My Guadalupe Island stock photos appear on Oceanlight.com in addition to the Guadalupe Island pictures I have on Photoshelter:
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Guadalupe Island Pictures, Isla Guadalupe, Mexico - Images by Phillip Colla |
If you cannot see the slideshow above, see this Guadalupe Island photo slideshow on Photoshelter!
Keywords: Guadalupe Island, Isla Guadalupe, Mexico, stock photos, image.
I’m very happy to announce that our annual Guadalupe Island diving trip is on for July 2010! Skip Stubbs is once again personally leading this special trip to dive remote and unique Isla Guadalupe using the San Diego-based dive boat Horizon as our home-away-from-home. At present this trip is by invitation only (i.e., the entire boat is reserved and Skip is determining who the participants will be). If you are seriously interested in joining us, please get in touch with Skip (or me if you prefer) to discuss it. We have put together a lengthy flyer describing the trip, with links to many photos and lots of information about the island itself. Please read through the PDF brochure first, especially if you do not know anything about Guadalupe Island. You can print out if you wish (it will open in a new window):
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| Guadalupe Island Diving Trip |
Note: this is not a shark diving trip. This is an open water SCUBA and freediving trip designed to offer our guests opportunities to appreciate the unique inhabitants and explore the underwater scenery of Guadalupe Island. This is the only open-water diving trip to Guadalupe Island, this year (or probably ever), that we know of. The dates are July 21-29, 9 calendar days with 7 fulls days of diving and two travel days.
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| Cortez chubb. Image ID: 01020 Species: Cortez chubb, Kyphosus elegans Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico  View this Image in Google Earth! |
Keywords: Guadalupe Island, Mexico, Isla Guadalupe, scuba diving, free diving, dive boat Horizon, Baja California, San Diego.
The sun sets on the Sea of Cortez. Today’s abstract photo, #12 of 15.
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| Sunset and water, Sea of Cortez. Image: 00285 |
View this blog entry in Google EarthThis great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) was photographed at Guadalupe Island, Mexico. I think I have made about 15 trips to the island, a mix of open-water diving trips and shark cage photography trips. I am hoping to get down there again for scuba diving, freediving and just plain exploration (no sharking or cages) with Skip in Summer 2010. More details about Skip’s return trip to the island will be sent out soon to those who have accompanied Skip and me on past trips to Guadalupe and elsewhere. See some past blog posts about Guadalupe Island if you are interested in the island.
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| A great white shark swims through the clear waters of Isla Guadalupe, far offshore of the Pacific Coast of Mexico’s Baja California. Guadalupe Island is host to a concentration of large great white sharks, which visit the island to feed on pinnipeds and use it as a staging area before journeying farther into the Pacific ocean. Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 19465 Common name: Great white shark Species: Carcharodon carcharias Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
View this blog entry in Google EarthSunset comes at the end of a day of shark diving at Guadalupe Island.
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| Dark water, clouds at days end, cliffs, sunset. Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 21382 Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
Shark Diving resources: Horizon Charters and SharkDiver.com. Also, be sure to check out our hundreds of additional Guadalupe Island photos.
View this blog entry in Google EarthThis is one of my favorites from this year’s trip on the M/V Horizon to photograph great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) at Guadalupe Island.
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| Great white shark, underwater. Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 21346 Species: Carcharodon carcharias Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
Shark Diving resources: Horizon Charters and SharkDiver.com. Also, be sure to check out our hundreds of additional Guadalupe Island photos and photos of great white sharks.
View this blog entry in Google EarthHere is the face of a great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias). Check out the detail in the shark’s eye, he is looking straight back into the camera. This was shot with a 24mm lens, full frame sensor, no crop. Pretty tight.
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| Great white shark, underwater. Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 21347 Species: Carcharodon carcharias Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
Shark Diving resources: Horizon Charters and SharkDiver.com.
Be sure to check out our hundreds of additional Guadalupe Island photos and photos of great white sharks.
View this blog entry in Google EarthMany of the great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) at Guadalupe Island are known to researchers and appear in the white shark ID database. Some of the sharks have even been “tagged” and now sport small pop-up satellite transmitter tags that collect data about the shark’s environment and behavior, eventually transmitting the data via satellite back to researchers. Shown below are a pair of satellite tags, located just below the dorsal fin of a great white shark:
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| Two satellite tags, below dorsal fin of great white shark. The tags record the sharks movements, relaying data to researchers via satellite. Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 21391 Species: Carcharodon carcharias Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
Shark Diving resources: Horizon Charters and SharkDiver.com.
Be sure to check out our hundreds of additional Guadalupe Island photos and great white shark photos.
View this blog entry in Google EarthWhen a Guadalupe Island great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) first approaches the boat, it is often deep. If there are divers in the cage they typically get a look at the shark as it swims slowly beneath the boat. It seems the shark is surveying things before making a decision to move shallower and approach the boat and cages more closely. Occasionally a shark rises from the deep suddenly, straight up, leveling out only when it reaches or breaks the surface. That’s what this male white shark did. (You can tell he is a male by his two claspers visible on his ventral surface.)
