Species: Great White Shark.
Location: Guadalupe Island, Mexico. 2015.
For years I have put the great white shark on the back burner, insisting that there were so many other shark species out there which I could be in the water with… But then in September 2015 I decided it was time to see what all the fuss was about!
I decided to book on the Guadalupe trip with “Big Fish Expeditions”, for which Andy Murch the well-known (prolific!) elasmobranch photographer, is the CEO and expedition leader. Unlike other well-known sites that are frequented by white sharks such as South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, the waters surrounding Guadalupe were practically crystal clear, with visibility typically ranging from an incredible 20-45m. Great White sharks group together and forage in the waters around the island from July through to February every year. In short it is a shark biologists & photographers dream!
From the point at which we began to drop anchor, we were utterly spoiled rotten by the abundance of sharks, with cries of “Tiburon” (shark) being shouted by the crew from dawn to dusk each day. At one point we had eight sharks, all within view; some sharks would hang around and check us out for a couple of hours, others would stay with us from sunrise to sunset, even accompanying us deeper in a submerged cage.
Everything about these animals fascinated me: their curiosity, speed, size, behaviours towards one another; their sheer presence blew me away. I had always held back from adding the word “great” to their name before; I thought it somehow unfair to the 500 other species of shark. Not anymore, this trip allowed me to fully comprehend the true greatness of the white shark.