• Welcome to the DeeperBlue.com Forums, the largest online community dedicated to Freediving, Scuba Diving and Spearfishing. To gain full access to the DeeperBlue.com Forums you must register for a free account. As a registered member you will be able to:

    • Join over 44,280+ fellow diving enthusiasts from around the world on this forum
    • Participate in and browse from over 516,210+ posts.
    • Communicate privately with other divers from around the world.
    • Post your own photos or view from 7,441+ user submitted images.
    • All this and much more...

    You can gain access to all this absolutely free when you register for an account, so sign up today!

Fun with great white shark

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.
Bill McIntyre

Bill McIntyre

San Clemente, CA
Staff member
Forum Mentor
Jan 27, 2005
3,676
1,347
368
85
It was an exciting day for local divers in Southern California. I, along with two friends, went to Salt Creek, a spot just north of Dana Point harbor. The visibility was very poor, maybe 6 to 10 feet, so we decided to head down to the Barn kelp, a spot about 15 miles down the coast. Just as we got under way, we got a text from a friend at that spot. He said that the visibility wasn’t much better, and that Dave, a guy on his boat, got buzzed by a big great white shark. We decided Salt Creek wasn’t so bad after all and dropped anchor at the other end of the kelp bed. It turned out that the vis was even worse there, so we went home early.

The other guys got back to the harbor at the same time, so we got the details. Dave said he was hanging (free diving) at about 30 feet when he glimpsed something white out of the corner of his eye. At first he thought it might be a white sea bass, but then he saw the teeth, then the huge eye. It was a 20 foot great white shark passing his left side from behind. It was so close that he reflexively reached out and touched its side as it passed.

After he got back in the boat and rinsed out his wet suit, they decided that it was a good day to come home early.

Good call.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Valdeeezzzyyy, westcoaster and Shaun13
Any fish that is 3x as long as your vis gets your attention...

A GW, and one that size.....

:eek:
 
Great experience all the same!
Personally that story is likely to give me nightmares but it is one of my dreams to see a GW ... it is just that I want to be on deck at the time!
 
  • Like
Reactions: westcoaster
Dear god, I almost soiled myself while reading this... I can only imagine how this fella must have felt... But then again, it's an incredible experience :)
 
Something odd is going on. In the last month or two, there have been more sightings of great whites by divers in the Gulf of Mexico and southern Atlantic coast of the US than I can remember total in the last 5 years, maybe more. People I know have seen whites. That's way to odd for something not to be going on.
 
I know freedivers that swim with GWS and there are surfers and divers who have encountered GWS without issues and it would be an event that would be pretty special. However, the GWS primary meal are seals and other mammals unlike the routine meal of Tiger and Bull sharks to name two. That alone raises the pucker factor a few notches. The other issue if the method GWS attack -ambush and low viz would favor a GWS like the condition Bill described.

I expect the accent and swim to the boat in the case Bill described was long and scary to say the least. I can't wait to read the diver's thoughts.
 
cdavis said:
Something odd is going on. In the last month or two, there have been more sightings of great whites by divers in the Gulf of Mexico and southern Atlantic coast of the US than I can remember total in the last 5 years, maybe more. People I know have seen whites. That's way to odd for something not to be going on.
Click to expand...

Much to the consternation of other water users, it seems the global conservation status of the GW is really doing it's numbers good...

In SA Great White encounters are now so common most guys don't even bother to mention it any more. Every single one of the guys in the group of spearos I usually dive with have had very recent encounters with GW's. I'd say it's up to about 1 in every 5 dive sessions will have an encounter.

The good thing, so far no one has been bitten, when an encounter got physical its usually a bump or in one instance a fin was shredded. The bad thing, it's happening more often... so it' only time until someone gets injured or worse.
 
Last edited:
I guess you guys in South Africa are jaded. Sighting here are much less common, so we think they are a big deal.

Dave says that he has had two previous sightings, but those didn't scare him since the sharks swam by in front of him. What was so different about this one was that it came from behind in murky water, and passed so close that he could actually run his hand along its side as it swam by.
 
I'd love to think that conservation is working, and it just might be in S. Africa, but all these recent reports of f the US are way too numerous and came on too fast to be conservation.
 
So what do you think in causing the increase in sightings on the east coast? We seem to have a big increase in the population in California, and many people think its because of the big increase in the population of seals and sea lions.

Another possibility is the ban on inshore gill netting that was imposed in 1994. It has caused a big increase in the numbers of large white sea bass and halibut, but the nets used to catch juvenile white sharks too. Now both the white sea bass and the white sharks get to grow up.
 
Haven't a clue for the eastern US. Maybe is just lots of gopros out there. With a video, divers get believed and get much more publicity. Still, I think its more than that. A decade ago, white sightings by anybody but commercial longliners were extremely rare. I never heard of a diver seeing one, ever, mostly the rare fishermen, no pictures and not sure of the ID.
 
It could be that food sources have dryed up in other areas and the sharks have been forced to move location.
 
Last edited:
Incredible. I can't imagine what the must have been like. I wouldn't have known what to do. Rocket to the surface? Stay put?

Jake
 
Last edited:
I dove that spot with Dave today. Neither of us was disappointed that we didn't see the shark.
 
Nice! I don't think I would want to be in the water with one. Not even from a cage, it's just not my cup of tea.

Jake

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk
 
It's a dream of mine to see a great white...in a cage or not!...shame we don't get them in the uk!
 
Last week in Cuba a 4 mt Nurse shark it came up to my stringer with fish which was 30 feet away from me, It was a piss in your pants or wetsuit moment until I realised it was a gato tiburon. Size matters.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
DeeperBlue.com - The Worlds Largest Community Dedicated To Freediving, Scuba Diving and Spearfishing

ABOUT US

ISSN 1469-865X | Copyright © 1996 - 2024 deeperblue.net limited.

DeeperBlue.com is the World's Largest Community dedicated to Freediving, Scuba Diving, Ocean Advocacy and Diving Travel.

We've been dedicated to bringing you the freshest news, features and discussions from around the underwater world since 1996.

ADVERT

Community platform by XenForo® © 2010-2023 XenForo Ltd.
Top Bottom
Back