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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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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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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Shredder – Our Favourite Tattered and Beat-Up Great White Shark

By on September 27th, 2007 in Archive, Captain Mike, Guadalupe

White shark sightings and behaviour today were very good although I would describe it as the slowest day of this trip. We had a steady stream of sharks swimming past the cages. Sightings included “Snow White,” “Shredder,” “Rocket,” 1 medium female that we couldn’t identify (even with the help of Mauricio, our favourite Mexican shark scientist), and one very big and very clean and beautiful momma female that we think might be “Sarah.” Unlike last year, we haven’t seen much of “Bruce” –  he has been by a couple of times but has not been making daily visits the way he did last season.

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One Big Momma Scary Great White Shark

By on September 26th, 2007 in Archive, Captain Mike, Guadalupe

One very interesting animal today was a very large beautiful female. It is unusual to see such a “clean”  shark – no scars, no bite marks, no disfigurations, no tags – and even more unusual to see a very large female this early in the Guadalupe season. Chatting with our guests later during cocktail hour, I was surprised to find that they all got the same spooky feeling from this shark that I did. She was one scary shark and it felt very uncomfortable when she started doing extremely close passes in front of the cage. It is very unusual to run across a white shark that is scary but there is no other way to describe this big female. Her habit of rocketing up out of the deep to take the tuna bait was exceptionally disconcerting.

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Easy Transit and Super White Shark Action

By on September 24th, 2007 in Archive, Captain Mike, Guadalupe

Great white shark sightings and behaviour were EXCELLENT today with more animals than I have ever seen before. Positive identifications included poor tattered old Shredder (he is one beat up looking shark!), Skid, New Rock, Criss Cross as well as some other animals that we couldn’t positively ID. At one point four sharks were circling 40 feet deep below the boat! All the sharks that we saw were males today. The award for most interesting behaviour would have to go to one very inquisitive 9 foot juvenile. This guy would come very close to the cages and was not at all hesitant about mixing it up with much bigger animals.

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