Monday, September 1, 2003

19:46 - We boarded the Horizon early this morning and were en route to Guadalupe by approximately 9:30. Captain Ron and San Diego Shark Diving owner Doc Anes gave a boat briefing as soon as we started off. We are now at some local fishing grounds catching dinner (for us) and bait (for the white sharks). Don just landed a good sized blue-fin tuna and a yellow-tail, so it looks like we will be eating well tomorrow!

Tuesday, September 2, 2003

23:18 - It's late, and I'm exhausted. We had encounters with four to five individual great white sharks today, and the first arrived during our practice dive, only half an hour after the cages went into the water! All of them were male, and the largest was somewhere around ten to twelve feet long. Two of them stayed around the cages (one had a black satellite tag and the remnants of a brown tag attached to his dorsal fin), coming in fairly close, but the others kept their distance. One large one buzzed by with a pilotfish riding just under his nose, but he never came back for a second look.

The weather has been amazing here so far (which means that there has been plenty of sunlight for photos). The visibility in the water was good as well, although it started to cloud up a bit late in the afternoon. A boat carrying a team from National Geographic is anchored not far from us, and spotted a 12-15' female late in the afternoon. Hopefully she will come in tomorrow. :)

Jessie Harper (one of the crew, and recently featured along with Doc Anes on Discovery Channel's Shark Week) is attempting to identify and catalog all of the white sharks we spot. It's difficult because she's relying on photographs from those of us who are shooting digital. I only photographed one of the multiple sharks I saw today because he was the only one who came in close. Now that we know about the ongoing ID effort, we'll try to shoot shots of new sharks that come in, even if they are not close enough for us to get a photo that we would normally keep.

Wednesday, September 3, 2003

17:08 - There's a young sea lion bull swimming around, stealing bait. We're all secretly hoping that he'll be hit by a great white, even though most of us will not voice such a desire without suitable disclaimers. :) He's been followed by one a few times, but never in a way that looked threatening. Like yesterday, a great white showed up within half an hour of the cages entering the water. We have seen at least four individuals today (I have photographs of two of them from underwater, and one additional one from the surface), all of them fairly large males. I call them "large" because they are all 10' or longer, but a 10' great white shark is actually quite small for the species. Still, they're really impressive animals. It may just be my imagination, but they seem to move with more purpose than other shark species do.

We haven't had any cage bumping yet, and none of the sharks have come in really close. But we still have two more days in the water with them. :) We go into the cages in hour-long shifts, each followed by an hour-long break on the surface; some of us have been staying in the cage for longer shifts, taking empty spots left by skipped turns. In particular, Douglas has been a cage-fiend, staying in their for hours at a time. I've been experimenting with my camera (with red filters and such), so I've opted to take all of my breaks to see the effects of my experimentation. The hotshoe connection in my housing broke today, and I had to solder the thing back on. Unfortunately, I discovered that 1) it is not easy to solder a small connection on a rocking boat, and 2) melting plastic smells really bad. But it's working now. I'm certain that it will break as soon as I touch it again, so we're leaving the soldering iron out in the galley. :)

19:24 - I should have stayed in the water! Had my body not quit on me from exhaustion, I would have. Although... it was also the crappy visibility that drifted in, and the complete lack of activity for two hours that prevented me from going in again. Near the end of the day's diving, activity picked up considerably. A male sea lion was swimming around with a 10-13' male white shark in close proximity. At one point, the shark missed the bait, turned around, and bit Harry (Harry is our carpet seal cut-out). Sharks can't swim backwards, and this one didn't have much room to maneuver. He rammed into the cage where Douglas was positioned (who had luckily just pulled his camera in to delete images out of his full compact flash card) and broke one of the welded joints! Sounds like fun, huh? I'm sorry I missed it. We have two more days for more shark/cage contact.

