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Teasing Great White Sharks!
Location: Guadalupe Island, MEXICO
11 am
Day 3
by Wayne & Karen Brown |
We woke up to our first sunrise at Guadalupe Island!
It looks like it will be another great day to dive with Great White Sharks! The sky is clear and there is only a slight breeze! We do notice that the boat is rocking a little bit. That shows us that there is a little ocean swell we didn't have yesterday...That means it will probably be a lilttle more bouncy inside the cages today...so more weight on our weight belts!
Today we will be doing something we didn't do on our Australia Great White Shark Expedition...We will be using a smaller cage that does not float at the surface...it is a special submersible cage that is lowered about 30 belwo the surface. Being in this cage will allow us to get some deeper water video the sharks and the cages on the back of the boat.
After breakfast we are ready to get in the cage!
The cage has been lowered into the water so the top is level with the deck of the ship so we can get into it easily. The ocean swell bangs the cage against the ship as we climb down into the cage with our cameras.
Safe and secure inside the cage the crew lowers the cage deeper into the ocean. No sharks around, yet. We like being in this cage because being deeper in the ocean, and not bolted to the boat, stops the bouncing around we experienced in the surface cages as they bob around on the ocan surface.
The cage stops at only 17 feet underwater. After a few minutes we wonder what is going on onboard the boat because the crew was supposed to lower us to twice this depth. Then to cage starts ascending! What is going on?
As the top of the cage breaks the surface of the water Rana tells us that we need to get out of the cage. He is worried about the ocean swell increasing and making it difficult to get us out of the cage! (He must have seen that movie 47 Meters Down about cage diving in Mexico where the cage drops to the ocean floor and the divers are trapped inside with Great White Sharks swimming all around them!)
Oh, well...The shark action is mainly near the surface so the surface cages are actually better for filming the Great White Sharks!
Today I guess that word got out that we have free shark food because we discover that we have even more Great White Sharks today! We counted a total eight Great White Sharks visiting throughout the day!
After lunch, while we were in a surface cage, an unexpected guest came by...a California sea lion! The sea lion didn't come by to hang out with us...He came by to tease the sharks! You would think that with all the Great White Sharks around the sea lions would be hiding out on the beach and keeping far away from the Great White Sharks! Not this guy! He would dive down and bite the sharks' fins as he swam around them. We assume that the sharks are used to this because they did not seem to react to his harrassement...They just slowly swam away ignoring the sea lion. It was funny to watch, but then we thought...Hey! We are paying big money to photograph the sharks and we don't want some goofy sea lion scaring away our subjects!
Fortunately after a short visit the sea lion swam away and didn't return...
We spent hours in the cages today and got lots of photos and video of all of the Great White Sharks that came to visit us!
Tomorrow afternoon we have to leave Guadalupe Island so we will be in the cages tomorrow for as long as possible...
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TODAY'S DATA
Guadalupe Island, MEXICO
Position: 29º 10' N / 118º 15' W
Air Temp: 75ºF
Weather: light breeze, clear skies
Water Temp: 68ºF
Underwater Visibility: 100+ ft
Sea: calm, little current, light swell
Sunrise at Guadalupe Island.
Wayne & Karen in the submersible cage.
Three of the 8 Great White Sharks that visited us today!
A sea lion harasses a Great White Shark!
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