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| Great white shark, underwater. Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 21362 Species: Carcharodon carcharias Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
Shark Diving resources: Horizon Charters and SharkDiver.com.
Be sure to check out our hundreds of additional Guadalupe Island photos and photos of great white sharks.
View this blog entry in Google EarthEach day on a Horizon Charters great white shark trip to Guadalupe Island starts with the crew lowering the huge aluminum cages into the water as guests enjoy breakfast and the morning calm. Often a shark will show up circling the boat and inspecting the cages before any divers have even had a chance to enter the water. Check out how flat the water is in these photos. The shark diving location, near the lighthouse in a broad protected bight at the north end of the island, is typically flat calm and sunny with blue water.
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| Lowering a shark cage into the water alongside M/V Horizon. Large, strong aluminum cages protect divers while they are in the water viewing sharks. Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 21380 Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
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| Shark cages in water, astern of M/V Horizon. Large, strong aluminum cages protect divers while they are in the water viewing sharks. Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 21370 Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
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| Great white shark, dorsal fin extended out of the water as it swims near the surface. Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 21353 Species: Carcharodon carcharias Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
Shark Diving resources: Horizon Charters and SharkDiver.com.
Be sure to check out our hundreds of additional Guadalupe Island photos and great white shark photos.
View this blog entry in Google EarthLast week I made another trip to Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe) on my favorite boat, M/V Horizon, captained by Greg Grivetto. The trip was conducted in collaboration with Patric Douglas and SharkDiver.com. Of all the boats and captains working at Guadalupe Island, the Horizon and Captain Greg have to have the greatest experience at Isla Guadalupe. The Horizon and the Grivetto family have been hosting open-water diving (non-cage) trips to the island since 1994. And since 2001, when he captained the first of the modern Guadalupe island cage diving trips that have since lent the island the fame that it now enjoys as the world’s finest white shark viewing location, Captain Greg has led shark diving expeditions to Guadalupe Island each year, from August through October. I have had the good fortune to join him at Guadalupe at least 15 times now (frankly I’ve lost track as I don’t actually have a dive log anymore) with somewhere in the neighborhood of 110 days spent either tank diving, free diving or in a cage looking at sharks. I like being at the island.
This year we motored down to Guadalupe Island under remarkably uninspiring conditions. The seas were calm and the ride comfortable, but we saw virtually no blue skies once we got south of the Coronado Islands. As we made our approach to the north end of Guadalupe Island the clouds were quite heavy and dark. However, the towering cliffs that make up the north end typically reach into the clouds and hold open a donut-hole of blue sky. Sure enough, as we reached the island, the skies parted and we had glass water and warm sun as we anchored the boat and prepared to get in the cages.
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| Guadalupe Island, dark and gloomy clouds, northern approach. Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 21369 Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
Shark Diving resources: Horizon Charters and SharkDiver.com.
Be sure to check out our hundreds of additional Guadalupe Island photos.
View this blog entry in Google EarthHere is a shot of South Island, part of the Coronado Islands (Islas Coronado) not far from San Diego and Tijuana, just south of the border.
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| South Coronado Island, north end viewed from the north. Coronado Islands (Islas Coronado), Coronado Islands, Baja California, Mexico. Image: 21324 Location: Coronado Islands (Islas Coronado), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
View this blog entry in Google EarthHere is a shot of Middle Island, part of the Coronado Islands (Islas Coronado) not far from San Diego and Tijuana, just south of the border. Partially obscured by Middle Island is “Middle Rock”, to the left and behind.
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| Middle Coronado Island, viewed from the south. Coronado Islands (Islas Coronado), Coronado Islands, Baja California, Mexico. Image: 21322 Location: Coronado Islands (Islas Coronado), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
View this blog entry in Google EarthFrom a recent flight over Islas Coronados (Coronado Islands, Mexico) recently, seen here is the western exposure of North Coronado Island viewed from the southwest. Do you see the crack between the rightmost tip of the island and the main island? There is a narrow submerged passageway through that crack from the east to the west side of the island which we have swam through while diving. If the water in the slot is calm, there are often sea lions hanging out there. On this day you can see that the wave energy was high and it would have been a ass-over-teakettle tumbler of a ride for a diver to swim through that passageway.
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| North Coronado Island, aerial photo, viewed from the south. Coronado Islands (Islas Coronado), Coronado Islands, Baja California, Mexico. Image: 21317 Location: Coronado Islands (Islas Coronado), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
View this blog entry in Google EarthMany of our photographs of Guadalupe Island can be browsed in Google Earth through some new programming that has been added to OceanLight.com. If you have Google Earth installed on your computer, you should be able to click on the link below and have our layer of images open up within Google Earth, showing where around the island each image was taken. Zoom in and the images will spread out, making it easier to select one. Clicking on an image will bring up a web page with more detail about it!
