Guadalupe Island

[OwRugby]

Can anyone describe what cage diving with great whites is like in Guadalupe Island? That might be #1 on my to do list, but I'm hoping it's worth it for just a handful of days. I HAVE to see these things in person before people kill them all off, I'm just hoping that after seeing the first three, that it doesn't become mundane. I know I sound spoiled when I say that I got kind of tired of seeing mantas in the Maldives, but I think when you're somewhere that's known for many things - including whale sharks, you have your hopes up to see them all. (not only did we not see the huge numbers of mantas, we didn't see many sharks much less any whale sharks) When you go somewhere for one thing in particular, I'd hope you wouldn't get tired of it. I don't know how you COULD get tired of seeing something 18 feet long, but just curious. That's another trip that's fairly expensive, especially for only 4 or 5 days. I know they can't guarantee sightings, but I'd be beside myself if I shelled out that kind of scratch to look at blue water.

 

[JulieM]

We went to Guadelupe Island the end of August on the Nautilus Belle Amie. It was just dumb luck, but the Belle Amie is the only boat I would consider because they have 5 cages (2 surface cages and 3 cages for certified divers). This is important to have enough time in the submersible cage. They scheduled divers in the submersible cage. Each rotation lasted about 40 minutes and we were down about 30 feet. It makes a difference because at 30 feet the Sharks come right up to the cage. We had up to 6 sharks at a time. One was 16.5 feet long. The morning rotations were sometimes slower, but we did see sharks on every cage dive. You could go in the surface cage any time you wanted to go. There were 22 people on the boat when we went. Although it was expensive, it is worth every dollar. It was a bucket list trip for us. The crew worked very hard to make sure everyone had their time in the cages. The cabins (even the cheaper ones) were very comfortable. The food was very delicious. We cannot find one thing that could have been improved. If you would like more info, please PM me. Just a hint: if you can go last minute we noticed that if they have last minute cancellations, they will offer 2 for 1 pricing.

 

[OwRugby]

Thank you so much! Very informative!!!

 

[drbill]

I was there in December of 2004 as part of a scientific research team tagging the great whites. We saw 15 individuals in three days, tagged 13 of them and my footage was used in Dr. Guy Harvey's "Portraits From the Deep" episode on great whites as well as in my own cable TV program. Since it was a private expedition, you probably couldn't compare my experience entirely with what you'd get on a commercial trip. However, the worst visibility we had was a slightly murky 40 ft the first day followed by 80 ft the following two days. That was much poorer than the expedition had experienced the year before. A storm was approaching so we had to cut our stay short by two days.

We had two surface cages with up to four people in each at a time. The largest fish we saw was an estimated 18 ft long female. Because we were there late in the season, the tuna had mostly disappeared so we could only get yellowtail to "bait" the sharks. Didn't really need to though as they came up close to the cages. Back then they didn't use submerged cages. Jean-Michel Cousteau's son Fabien was there at the same time filming a special on the sharks for CBS. They used the submersible roving unit.