CALIFORNIA SHARK ADVENTURE
Southern California
September 2011
(Video Journal)
Day 1 - The Arrival... I am on the road headed to Southern California for our Cali Shark Adventure. We will be seeking out 9 different species of sharks; makos, blues, leopards, horn sharks, swell sharks, soupfin sharks, angel sharks, gray smoothhounds, and one of my unicorn species - sevengill sharks. On this trip we have so many different styles of shark diving we will be attempting to bring in the sharks we are chasing. Some of the dives are open ocean swims, most are beach entries, and we will be seeking sharks in kelp beds, under rock ledges, we will be diving at night, and so on. It is going to be an amazing week (I hope) So with no futher adu, I bring you Blog # 1 from our Cali Shark Adventure.
Day 2 - Leopard Sharks - La Jolla Shores - Bad weather has moved in and We have 6 days to find 9 species of sharks, a huge undertaking and one I am very nervous about, but I will do everything I can to make it happen. Our first day in the water we kicked it all off with a swim with the leopard sharks off of La Jolla Shores. The visibility was really crappy, and I was surprised we were able to get any footage at all of the leopards. But we did and we have brought to you our first day in the water. I hope you enjoy...
Day 2 - Makos and Blues -We headed out to sea and spent the day chumming for sharks. We got skunked. In all fairness it was a rough day at sea. It was rainy, cold and windy, the surface was rough and the water was unusually cold. I decided not to create a video blog about just becuase it was a lot of watching water. We still have one more day planned for open ocean sharks.
Day 3 - Sevengill and Soupfin (tope) Sharks - La Jolla Cove. On our third day in California we headed out to La Jolla Cove for a shot at sevengill sharks and possibly soupfin sharks. That is the one shark on this adventure that I thought would be almost impossible to find. The sevengill shark was my unicorn shark...well we found one, AND we also found soupfin sharks as well. So we are 3 species in, and still need six to go. Of course on day 2 we got skunked when we went out for makos and blues...we will see what this day brings. Going out after angel sharks and horn sharks this morning.
Day 4 - Angel Sharks and Horn Sharks, La Jolla Shores ..We decided to go out for an early morning dive at the Cove to seek out sevengills and soupfins again, and hopefully find angel sharks. Our group went crazy over the sevengills and wanted another opportunity at them. We ended up getting skunked, and so we decided to snorkel the shores to seeek out more leopards and possibly gray smoothhound sharks. I have seen these sharks out here once before in the past, so I figured that the best opportunity to see one would be at the shores. We ended up finding an angel shark which was pretty EPIC. Angels at the shore are vey rare. This week has really been amazing, other than our blue and mako skunking on Tuesday, we were having some really great shark mojo this week - not sure why, but our shark mojo was on fire. First with a sevengill (none of the locals had seen any of these sharks in over a month) and then a soupfin, and then an angel shark in the least likely place. After our swim, we took an hour break to have lunch and charge batteries and then we headed out to meet Michael Bear (Michael is in charge of the sevengill sightings website there in San Diego.) to dive a spot where baby horn sharks are frequently seen.
I was hoping to add horn sharks to our list. It was a hard, scary swim out to the spot to find these sharks. This was a night dive, and we took off from shore and swam out in the dark, on the surface, a distance of about 2 football fields. Then we dropped down into 60-80 feet of water to seek out what we hoped was a 6 inch shark. Pretty wild. About 10 minutes into the dive we found one. It was an amazing, but exhausting day. So please excuse the very bad lighting in this video, as well as blogging from our hotel room. I know the locations could of been better chosen, but this was as real as it gets. So now officially after day four of diving we have found 5 of the 9 species I have officially tied my record, which was set in 2006 during our Summer of the Sharks film shoot, we found 5 of seven species for our movie.
Day 5 - Mako Sharks, San Diego. This is our last post from the trip. On day 2 we went after makos and blues in the open ocean, but we had a really bad conditions and after a full day in the water we did not see any sharks. It was the only day on our adventure that we did not see sharks. We returned to the open ocean on day five. We had clear sunny skies, a flat calm sea and a nice current that pushed our chum way out there. We returned to port with one of the most amazing days of mako shark diving we have ever experienced....
Day 6 - Sevengill - La Jolla Cove - We decided to try and find another sevengill shark before we said good bye to California. We found one and managed to get one very bad proof of life image. It was an amazing trip with good friends, and great adventures. I would like to thank my friends who joined me out there...it was a trip to remember.
(l-r) Eli Martinez, Eldad Cohen, Bengermin Perret, Javi Martinez
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