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Photographs of Guadalupe Island on Google Earth. If you do not have Google Earth installed, you can Download Google Earth to get started.
Once we get further along with geotagging images, we can offer the same sort of displays for other places like Galapagos, Alaska, California, and Yellowstone. Currently about 15,000 of 22,000 images have been tagged.
View this blog entry in Google EarthThis great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) had a particularly pointy look to him, really streamlined and sleek, with little beady black eyes. When you see a white shark in person its no wonder they are known as white pointers down under.
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| A great white shark swims through the clear waters of Isla Guadalupe, far offshore of the Pacific Coast of Mexico\’s Baja California. Guadalupe Island is host to a concentration of large great white sharks, which visit the island to feed on pinnipeds and use it as a staging area before journeying farther into the Pacific ocean. Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 19465 Species: Carcharodon carcharias Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
Yesterday a copy of the new book, The Coronados Islands, Their History and Environment (Las Islas Coronados, una Historia y un Entorno Natural) arrived in our mailbox. It is very well done, the best treatment of the Coronado Islands (Las Islas Coronados) I have yet seen. Although I was contacted by the editors of the book for images related to the ecology and animal life at the Coronado Islands a couple of years ago, yesterday was the first time I had a chance to actually see the publication, which is printed in both Spanish and English with high quality printing and binding.
The book has some history. In 2003, Chevron proposed installing a $650 million liquified natural gas receiving terminal near the Coronado Islands, which are only about 8.5 miles from the Tijuana coast and just a 1-2 hour boat ride from San Diego. The book is derived from a large body of data that was collected during the permit process and includes interesting material about the history and ecology of the islands along with many photographs. Chevron received approval for the project but ultimately withdrew for economic reasons. Fortunately, the book was still produced and is now a publicly accessible distillation of all that research data. It is being distributed at no cost to many educational institutions in Mexico.
Check out the cover. The top photo showing all three islands was made by Alfonso Caraveo Castro, who contributed most of the images in the book. The middle photo, of fishes swimming in a kelp forest, and bottom photo, of a huge blue whale raising its fluke out of the water before diving, are mine.
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View this blog entry in Google EarthThis is my favorite shot from my Shark Diver trip last week on the liveaboard boat Horizon to see great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) at Guadalupe Island. One shark in particular took to circling the boat clockwise and would pass very close to the starboard side cage. As it did so, I managed to get some close photographs with good detail of its eye, gills and the ampullae of Lorenzini on its snout.
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| A great white shark swims toward the photographer. Perhaps the shark is considering him as possible prey? The photographer, a “shark diver” is safely situated in a sturdy metal cage. The best location in the world to “shark dive” to view great white sharks is Mexico\’s Guadalupe Island. Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 19457 Species: Carcharodon carcharias Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
Here are all of the photos from the trip.
See also: great white shark photos, Guadalupe Island, Isla Guadalupe, Carcharodon carcharias photos.
View this blog entry in Google EarthThis is the dorsal fin of a great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) at Guadalupe Island, sticking above the water as the shark cruises at the surface.
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| Dorsal fin of a great white shark breaks the surface as the shark swims just below. Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 19493 Species: Carcharodon carcharias Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
See also: great white shark photos, Guadalupe Island, Isla Guadalupe, Carcharodon carcharias photos.
View this blog entry in Google EarthI was pretty lucky to get this photo. This is a great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) that I photographed at Guadalupe Island while I was on a Shark Diver trip last week on the liveaboard boat Horizon. This one, a medium size (e.g, 12-13′) male, surprised us all. We were cooling our heels in the cage during a five minute lull, a rarity on this trip as virtually every minute we had at least one shark visible underwater. I happened to be staring off the port stern corner of the boat when suddenly this shark came streaking in from the edge of the visibility, took a huge bite at the bait and missed. I have never seen a shark swim so fast in my life. What motivated him to approach like that was a mystery. Typically the sharks at Guadalupe swim rather slowly around the boat, accelerating only with two or three final thrusts of their tails to take the bait. But this guy was going full steam the entire time, even as he disappeared into the gloom on the starboard side of the boat. His momentum carried him in front of the cage with his mouth still agape, which was awefully impressive. When I returned onto the deck later, the crew even commented how they were caught offguard by his rocket approach and how he left a pressure wave on the surface as he pumped his tail below. That such a large creature could move through the water with such speed was a real eye opener for me.
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| A great white shark opens it mouth just before it attacks its prey with a crippling, powerful bite. After the prey has been disabled, the shark will often wait for it to weaken from blood loss before resuming the attack. If the shark looses a tooth in the course of the bite, a replacement just behind it will move forward to take its place. Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 19452 Species: Carcharodon carcharias Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
See also: great white shark photos, Guadalupe Island, Isla Guadalupe, Carcharodon carcharias photos.
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Updated: November 7, 2009
