4/10/2023 0 Comments Shark bridge windowsAmong the pictured sharks are Fat Tony (the charter member of Shark Diver’s roster), Nacho, Belt Strap, Bruce, Captain Hook, Harvey, the Russian. A thick ring binder, the “family album,” circulates in Horizon’s wood-paneled saloon. A compilation of photographs (including contributions from amateur cage divers) plus tagging and satellite tracking is steadily producing a detailed profile of the Guadalupe community of great whites. Shark Diver, in conjunction with the Marine Conservation Science Institute, has identified, recorded and named more than 85 individual great whites that regularly return to the area, now a reserve protected by the Mexican government. The mission, as always: to watch at close hand this impressive animal in its natural surroundings. On this August morning Horizon’s crew, scientists and ecotourists are arriving under the aegis of Shark Diver, a leading operator of “sharking” excursions to Guadalupe. But recent growth in the popularity of shark-cage diving has opened new opportunities. Swimmers and scuba divers ardently avoid the sharks, and useful observation in study tanks or aquariums is impossible because the animals do not survive prolonged captivity. Remarkably, they also are now listed as endangered, and when an apex species is in trouble the threat can cascade down through the entire food chain.įor years close encounters were pretty much out of the question. To scientists and shark devotees, great whites are a feast of complex behaviors-maddeningly coy in their breeding habits and wary but stunningly accomplished killers. The great white is the undisputed king of the cartilage-skeletoned vertebrates that have been swimming through the seas for 400 million years and the supreme iteration of an “apex predator”-top dog-in its watery world. It is the world’s largest predatory fish, typically 13 to 16 feet long, weighing 1,500 to 2,500 pounds. The inshore waters of Guadalupe make up one of the few known habitats for this formidable migrating creature. It is Carcharodon carcharias, the great white shark. There, deep in flat, dark water, something is also stirring, and everyone onboard is thinking about it. In the distance, sunlight outlines the arc of Guadalupe’s northeast inlet. We’re shaking off sleep, gabbing, sipping coffee, eager to catch sight of our first landfall on this remote volcanic rock. He glances down through the bridge windows at the dozen or so passengers gathered on Horizon’s foredeck. The skipper, Greg Grivetto, is standing the final watch of a 20-hour passage from San Diego. Rolling slightly in a gentle Pacific swell, our 80-foot trawler Horizon motors toward the island’s north end. A windless dawn rises over Isla Guadalupe, 150 miles west of the Baja California coast.
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