Great whites again!!

[beamjoel]

I am headed for Catalina this Sat. so I decided to check the local fish reports to see what the anglers are getting into out there. The first posting I see on the allcoast.com :: fishing report is that two boats worth of divers were chased back into the boats (Sundiver and ??) by GWs at two different locations on 3-24-08. They are reported at 15-17 feet, so biggies!!
I guess the large Sea Lion population has got some resident tax collectors. I guess that they are thinking that atleast 3 have taken up full time residency.

Ill report any sighting when I get back on Sat. Or should I say if I get back


good luck

Joel

[Mongrel454]

ALl i can say is F#@K that LOL

I aint seen a shark yet and i hope i never do.

[armandozx]

lol ajajaja dude I love that response! even though I prob won't see a GW here in Miami,FL I wish not to see a HH shark or a bull shark. like you said F*@K that 2!

[Bill McIntyre]

Beachgoers abuzz about sharks - Los Angeles Times

[beamjoel]

Bill,

Are you calling "hog wash" on the reports? I have read about all the local coastal frenzy over reported GW sightings but we both know that there have been "actual" encounters around the island.

Do you think the recent encounters posted on allcoast are hype?

That would be ok with me!!!!!

Keep up the nice work but try to leave some for ME!!!!!!

Good Luck,

Joel

[Bill McIntyre]

I think the reports are probably true, at least most of them. Every year surfers at Trestles get run out of the water by "small" great white sightings, and the Marine helo pilots report seeing plenty of them along the Camp Pendleton coast.

I just try to be philosophical about it. I've never seen one, even from the boat, and only one has been seen by anyone while diving from my boat. That was an estimated 17 footer on Farnsworth Bank. I can think of about 6 other guys I know who have seen them underwater. Its an experience I would just as soon do without.

[Bill]

Joel
Just to give the observations a little balance..... For 25 years we dove most of the good spots from the Coronados to Point Conception, over 1,000 days in the water (many sunrises and a few sunsets). I saw sharks twice. One day a couple of blues came by at Santa Cruz Island and one white checked me out when I was banging around on hookah at a known shark spot off Santa Rosa Island. Over the years we also had a chance to talk to many people about the 'known' shark attacks. Near as I can tell a third of the reports are as phony as a three dollar bill.
If you go diving, be very careful when you drive to and from the marina, that's the most dangerous part of the day. Same with aviation. I flew for 40 years and for every one that I knew that died in an airplane there were 50 that died on the road.
My two cents worth.

[Bill McIntyre]

Originally Posted by Bill

I flew for 40 years and for every one that I knew that died in an airplane there were 50 that died on the road.
My two cents worth.

But I bet you knew a hell of a lot more drivers than pilots.

I only flew 20 years, but it was all in USMC single-piloted jets, and I lost a lot more friends to aviation accidents than I did to car crashes. Hell, I lost a lot more friends to accidents than I did to enemy fire in Vietnam.

And it wasn't an either/or situation. I still had to drive to work on the freeway before I got in the airplane.

But back to sharks- most of us have to drive to get in the water where the sharks are.

[beamjoel]

thanks for the years of experience shared! I have been in the water for about 25 years now bodyboarding and diving and have only had one run in with a smaller 8ft mako and it gave me no grief.

This site is great for more than just tech. support!!! I feel better already! HAHA

good luck

Joel

[mateusz h2o]

my cousin dove off the back side of catalina a few times and told me a story where he encoutered a white, but nothing happend. you have been in the water for 35 years so you know how to react in that sort of situation. but i can see how there have been sightings of whites around catalina. good luck when you go out there let me know how it is. where are you going exactly?

[beamjoel]

h20,

I wrote that I have been in the water for 25 years and have only have 1 encounter so I am not sure how I would react to having a run in with a fish of that size? I would hope I could keep my wits about me and wait till I got back in the boat to mess my suit!!! HAHA

Headed to the Front / West side, Great Whites be damned!!!!!!!!

Good Luck

Joel

[MahiMan]

Man........ I would probably seriously lose my composure if I see one of those submarines approaching me in a bold manner O_o

[MahiMan]

I remember running into an article a while back about this guy Terry Maas and how he killed a 14ft tiger in self defense while spearfishing for yellowfin tuna.



In any given dive, we’d often be accompanied by two of the four species of sharks common to the area: schooling hammerheads, the ubiquitous browns, solitary tiger sharks and the aggressive, and speedy silver-tip sharks.

We faced a dilemma when managing a speared and thrashing tuna: Let it fight 30 feet below, where there is a greater risk of loss to the sharks, or risk bringing it to the surface and subdue it quickly and get it into the boat before the sharks got too excited. Veteran bluewater hunter Ron Mullins tried the latter. Unable to get the attention from our observers in the sloppy seas, he hoped that holding his 100-pound fish close enough to subdue it with his knife would buy him time. He held his own against the browns, but he was ultimately forced to deliver his catch straight into the mouth of a rocket-fast, silver-tip shark which chose to avoid any preliminary circling and simply attacked.

Curiously, the sharks tended to leave the larger tuna unmolested. We’d observed smaller tuna break from a passing school and ram the stomachs of brown sharks. Perhaps, we speculated, given the aggressiveness of the smaller tuna, the sharks were not willing to challenge larger tuna even if they were injured.

Since I’d nearly become lunch for a 1,000-pound tiger shark 6 months earlier, we were especially alert for the largest of potential man-eaters. Usually, when we spot a large tiger, they keep their distance, often swimming obliquely toward us and then angling away, never getting closer than 30 feet. This particular 14-foot tiger acted differently. It decided it would rather eat me than admire my form. Swimming straight up from 100 feet, the great eater-of-men never wavered in its path directly toward me. When it opened its mouth 6 feet away, I fired. An hour later, the beast lay on the deck still snapping its jaws in defiance, my spear imbedded in its head between the eyes.

[mateusz h2o]

crazy story. i think that if i saw a shark and i was under i would try to stay as calm as possible even though it owuld be harder than hell. but yea my friend said thats what he did. he said he nearly got swb on his way up because he was down for so long. he started seeing white and got disoriented when he surfaced

[Lockedin]

Well, Joel, How was it? Good dives I hope!

BTW, I was only driven out once: LARGE dorsal fin that we sighted at the old oil piers, just south of Santa Barbara. We never did identify the species, only that it was a LARGE, shark's dorsal fin, about 40-50meters from shore. My only other sighting was from the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln: A massive Great White (appx: 4 meters) swam out from under the ship as we made our way into the Puget Sound - Beautiful animal, in a beautiful locale.