It is early morning on the Pacific, outside of Baja California. I am navigating towards Islas Revillagigedo, having just finished our last dive at Isla Guadalupe. It is a 16-day repositioning trip, ending our season with the great white sharks in Guadalupe and starting the season in Socorro (as it is most popularly called, although Socorro is just one of the four islands in the Revillagigedo archipelago) diving with giant mantas, dolphins, and 11 species of sharks. From January through April, we also get to see humpback whales underwater.
It has been 5 years since I last worked with the white sharks in Guadalupe. It was interesting to be back; this year I went for 8 trips. I still recognized some of the sharks… old Bruce was there, although I missed Shredder and Lucy. On the last day we had a shark whose talent was to catch seagulls. He caught two on the same day, just beside our boat.
Towards the end of the season we could see more of the bigger sharks; when the season started we had mostly smaller males. The small ones still measure up to 4 meters long, so “small” is relative…
Yesterday we did some dives by the island of Cedros. Most of the time we hung out with sea lion pups in a sea lion rookery. It was nice being out there, where there were almost no other people around. At Cedros I could see some of the first humpback whales starting to head down south towards the cape of Baja, mainland Mexico, and also Revillagigedo.
I can’t wait to see what’s in store for this season.
