Isla Guadalupe Shark Cage Diving - 2011 Trip Reports

Guadalupe Island is once again in full bloom with another season of record shark numbers and as always the "unexpected."

Newly minted Shark Diver James Woodhead joined us last week at Guadalupe not sure what to expect - but ready for anything.

It was that mindset that helped James when the "unexpected" happened, it's also the reason why Shark Diver builds and maintains the best shark cages in the business.

Here's James after action report:

Turning 40 this year finally lit a fire under me to fulfil a childhood ambition - diving with Great Whites. Luckily, my web research led me to Shark Diver's website, and I'm so glad it did.

After a long sea journey to Guadalupe we finally got to suit up and get going. Being non-certified, Dive Master Martin showed me the ropes of breathing with the regulator and clearing my mask underwater, and thankfully I didn't have any problems.

On the first day, amongst some 'regular' Guadalupe sharks returning to say hello to the cages, a notable encounter was with a very shy young male White Shark who was very wary of the cages. Martin said we should keep a special eye out for him over the next few days. Again on day two, our young shark turned up and kept his distance. We also saw Jaques, a Guadalupe regular who is now over 16-foot, and a female regular too.

Both sharks got very close to the cages.

On our last day, the regulars turned up again. Our mystery male also arrived, and this time headed straight for my cage. I took a lovely photo of him very close to the cage, which I have attached, and thought "He's not stopping". The next second he'd rammed our cage with his snout - just out of curiosity - and shot off at very high speed.

It might have been the shock of his life, but it was a huge thrill for myself and my cagemates.

I would like to thank Patric for his excellent customer service, and our crew; Captains Spencer and Kyle, Galley Crew Mark and Alyssa, Dive Master Martin, and crewmen Mark, Nick and Kyle, who were always friendly, informative, funny and professional, (and in the case of Mark and Alyssa, damned good cooks!).

I'd also like to thank my shipmates, who to a man (and woman) were excellent company.

They all helped to make the dreams of a 5-year old English kid an unforgettable experience for a 40-year old English guy!

Cheers,

James Woodhead UK

Shark Diver Guadalupe 2012 - Shark Diving Expeditions

Shark Diver M/V Horizon 2012

August

17-21, 22-26, 27-31

September

1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, 21-26

October

8-12, 13-17, 18-22

Our 2011 pricing includes 12+ divers per trip max (compare other boats with 16-24 divers), U.S. shark and vessel crews, all shark diving permits, unlimited beer and wine, soft drinks, wet suits, weight systems, on board accommodations, meals, snacks, transfers from San Diego airport.

Shark Diver offers expedition forward pricing so you do not get hit with surprises down the line.

Solo shark divers are encouraged and never hit with a single supplement fee. Ever.

Book your 2012 Adventure Today

Departs from San Diego
Inclusive pricing
$3100 per person

Tiger Rip Fest Nom, Nom, Nom

A pack of tiger sharks take turns to attack the carcass of a dead humpback whale in Onion Bay on Palm Island, near Townsville. The sharks, some up to a 5m in length, stick their snouts out of the water to rip the blubber off the carcass.

Yes we love this video, watching sharks do what they do "au naturel" is a sight to behold.

Behold:

Sharks and DNA Zip Codes - Hope?

An international team of scientists, led by the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University, has used DNA to determine that groups of dusky sharks (Carcharhinus obscurus) and copper sharks (Carcharhinus brachyurus) living in different coastal regions across the globe are separate populations of each species. Both are large apex predators that are heavily exploited for the shark fin trade, which claims tens of millions of animals every year to produce the Asian delicacy, shark fin soup.

Many of these species are declining as a result of this fishing pressure for their fins.

DNA research projects were conducted by a collaborative international team of scientists from the United States, Australia, South America, Asia, New Zealand and southern Africa. The scientists collectively analyzed part of the mitochondrial DNA in nearly 400 sharks sampled from all over the globe.

This research was funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts through a grant to the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University. Sequence data were collected in the Field Museum's Pritzker Laboratory for Molecular Systematics and Evolution, operated with support from the Pritzker Foundation. Additional sequence data were collected at the Guy Harvey Research Institute with operational funds and a grant from the Save Our Seas Foundation. Funding was also provided by the Turner Fellowship Program and the Tinker Foundation.

