Snapshots from the Road – Destination: Guadalupe Island

Dawn in the Pacific, 115 miles off the Baja California coast: A group of us on the chilly foredeck of the 80-foot trawler Horizon are stirring early, sipping hot coffee, eager to make landfall on a remote spike of volcanic rock called Guadalupe Island. Up ahead, in the flat, dark water of the island’s northern inlet, another creature is also stirring, and everyone on board is thinking about it.

It is Carcharodon carcharias, the great white shark, and the inshore waters of Guadalupe are among its few known migratory habitats. The great white is the world’s largest predatory fish. A typical adult is 13 to 16 feet long, with proportionate girth measured in meters, and a body weight generally between 1500 and 2500 pounds. He is the supreme iteration of an “apex predator,” and the undisputed king of the cartilage-spined fishes who’ve lived in our seas for 400 million years.

Calculating hunters, coy in their breeding and migratory habits, and stunningly efficient killers, great whites are a feast of complex behaviors to scientists and shark devotees. To a photographer with the opportunity to observe this ancient life form in the wild, the sight of a massive white shark gliding silently past your viewfinder is a life-changing moment. Here are a few brief glimpses of this ongoing adventure, under the aegis of San Anselmo, California-based Shark Diver and Horizon Charters of San Diego, both leading operators of shark-cage excursions to the lair of the great white.

For booking and schedules of white shark cage dive excursions: visit https://sharkdiver.com or www.horizoncharters.com. Underwater camera rentals are available through Horizon Charters, or in the San Diego area, consult https://www.divespots.com/scuba/site-san-diego/destDiveShops.info.

Note on Photographs:
Topside photos were all made with a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II. With the exception noted in the caption, all underwater photography was shot with the Olympus E-620 DSLR and 11–22mm zoom lens, using a PT-E06 underwater housing.

Jim Cornfield is a commercial photographer and travel writer based in Malibu Canyon, CA. He’s a veteran certified scuba diver and a passionate campaigner for great white shark conservation and coral reef preservation.