharks literally attacked Mauricio’s panga. He later commented that never before has a 22ft fiberglass panga felt so flimsy!! This is indeed a very interesting development.

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A Newborn Great White Shark at Guadalupe Island!

By on October 4th, 2007 in Archive, Captain Mike, Guadalupe

So we got some incredibly exciting news from Mexican shark scientist, Mauricio Hoyos, when we arrived on station. Mauricio just finished spending 22 hours tracking a 1.5 metre great white shark that he tagged. A 1.5 metre shark is a NEWBORN!! We have seen two 6 footers and a 7 footer over the last couple of weeks (6 – 7 feet would would be an animal less than 1 year old) but this is the first time that anyone has seen a newborn out here.

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Deep Scratches and Fresh Wounds on a Female Great White Shark

By on October 2nd, 2007 in Archive, Captain Mike, Guadalupe

Great white sharks are considered to have “adaptive intelligence” and learn lessons as they try out new behaviour – a trait which is presumably very useful to an apex predator. Adaptive intelligence seemed to be at work here as this white shark learned that he could “sneak up” on the throw lines without the wranglers on the back deck seeing him. That is, until he brushed up against a sacrificial zinc on the hull of the Nautilus and scratched himself, which in turn seemed to end his experimentation with this new type of behaviour.

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Unbelievably Cute 6-Foot Little Great White Sharks

By on October 1st, 2007 in Archive, Captain Mike, Guadalupe

To our great surprise, some even smaller sharks showed up as well. Newborn great white sharks are believed to be 1.5 metres in length (slightly less than 5 feet). Well, we saw 2 different sharks that couldn’t have been more than 6 feet long! Way cool and I would think much younger than even a year old. They were unbelievably cute (if you are into great white sharks that is).

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