For more information on "Global phylogeography of the dusky shark, Carcharhinus obscurus: implications for fisheries management and monitoring the shark fin trade," visit here.

For more information on "Phylogeography of the copper shark (Carcharhinus brachyurus) in the southern hemisphere: implications for the conservation of a coastal apex predator," visit here.

Guy Harvey Tiger Tracks - Just The Facts

The Guy Harvey Tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier) tracking program is delivering the goods, and for folks like us who just love to know the "what,why and where" of the animals we are fortunate to encounter each year, this is just good stuff:

An important requirement for the proper management and conservation of any shark species is a robust understanding of its migratory patterns, how it uses its environment, and identification of what is termed its “critical habitat” – areas that are key to successful reproduction and feeding. To understand tiger shark movements and aid in conservation efforts, the GHRI/GHOF in collaboration with the Bermuda Shark Project and with financial support from AFTCO is investigating tiger shark movements in the western North Atlantic in a long-term study. The sharks’ movements are being studied by employing satellite tags that relay information on where the tiger shark is and/or its depth in the ocean.

Kudos to the entire Guy Harvey team and the good folks at the Bermuda Shark Project for helping us all learn more about these magnificent animals.

Study results so far.

What.We.Do.Media - You Need Them

Who are they? What do they do?

What.We.Do.Media is the brainchild behind a lot of the imagery, websites and PSA's that have been floating around the industry as of late. We hired their design team to create, build and launch the all new Shark Diver website.

Celebrating a decade in the commercial shark diving industry required a team who knew marketing, the dive world, conservation, and of course, sharks. Try finding that in an online web 2.0 template.

Fortunately for us the diverse team over at What.We.Do.Media knew exactly what we were looking for. In today's marketplace anyone can build a website. But to create a brand, and help launch it takes skill, dedication, and understanding.

Do we endorse the team over at What.We.Do Media?

Damn right we do and we're willing to share our success with you. You need What.We.Do.Media for all your your next web creation, branding and site launch.

So, you want to be in this industry for just a year, or the next twenty years?

Call them today, and start booking divers tomorrow.

Dermal Denticles, Cristina Zenato, and Anti-Bac?

This week CBS news (not known for pro-shark coverage) was in the Bahamas with the First Lady of Shark Diving, Cristina Zenato, to discuss sharks, dermal denticles and researchers use of simulated sharks skin for new anti-bacterial efforts in the lab and beyond.

It's nice to see pro-shark media coming from the Bahamas especially when a critical push to make the Bahamas a full fledged Shark Sanctuary is in the works by many of the regional stakeholders including for the first time shark diving operations.

Image by Christy Fisher.

Complete article here.

Today's Sharks: Smart, Tagged, and in Short Supply

Scientific American did a great piece this month with Doc Gruber in the Bahamas on sharks, research and conservation.

Sci Am jumped into the shark conservation arena with Shark Diver on 2008, but this latest article hits all the right notes.

Kudos.

"Many sharks have good learning capacity, which is one way we measure intelligence," says Samuel Gruber, a marine biologist at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS), who discovered in 1975 that lemon sharks could learn a classical conditioning task 80 times faster than a cat or rabbit. "I was shocked to find that they could learn so rapidly," he says.

White Sharks off Florida? Yes!

First posted on Da Sharks blog this is one of those rare shark encounters at sea caught off the coast of Florida last week. While not unknown in the region this video is still very cool to watch.

For those of you who are white shark geeks like us, here's an in depth paper on whites in Florida waters - a good read.

Reminds us of the white shark that was beached in the Bahamas back in June 2008.

What's nice to see in this video is the respect the folks shooting this clip have for the white shark. Kudos:

Hawaii Shark Diving - Rep Gene Ward

Like a tuna's ability to attract sharks in waters seemingly devoid of them, a politician will also be attracted to "an issue" just as quickly. Rep Gene Ward of Hawaii has chosen his next big platform to be commercial shark diving and has opened his candidacy as the lead spokesman against the entire industry with an Op-Ed this week. His folksy approach to the industry is peppered with themes and sentiments taken from 1976.

