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20 foot Great white in the Sea of Cortez?!

Posted: April 19th, 2012, 7:56 am
by scottriv

Re: 20 foot Great white in the Sea of Cortez?!

Posted: April 19th, 2012, 11:12 am
by DMong

Wow!,.that's certainly no minnow! :lol:


~Doug

Re: 20 foot Great white in the Sea of Cortez?!

Posted: April 20th, 2012, 5:32 am
by tai haku
There are some absolutely gargantuan whites late in the year around Guadelupe - we saw a number in the 16-18 foot range on our 3 days there - so since the cortez sharks are part of the same population I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were some record breaking sharks around.

Image

That said accurate measurements of these beasties are a bit like accurate measurements of big pythons....

Re: 20 foot Great white in the Sea of Cortez?!

Posted: April 20th, 2012, 6:20 am
by Tom
tai haku wrote:There are some absolutely gargantuan whites late in the year around Guadelupe - we saw a number in the 16-18 foot range on our 3 days there - so since the cortez sharks are part of the same population I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were some record breaking sharks around.

Image

That said accurate measurements of these beasties are a bit like accurate measurements of big pythons....
Incredible :shock:

What's the story?

Re: 20 foot Great white in the Sea of Cortez?!

Posted: April 20th, 2012, 9:36 am
by VICtort
I am not sure where this shark was landed...if indeed within the Sea of Cortez, it is pretty unusual. Certainly there are plenty of marine mammals to feed on, and maybe the Humboldt Squid too. The pescadors are relentless in fishing sharks, with set lines a constant, and virtually all of them use gill nets to which whites are pretty vulnerable, and shrimp trawlers etc. often catch the pup sharks before they can reproduce, thus sharks have declined precipitiously in the Sea over the last 50 years...sharks were formerly there in incredible numbers. I remember seeing thousands of dried up butchered carcasses of sharks and rays that extended for miles on the then lonely Baja beaches within the gulf. I dive in the Sea and rarely give sharks a second thought now days, but this big shark makes one pause for consideration.

The Baja west coast is a different story, with the great whites at Guadalupe Island and others regularly taking tuna off anglers lines, and sometimes photographed by diving charter vessels. I presume those great photos posted were taken at Guadalupe? Attacks and close calls have been documented on the Pacific side of Baja.

Interesting post...we seem to like sharks as well as reptiles, and that is one of the things that makes Baja so attractive to folks like us...

Re: 20 foot Great white in the Sea of Cortez?!

Posted: April 24th, 2012, 9:37 am
by tai haku
Tom - that was at Guadelupe Island, Mexico. There are a couple of boats that do cagediving trips out there (it's like a 3 day trip). We were the last trip of the season; apparently the big females turn up late in the season so we had big sharks. There are two cages (8 foot wide) with a little gap in the middle off the back of the boat so you have a scale object to measure them against.

VICtort - I believe this shark was indeed landed in Sea of Cortez. I think the radio tracking of some of the guadelupe sharks has shown they do go into the Sea of Cortez.