We begin with a slow start; one large female great white shark circling the submersible cages a few times on our first dive before disappearing, along with all of her friends for the second and third. Dive four is when things begin to get fun. A mixed bag of visitors begins to show up, including […]
Read MoreThe divemastesr soon found their own form however, snatching the tuna baits away from a large female with a severely broken tail who seemed to be working in tandem with “Chica,” who is a regular visitor when we are in Guadalupe. “Broken Tails” showed some very interesting behaviour – flicking her caudal fin against one of the transom cages and then later rubbing up against the same cage.
Read MoreInteresting 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.
Read MoreSo 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.
Read MoreGreat 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.
Read MoreWhite 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.
Read MoreOne 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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