Isla Guadalupe:
Mexico’s Great White Sharks (2003 Trip Report)

By Patric Douglas - This season Absolute Adventures-Shark Diver introduced 144 excited divers to the wild world of white sharks during our eight-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.”

Say Cheese (Patric Douglas)

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 island’s ancient tangle of volcanic formations, cinder cones and Devil’s Post Piles while we set up for our three-day stay. 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 “shredded” dorsal fin and several deep bite marks on his head happened at 7.00am. He came in fast from the left, 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 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. But apex predators, such as this one, 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.

Guadalupe Local (Patric Douglas)

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. Fortunately we have 100 square feet of cages between our divers and these animals. Even so, 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 even to the most dedicated shark diver.

Over the three days we spent at Guadalupe, our divers filmed and dove with over 14 different Great Whites. But 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 Scotty, our boats captain, during the last dive 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. Kevin and Matt, two divers not in cage rotation, 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!” That was Matt. One look into his face and I knew he was speaking the truth.

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