Blue Shark Photo
In the late 80s and 90s we used to leave the docks really early on summer mornings, motor 10-20 miles offshore in our little boats, far enough to get into really blue and bottemless water, drop a bucket of chum in the water, and make bets on when the blue sharks (Prionace glauca) would show up. When they arrived we would hop in and spend the day swimming around trying to photograph them, sometimes on a tank and sometimes just freediving. It was great fun. The last few times I did this, though, there were very few sharks, and none of the big ones we used to see. I hear talk nowadays that most of the blue sharks have now been fished out, presumably by longliners. This was shot about 3′ deep at sunset — bits of plankton are seen in the shot, they rise to the surface at nightfall. This is a juvenile, and shows none of the scarring acquired during mating that the mature males and females tend to exhibit.
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| Blue shark, open ocean. San Diego, California, USA. Image: 02286 Species: Prionace glauca Location: San Diego, California, USA |
Guadalupe Island White Shark ID Project
I had an interesting conversation with Nicole Nasby Lucas of the Pfleger Institute of Environmental Research yesterday. Ms. Lucas and PIER co-founder Michael Domeier PhD have been conducting a capture/recapture study on great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) at Guadalupe Island, Mexico, building a database of identification photos and video of white sharks that inhabit the island. To date PIER has 73 individual sharks in their database, and the count increases each season. PIER also places a small number of satellite tags on Guadalupe white sharks to learn where they are going once they leave the island. Interestingly, some of the sharks tagged at Guadalupe Island swim all the way to the Hawaiian islands, including two of the sharks tagged during the most recent season. By observing the white sharks in this way, the PIER researchers are able to collect evidence about how the sharks utilize the island habitat and their migrations to and from the island.
I have had the good fortune of naming five of the PIER sharks by virtue of being the first photographer to capture each of them on film. The three females are named after my two daughters and my mother (you don’t think I am stupid enough to name one after my wife do you?). The two males are named after the notorious bachelors on Sex in the City: Big and The Russian.
In this case Ms. Lucas was able to link the right side and left side photographs by finding a common element between them: a notched tip on the left side ventral fin. Here she is, Guadalupe Island great white shark #57, “Leslie”:
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For more information about PIER’s white shark research at Guadalupe Island, how the identification process works and what scientific publications have resulted from the study, visit the PIER website and see the online catalog.
Keywords: great white shark photos, Carcharodon carcharias photos, Pfleger Institute of Environmental Research
Photo of Blue Shark and Yellowtail
Some years ago I was freediving around an open ocean kelp paddy with Mike Johnson. We were photographing a few blue sharks that we had attracted to the paddy with a small bucket of chum. Two small yellowtail jacks were flanking one of the blue sharks, swimming closely beside it and repeatedly brushing along he shark.
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| North Pacific Yellowtail brushing against blue shark. San Diego, California, USA. Image: 01000 Species: Seriola lalandi, Prionace glauca Location: San Diego, California, USA |
I believe the yellowtail were bumping the shark in order to remove parasites against the rough skin of the shark. The shark seemed bothered by this but there was nothing the shark could do — the yellowtail are so much quicker and more agile that the blue shark had little hope of actually biting them or chasing them off. This behaviour persisted for about 10 minutes, at which point the blue shark probably became exasperated at the yellowtail that were pestering him and left. Open ocean about 10 miles offshore of San Diego.
Keywords: blue shark photo, yellowtail, kelp paddy, underwater photo, Prionace glauca.
Smiling Great White Shark
View this blog entry in Google EarthLatitude: 29° 9' 44.74" N, Longitude: 118° 16' 27.96" W, Coord: 29.162428°, -118.27444°
Filed under: Great White Shark, Guadalupe Island, Mexico, Sharks, Wildlife on 2/22/2005
One great white shark photo on our website that is viewed more than almost all others is this one:
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| A great white shark underwater. A large great white shark cruises the clear oceanic waters of Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe). Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 10119 Species: Carcharodon carcharias Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico  View this Image in Google Earth! |
It appears that the great white shark in this photo is smiling at the cameraman, or is perhaps preparing to chomp the guy. In fact, this great white shark had just taken a mouthful of bait and was opening and closing its mouth in order to free bits of the bait from its teeth or gill slits. The exposure was made just as the shark happened to have both an open mouth and a gaze directed at the divers in the cage. Isla Guadalupe, Mexico.
Keywords: great white shark photo, Carcharodon carcharias, Guadalupe Island.
Blue Shark Eye to Eye
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| Blue shark showing ampullae of Lorenzini, eye and small portion of nictitating membrane. San Diego, California, USA. Image: 01076 Species: Prionace glauca Location: San Diego, California, USA |
This is a photograph of a blue shark, Prionace glauca. We bait for them offshore of San Diego, anywhere from 5 to 20 miles offshore (however far it took to get to clean blue water) and then wait for them to show up. We get in the water and swim around with them, usually with just freediving gear to remain unencumbered and agile, hoping they come close enough for really good pictures. At times we tie the boat off to a kelp paddy, allowing us to frame the sharks against something other than simple blue water. The best lens to shoot these sharks is a Nikonos 15mm lens, it is tack sharp in situations like this — check out the pores on the shark’s nose — and I don’t think any housed lens can beat it, plus framing these sharks properly is no problem with a Nikonos’ rangefinder method. The underside of a blue shark is quite white and very reflective, so stopping down to f/11 - f/22 is required in many cases, which is just as well as it helps to balance the sunburst in the background. This is essentially a silhouette exposure with strobe fill, tiny little manual MCD strobes were used, with diffusers.
Keywords: blue shark photo, shark picture, underwater photograph, Prionace glauca.
Sex and the Single Shark
View this blog entry in Google EarthLatitude: 29° 9' 44.74" N, Longitude: 118° 16' 27.96" W, Coord: 29.162428°, -118.27444°
Filed under: Great White Shark, Guadalupe Island, Mexico, Sharks, Wildlife on 1/30/2005
In the world of wildlife study, in which efforts are made to identify and track individual animals over time, researchers can fall prey to the temptation to name their subjects. There is considerable debate about the merits of this, as some scientists feel that assigning names to the animal subjects of a study causes the researchers to lose a certain amount of objectivity in the course of their observations. We have had the good luck of working with humpback whale researcher Dan R. Salden for a number of years, and observed that he made sure to always identify “his” humpbacks with an ID number rather than a descriptive name in an effort to avoid developing an attachment to them. However, it is unavoidable that over many years of work some individual animals receive a nickname in addition to their simple ID number. In the case of Dr. Salden’s whales, one such animal was “Mr. November” who had 30 days of fame when a photograph of his fluke appeared on the November page of a wall calendar.
We have been allowed to name five research subjects. It turns out that in some research efforts, the “right” to name an animal subject is given to the first person to photograph or videotape the animal. In this case, the animals happen to be great white sharks which I photographed and videotaped at Guadalupe Island. Three of them are females, big and beautiful sharks two of which are now named for my daughters who are happy to have the distinction of being the only students at school after whom killers have been named (the other female is named for my mother!). The remaining two are males, real brutes and good looking to boot, whom we decided to name for two notable lotharios of Sex in the City fame: Big and The Russian.
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| A great white shark underwater. A large great white shark cruises the clear oceanic waters of Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe). Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 10111 Species: Carcharodon carcharias Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico View this Image in Google Earth! |
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Updated: May 23, 2012
