This season Absolute Adventures-Shark Diver introduced 144 excited divers to the wild world of white sharks during our 8-week shark
season. What we encountered there on our first expedition was nothing short of spectacular and began with an extraordinary introduction to one very wild
great white that we quickly named "Shredder."
"Shredder"
Arrival to Guadalupe is always exciting for our divers and crew. Divers wake up after a 20-hour crossing from San Diego, California and walk to the
bow of our vessel with coffee in hand investigating and filming the islands' ancient tangle of volcanic formations, cinder cones and Devils Post Piles
while we set up for our three-day stay here. Many of our divers say they half expect to see some kind of flying dinosaur swoop down from the high
3000-foot craggy peaks after our arrival. Guadalupe is that kind of wild "off the beaten track" kind of place, 210 miles from nowhere located in
deep blue waters of the Pacific. The perfect place for world-class tuna fishing and as it turns out unparalleled white shark diving.
Our first encounter with a 14-foot male white shark complete with a "shredded" dorsal fin and several deep bite marks on his head happened at 7.00am.
He came in fast from the left, and our first sight was of his mangled dorsal fin slicing through the surface toward our hang baits (tuna). He hit the
first one with an unexpected fury, then turned and zeroed in on the second hang bait, missing it and disappearing into the blue distance. Closer
inspection of this deeply scarred shark revealed his entire left eye which was milky; it had been damaged in the encounter with a larger more
aggressive shark in years past. These impressive wounds should have killed this animal, apex predators can sustain a lot of physical damage as
we discovered later in the season with Chompers, Top Notch and Split Fin not to mention Maximus who was missing clearly one third of his tail to a
very recent bite.
Another smaller 10-foot female we named Cuddles soon joined us along with two unidentified males. Her disposition was perfect for shark diving. Slow
moving, cautious, and inquisitive at the same time. She had an unusually large and distended belly, looking like she had fed very well recently.
Shredder, on the other hand, was quirky, fast moving and very aggressive, attacking hang baits (tuna) with abandon and flashing past our 20-foot
shark cages at top speed, thrilling our divers. Even in 100-foot visibility a white shark can sneak up on divers they will not even know is there
until it's right on top of them. Even though we have 100 square feet of cages between our divers and these animals, having a shark like Shredder
with his scarred face and milky eye run his pectoral fins along the cage bars like a school kid on the neighbors' fence is a bit unnerving to
even the most dedicated shark diver.
Over the course of the three days we spent at Guadalupe our divers filmed and dove with over 14 different Great Whites. It was Shredder who stole
the show. His arrivals on site were always quick, coming in fast from either the left or right and staying just long enough to destroy one or two
hang baits in a powerful display of predation. This was also one of the few sharks we encountered that seemed to be "aware" of the divers in our
cages, spending time to investigate them with his good eye on several extremely close passes.
Shredder Takes a Bite
I was up in the wheelhouse with our boat's captain (Scotty) during the last dive of our last day at the island. This had been an amazing expedition
thus far and our shark cages were loaded for the last time with die-hard shark divers. At the time three new sharks in the 10-13 foot class were
entertaining them. Two divers not in cage rotation, Kevin and Matt, were fishing for "last chance" tuna on the bow of our 86-foot dive boat the
Ocean Odyssey when our crew in the wheelhouse heard a large splash. Seconds later a startled voice called up to us, "Umm, hey, a shark just blasted
up and severed the anchor cable from our boat."
