SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA | ADVENTURE TRAVEL
Swimming with sharks in Baja California
JUST after 6 a.m., I awoke to the sound of someone chanting my name. Peeling back the side curtain of my upper bunk, I was greeted by the wide-awake face of Alan De Herrera, trying to roust me from the cubbyhole where I had been holed up for the last 10 hours.
It had been a rugged 22-hour steam by boat from San Diego, about 215 miles away. Ten-foot swells had resulted in a stomach-churning side-to-side tottering, but somehow, overnight, hunger had replaced nausea.
The Mexican sunrise anointed me when I ascended the stairs. Less than a mile away, I could see Guadalupe Island, host to one of the world's largest aggregations of great white sharks.
The reason I was here.
While we ate, our vessel, the Odyssey, maneuvered to the northeastern, leeward side of the island, anchoring about 200 yards off an area nicknamed "Shark Heaven." We had signed on with Patric Douglas, a veteran of shark-diving operations and the chief executive of Shark Diver, which offered this five-day, live-aboard package.
Guadalupe, 19 miles long and five miles across at its widest point, is a pinniped sanctuary: Northern elephant seals, Guadalupe fur seals and California sea lions congregate at rookery and haul-out points around its perimeter. Abundant yellowfin tuna and yellowtail also attract sport fishermen.
In 1998, long-range fishing boats out of San Diego began reporting great whites attacking their catches.
Word spread like chum.
Keep hands inside the cage
TRACY ANDREW, our dive operations manager, laid down the rules with disarming authority: Never stick any part of your body outside the cage, and never make any sudden movements that might trigger a "predator-prey reaction," she said at the dive meeting. Tracy would monitor us from the dive platform. Another "sharky" would man a push-pole during rotations.
"If a shark were to come in too close to the cages, we push it off," Tracy said. "It doesn't harm the shark. We just give them a little extra nudge to keep them from entering the cage, because sharks don't have a reverse mode."
I was the only noncertified diver which was why Patric had emphasized taking a pre-trip introductory scuba course. "Some people get claustrophobia or panic," he had told me. "The last thing you need to worry about is breathing through a regulator with great white sharks swimming in your face."
Noncertified divers are allowed because you don't go deeper than 10 feet (the height of the cages) and breathing is done through a "hookah," a regulator on the end of a long hose connected to a shipboard air compressor.
We were divided into two teams — Black and Blue — of eight divers per group. Each team was further halved into A and B, designating starboard and port cages, respectively. Teams would alternate one-hour dive rotations. There were 11 crew aboard (usually there are nine) and 17 divers, including Mauricio Hoyos Padilla, a 28-year-old shark researcher from La Paz, Mexico. Patric has been an ardent sponsor of Mauricio and other shark researchers.
"Something truly special is happening at this island," Patric said as we waited for the seas to abate enough to dive, "and I believe it's absolutely incumbent for any eco-tour operator to give back or channel funds into any sort of research going on. But without direct engagement with the Mexicans, we will lose this site."
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