Thursday, September 4, 2003

21:47 - Best day of white shark action so far! We had four to five individuals, all from 10-12' in length. I saw four, but only have photographs of two. A large male with a satellite tag and mouth wound (shark #008) played with us all morning, going for bait repeatedly. The sea lion that was here yesterday was also around, sometimes swimming within just a few feet of the great white. Shark #008 banged into the cages twice, and took multiple test bites at a surfboard that Darren and Ron brought with them. The board was covered with carpet to make it look like a seal or a turtle, and it hangs off of the back of the boat along with Harry. Interestingly, the sharks tend only to bite at Harry and the surfboard after missing bait (we have good wranglers, and the sharks are rarely able to get bait off of the line). The shark with the claw marks above its left-hand gills (#001) was back as well, displaying its characteristic behavior. He only ventured above the bottom of the cage a few times, prefering to stay deep, and tended to move off when larger sharks appeared.

Friday, September 5, 2003

23:40 - Kaz, Mike (Dukes) and I are the only non-crew awake; we're sitting the galley watching everything rock back and forth with the mild swell we're motoring through. Having left Guadalupe a bit late, we are anticipating a 4-6pm arrival time in San Diego.

We moved to a different location during the night, a bit closer to the lighthouse, where the white shark action has traditionally been very good. I spent most of the day manning my pole-cam, looking for a close-up shot of a gaping great white. The morning was very quiet; in fact, it was the first day a white shark didn't show up within half an hour of the beginning of shark watch. By early afternoon, we had four sharks circling the cages. We saw at least five individuals today, including our first female, who was quite large, weighing in at somewhere between 12-13' in length. She clearly was at the top of the social ladder (in this group, I mean), and was considerably larger in girth than the males were. Most of our sharks today were interested in everything floating on the surface of the water; bait was readily pursued, Harry was literally ingested and regurgitated (and later on torn into several pieces), and Don's surfboard is now adorned with two semi-circular holes and several teeth marks. One of the white sharks bit into the surfboard, picked it up, and shook it back and forth until it had ripped a section out of it! More bars in Doc's cages were bent by sharks coming in too close, and in a spectacular display of misplaced aggression, the left-hand cage's air supply hoses were bitten in half, along with the rope securing that side of the cage. It's not that white sharks are out to destroy equipment. It's that they have just come in on some bait and are likely to bite the next thing they see after our wranglers pull food out from right under their noses. In any case, the four divers in the cage came up pretty quickly after their air supply was cut short. :)

The shark action continued until the end of the last dive, at 6pm. It ended spectacularly, with five sharks circling the cages in low light. My camera was almost taken by a great white three times, but I narrowly escapes bad fortune, ending up with some dramatic down-the-gullet shots. Joe from Brooklyn was hit in the knee by a great white after he missed my camera. Not many people can say that they were injured by a great white shark without having scars from the encounter. :)

Initially, I was a bit disappointed that I decided not to shoot from inside the cage today. Tthe action was amazing, and the visibility was the best we have had so far -- probably over 100'. However, I ended up being pleased with my decision because I managed to get photographs that would not have been possible without a pole-cam.

I've really enjoyed being on the boat with this group of divers. The crew and guests on board were a "meat and potatoes" sort of crowd -- almost 100% different than the crowd I had been with on the Sky Dancer just a week before (who were an "afternoon tea" sort of crowd, with a bit of Dutch madness thrown in). Obviously, everyone here likes to be in the water with sharks, and it was great to finally meet Kaz, whom I have heard about for a long time now. The Horizon has a very San Diegan feel to it, and being here for a week reminded me a lot of how I felt when I lived here.

Special thanks to Dave Haas for organizing the trip, to Doc Anes for keeping us on schedule by yelling at us every fifteen minutes, to Mark and Monica for the wonderful food, to Captains Ron and Chris for keeping us afloat, and to Patti, Sterling, Dave, and Jessie for keeping our shark encounters exciting and safe.

Author: Eric H Cheng