Posing a series of innocent questions couched in a framework of "raw meat and fear" Mr.Ward has masterfully pushed the agenda forward and set the table for existing shark diving closures in Hawaii.

Rep Gene Ward is not the problem but a symptom of how our industry fails itself. Mr.Wards newly discovered public anti-shark diving persona was spawned at the sight of 300 angry residents, protesting a simply ludicrous commercial shark diving roll out in Hawaii Kai. The arrogance and outright stupidity of that single effort is the reason Mr.Ward has chosen to make the banning of all shark diving operations his "new cause".

As we have said before and to whoever will listen - commercial shark diving is under siege. As an industry in the western hemisphere there is not one well known commercial site that is currently not under new rules or under review by politicians and agencies.

This is the face of the anti-shark diving lobby - they are well spoken, well networked, and agenda driven. When will our industry get it's collective head out of it's ass and start working on solutions?

Sharks - Those Crazy DARPA Kids

DARPA is the military's design and development wing and they are designing "guided sharks" according to the BBC:

Pentagon scientists are planning to turn sharks into "stealth spies" capable of tracking vessels undetected, a British magazine has reported.

They want to remotely control the sharks by implanting electrodes in their brains, The New Scientist says.

It says the aim is "to exploit sharks' natural ability to glide through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails".

The unusual project was unveiled last week in Hawaii, it says.

'Steering' sharks

The research is being funded by the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), according to the magazine.

Remote-controlled sharks do have advantages that robotic underwater surveillance vehicles just cannot match: they are silent, and they power themselves The New Scientist

It aims to build on latest developments in brain implant technology which has already seen scientists controlling the movements of fish, rats and monkeys.

"Neural implants consists of a series of electrodes that are embedded into the animal's brain, which can then be used to stimulate various functional areas," the magazine says.

It says such devices are already being used by scientists at Boston University to "steer" a spiny dogfish in a fish tank.

The next step for the Pentagon scientists will be the release of blue sharks with similar devices into the ocean off the coast of Florida.

As radio signals will not penetrate the sea, communications with the animals will be made by sonar.

The US navy has acoustic signalling towers capable of sending sonar signals to a shark up to 300km (187 miles) away, the magazine says.

It says the scientists will be particularly interested in the animals' health during the tests.

"As wild predators, it is very easy to exhaust them, and this will place strict limits on how long the researchers can control their movements in any one session without harming them.

"Despite this limitation, though, remote-controlled sharks do have advantages that robotic underwater surveillance vehicles just cannot match: they are silent, and they power themselves," the magazine says.

The project was discussed at the 2006 Ocean Sciences Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Oceanic Dreams Blog - Breaking News

Wolfgang Leander got the shark scoop this afternoon from Washington DC.

With shark news from both the Maldives and now in the US it would seem this is has been a great week for sharks:

Some very good news coming out of Washington D.C today...The House of Representatives passed the Shark Conservation Act of 2009 (H.R. 81) yesterday. This bill would require sharks to be landed with their fins still naturally attached, which allows for better enforcement and data collection in stock assessments and quota monitoring.

For more information please read Oceana's press release (who also happened to be a driving force behind this initiative) and visit their website - specifically their shark section.

Editors Note:Kudos to those that made this happen. On the subject of first rate eco work support Oceana.org, they actually effect change with your money and your time.

Maldives Sharks - Historic Decision

The Marine Research Center, Maldives in tandem with the ministry of fisheries and agriculture has extended the moratorium on reef shark fishing to cover the whole of the Maldives, as part of a historic move towards a total ban on both reef and oceanic shark hunting.

The Banyan Tree Resort also deserves kudos for their ongoing efforts to preserve sharks in the region.

This move is simply remarkable, showing a level of government leadership that few other 1st world governments have yet to adopt. The Maldives have been quick studies of the power of shark tourism and research vs one time takes and this announcement sets the table for other governments such as Malaysia to follow suit:

Marie Saleem, a reef ecologist at the marine research centre and one of those at the forefront of the campaign to ban shark hunting, said she was both excited and relieved to hear that the efforts of those who had been pushing for a ban were finally fruitful.

For divers, shark conservationists, and others, sending an email of support would be highly appropriate at this time. When fisheries decide to make the right move for sharks we need to be there as well. Kudos.

Email: Maldives Fisheries