Northwest Dive Club

I was diving at Redondo this morning at about 10:00 AM with my buddy Mark Nayer. We went down to the carousel boat where we found a large area of sea lettuce that was covered in Hooded Nudibranchs. We spent several minutes poking through the sea lettuce photographing the nudibranchs, then I signaled to Mark that we should should head back upslope. As we started to move I was looking down at the sea lettuce, then I looked up and found myself nose to nose with a 7-8 foot six gill shark!

I yelled for Mark and quickly took the one picture here. All I had was my macro lens so I couldn't do anything but get quickly get one closeup. As I took the photo the shark kept coming even closer, I think it was fascinated with my focus light on my left strobe. It was clearly going to swim right into me so I gently pushed its nose with the lens port of my camera.

The shark then backed off and started a leisurely swim away. It had an enormous thresher-shark type tail and was much bigger overall than I originally thought. I then turned to Mark and got his attention (he too was engrossed in the sea lettuce). Mark yelled out as he saw it and swam towards the shark as it was moving away. Clearly this shark was following us for awhile while we were poking around and then became curious about my focus light.
Mark had a camera setup that was better for wide angles than mine, so I'll try to post some of his pictures as he gets them uploaded. You never know what you'll see at Redondo!




Dan

Awesome!!!!!

I was looking through old files and found that I saw a six gill at redondo during this same time in the year in 2013. What an awesome experience!

Awesome

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!! This is so amazing!! I'm really happy for you guys!!! What an amazing experince!
I was just saying to YellowEye the other day that I bet the sea life talks to each other after divers leave and are just like, I just saw a alien and it took a picture of me then left! lol

Thanks everyone! If this was the same six gill that we saw there in 2013 I'd say he's grown a bit. [SMILING FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH AND SMILING EYES]

What was viz like???

dphershman wrote:Thanks everyone! If this was the same six gill that we saw there in 2013 I'd say he's grown a bit. [SMILING FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH AND SMILING EYES]

There were actually 2-3 different ones that year. I saw one smaller one at 40' and another 7-8 footer at about 86'.

Very cool, Dan. Congrats!

That is awesome!!! I had heard there was one in the area!!!
Kirsten

I'm so envious! I am still very much in the "Never seen a sixgill" club. :(

enchantmentdivi wrote:What was viz like???

Viz was about 4 feet down to about the 40 foot depth. Then it opened up a bit to about 12 feet by the time we got to the Carousel Boat. It was a really low tide, so that compounded things a bit.

Penopolypants wrote:I'm so envious! I am still very much in the "Never seen a sixgill" club. :(

+1

Wow what an encounter.

If you don't mind and if you have time would you please consider filling out the Seattle Aquarium Six Gill shark sighting form,

http://www.seattleaquarium.org/sixgill- ... rting-form

They would appreciate any information that you are willing to share with them.

Mike

Holy Guacamole, that is freakin' awesome! And, personally, I think having the macro lens was a stroke of luck - I have never seen a photo like this one...

Jim

AWESOME!!!! Im with Pen.....I want to leave the no six gill club and join the smaller saw a six gill club.

Here's the photo that my buddy Mark took.

Dan

Wow!!!!! Amazing!!!!!!!

Here's a link to a short video that mark was able to get. Watch until the end to see the cool tail.

https://marksunderwateradventures.shutt ... tures/2664

We were at Redondo at 10am this morning and saw it as well..

saw it at 60ft on the line down to the boat.. I think all the fishing activity in the area is luring it out..

So awesome. So jealous!