A great white to rival Jaws ... but it was safe to go in the water
Divers tell of delight at encounter with ‘Deep Blue’, but experts warn the sharks can be killers
IT WAS the opportunity of a lifetime: the chance for divers to photograph themselves alongside Deep Blue, the notorious great white shark.
But, in the words of one commentator, the resulting headline could easily have read: “Stupid human dies chasing a 20ft shark”.
The female great white, one of the largest sharks ever recorded, was photographed feasting on a dead sperm whale nine miles off the coast of Oahu, a Hawaiian island.
It is only the third ever sighting of Deep Blue, which was last spotted near Mexico in 2013, and is estimated to be around 20ft long and weigh 2.5 tons.
The team of divers stumbled upon it while looking for tiger sharks in the area earlier this week and were quick to photograph themselves swimming alongside the great white.
Deep Blue is estimated to be up to 50 years old and is something of a celebrity in the world of shark enthusiasts – it even has its own Twitter account and featured in an episode of Shark Week.
However, researchers have said that establishing the shark’s exact size is difficult, and highlight the fact that three very large females have been spotted in the area over consecutive days.
Michael Domeier and Nicole Nasby-lucas from the Marine Conservation Science Institute led the research project that first documented Deep Blue in 1999.
The pair told The Daily Telegraph that unique pigment patterns confirmed the shark photographed this week was Deep Blue.
They added that Deep Blue, which may live until around the age of 70, is very likely pregnant at the moment and could give birth off the coast of Baja, Mexico or California in the spring.
Great whites are a rare sight in Hawaii but Ms Nasby-lucas said the institute has tracked another large female, Murphy Jean, heading to the islands recently.
“This is a unique opportunity to see them feeding on a dead whale,” she said, adding this appeared to be the “closest anyone has got to Deep Blue without a cage”.
However, the research biologist warned of the danger that touching sharks poses to divers. “The bigger females like that are obviously there to feed and some of the smaller sharks are a little more dangerous because they don’t know who you are. But it’s still dangerous and there are photos of them touching the shark. I don’t approve of that. Obviously this isn’t your amateur dive, but it’s nothing I would recommend.”
Ocean Ramsey, one of the divers, told the Honolulu Star-advertiser: “She was just this big, beautiful, gentle giant wanting to use our boat as a scratching post. We went out at sunrise, and she stayed with us pretty much throughout the day.”
Ms Ramsey cautioned against swimming anywhere where sharks were feeding but told the newspaper that sharks would only attack humans if they were curious or if they mistook people for their normal prey.
The diver used Instagram to hit out at critics, writing in a post: “I know
some people criticise touch but what some don’t realise is that sometimes sharks seek touch.”
She added: “It’s not petting sharks or pushing them off to maintain a respectable space that is hurting sharks … it’s the wasteful and cruel practice of grabbing and catching sharks to cut off their fins”.
Speaking to Mother Board, an online technology magazine, George Burgess, a former professor at the University of Florida, warned: “Most of the time, that shark won’t turn around and bite you.
“But when it does, you’ll end up as a statistic on the International Shark Attack File, and the headline won’t be ‘Stupid human dies chasing a 20ft shark’, it will be ‘Shark kills human’, and that is very bad for conservation.”
‘The headline won’t be “Stupid human dies chasing 20ft shark”, it will be “Shark kills human”, and that’s bad’