Great white sharks frequently visit Mexico’s Guadalupe Island, but this beautiful female may just be the largest one ever recorded. Nicknamed Deep Blue and measuring in at over 20 feet (6 metres), the massive predator was thought to be pregnant, and clearly is no stranger to the camera. She was filmed in a successful tagging operation in 2013 and featured in a documentary that aired during Discovery Network’s Shark Week. However, new footage was recently uncovered by local researcher Mauricio Hoyos Padilla who posted the clip on Facebook.
The footage shows a member of the research team swimming at the top of a submersible cage dwarfed by Deep Blue, as she curiously investigates the foreign object. As if shooing an inquisitive dog, the diver can be seen pushing the pregnant shark away from the steel cage. It’s a risky move and one we definitely wouldn’t recommend (seriously, don’t touch sharks). In this case, the diver was able to read the shark’s behaviour and took a calculated risk. “Sharks do not have hands and that's why they use their mouths to explore their environment,” Hoyos explains on Facebook. “She wasn’t trying to [attack], but rather wanted to know what was there.”
Hoyos cannot remember who was behind the camera, but believes that the footage was captured at the same time that Deep Blue was tagged in the fall of 2013. This is prime shark-sighting time in Guadalupe and shark fans from across the globe visit this famed area to view great whites in the clear waters beyond the island. With impressive sharks like Deep Blue hanging out there, it’s not hard to see why.
Top header image: Gaftels, Flickr
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