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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Does A Great White Shark – ahem – Poop in the Water??

By on September 30th, 2007 in Archive, Captain Mike, Guadalupe

Today we had visual confirmation that at least one of the great white sharks of Guadalupe Island does indeed – ahem – poop in the water. And boy when they do, is there ever a lot of poop!! It was my turn to play at shark wrangling when I spotted a big female swimming under the boat. Something looked odd – as if she was trailing something. Some of our guests were watching from the hot-tub deck and shouted out “2 sharks,” “no, 3 sharks,” “no, 5 sharks,” “man, there are 6 sharks there.” By that point in time, I had figured out what was going on and shouted back “heck no, that is one very big shark taking a personal moment in front of you!!!” Digital and video evidence confirmed my contention. The amount of discharged material was quite astonishing but I suppose, not unreasonable for a 2500 pound animal that is 17 feet long.

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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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