SHARK HAUNT

GUADALUPE ISLAND, Mexico — It was a classic ambush, a swift charge from the wavering depths, a powerful bite to the neck, then a sprint out of sight.

The sea lion had been lounging atop the surface, soaking up the sun. It never saw the shark coming.

Like the seals and sea lions that frolicked lazily around the vessel, those aboard the Searcher had also been lulled into complacency. There had been two uneventful days. Their bodies were stretched out on the sprawling deck. Their eyes wandered. Their minds were elsewhere.

But then, at 9:38 a.m., came the shout, “Shark! Great white shark! It’s a 15-footer at least!”

Pandemonium suddenly reigned on the 95-foot vessel. Its passengers sprang to life, scrambling to climb into their wetsuits. Graham Atkinson of Toronto was the first to dive in, ahead of his father, Bob. Karen Green of Millbrae, Calif., was next, followed by her husband, Jeff. Then went Richard Brauer, a retired Air Force colonel from Fort Walton Beach, Fla., and Sam Thompson of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Now, what they all wondered, wide eyes glaring nervously through masks, was whether the predator would return....

The Guadalupe Mystique

It took 20 hours over a wind-swept sea to get here to Guadalupe Island, the boat traveling day and night, arriving in the gray light of dawn with two large aluminum cages. Some handled the trip better than others, but regardless of what kind of shape the 12 intrepid divers were in, as they staggered from their bunks, wiping sleep from their eyes, what they saw was something they’ll never forget.

Looming ominously off the bow was a colossal volcanic island with steep and colorful shores teeming with seals and sea lions. Their incessant roars, from the dark caves they lived in, sounded more like those coming from dinosaurs or great apes.

From the center of the island rose high rolling hills, some to 4,000 feet, being washed over by fog that cascaded down their slopes in what looked to be a perpetual avalanche.

This was another world, to be sure. But it was the stunningly blue world beyond the island’s mysterious shores, the one immediately beneath the vessel that had brought them here, that was of particular interest to the passengers.

Somewhere down there was the great white shark, a creature reputed to have menaced schools of tuna that breeze through these waters; to have terrorized the seals and sea lions; to have spilled human blood.

Somewhere down there was “Whitey” and those aboard the Searcher had come specifically to look him squarely in the eye.

“I’ve heard about reef sharks in the Bahamas and smaller sharks elsewhere in Mexico that you can dive with,” said Bob Atkinson, here with his 16-year-old son, Graham. “But if you’re going to swim with sharks, why not go for the ultimate?”

‘Sharkiest Place on Earth’

This remote island--it’s 220 miles southwest of San Diego and 160 miles west of Baja California--has long been a haunt for great whites. In recent years, though, encounters between sharks and fishermen have been steadily increasing, leading some to believe that the number of sharks also is increasing.

This has piqued the interest of at least one shark-diving operation, whose president is predicting Guadalupe will become the next great haven for divers wanting to swim with the world’s most notorious predator--Australia and South Africa being the others. It has also caught the attention of scientists hoping to learn more about an animal whose movements and habits remain very much a mystery.

“Guadalupe is a major site for great white sharks, but it’s only recently being looked at,” says Michael Domeier, president of the Pfleger Institute of Environmental Research in Oceanside, Calif. “I’ll put it this way: There are enough sharks there that I won’t go in the water.”

Domeier’s group has tagged 19 great whites over the last three summers as part of a long-term project. The smallest was an eight-footer, the biggest measuring 18 feet. The deepest one has dived is 12,000 feet; the farthest one has traveled is more than 1,000 nautical miles, to an area in the mid-Pacific.

Domeier couldn’t say for sure whether their numbers were increasing at Guadalupe but cited several reasons for them to be here: a growing number of Guadalupe fur seals, a species once thought to be extinct; a seasonal presence of northern elephant seals and California sea lions, and the same seasonal presence of very large tuna.

The tuna, mostly bluefin and yellowfin, for the last 40 years have lured sportfishermen aboard San Diego-based long-range boats. The Searcher is one such vessel. Its owner and primary captain, Art Taylor, says the sharks have come to consider the fishing boats as food sources, having learned that tuna on the hook are much easier to catch than those swimming free.

“I saw [a shark] last summer that was 20 feet long, right here,” he said, pointing beside the boat, which he had anchored on the lee, or east side of the island’s north end. “It was almost to the point where we had to leave because we weren’t getting anything to the boat. The shark was getting it all.”

This phenomenon is what led Lawrence Groth to add Guadalupe Island and its gin-clear water to his menu. Groth is president of Golden Gate Expeditions, which for three years has been taking divers to the Farallon Islands off San Francisco, with limited success in perpetually murky water.

During Groth’s first voyage here last September, aboard the San Diego dive-boat Horizon, Whitey came through spectacularly.

For three consecutive days the passengers, breathing air piped from above, had close encounters with sharks as large as 15 feet, attracted by Groth’s continual “chumming” of beef blood, tuna oil and fish byproducts. There were up to four sharks around the cages at a given time. All were cautious but methodical in their approaches. None attacked the cages.

Groth returned, claiming to have discovered “the sharkiest place on earth.” He struck a deal with Taylor to run a series of trips this summer and fall, and has similar plans for next season.

As the chumming began on the first morning of one of his most recent trips, Groth made only one request of his customers: “If you’re lying down in the cage, which a lot of divers like to do while they shoot pictures, remember to bend your knees because the cage is only five feet across. Otherwise, if you’re taller than five feet, you’ll have your legs and feet hanging out, and we wouldn’t want that.”

A Fatal Attraction

The new wave of shark divers can bask in the security of sturdy aluminum cages, with bars wide enough for fish and perhaps even small sharks to swim through, but narrow enough to keep the larger and potentially deadlier predators out.

They have floats on top to keep them at the surface and struts attached to the vessel’s stern. The divers, wearing wet suits and weight belts, need only step carefully across a short horizontal ladder and plop into the cages. Each then is handed a regulator attached to a rubber hose, which in turn is attached to a topside compressor. They dive hookah-style, with no bulky tanks on their backs. Scuba certification, although advised, is not mandatory.

But there are those who scoff at such an operation. They are the breath-hold, or free-diving spear-fishermen, who have been coming here as long as the fishermen have, though in far smaller numbers. These are the purists, the “blue-water hunters” who purposely place themselves in the food chain as they seek record-sized tuna and yellowtail known to frequent Guadalupe’s shores.

The first serious incident occurred in 1973. That September, late in the afternoon, as revered free-diver Albert Schneppershoff was in the water alone, a shark struck unsuspectingly, biting deeply into one of his legs.

He surfaced, yelling, “Shark!” His 9-year-old son, who had been watching from the bow of the yacht, ran into the cabin to get help, and soon the captain was backing toward the diver. Schneppershoff managed only one more word, “Tourniquet!” The shark had severed an artery in his leg and he had bled so profusely while in the water that virtually no blood was left in his body when he was pulled aboard.

Schneppershoff was one of the most respected free-divers of his time.

“When we lost him, it struck at the very heart of our sport,” recalled Skip Hellen, a prominent San Diego free-diver.

Schneppershoff’s son, also named Al, doesn’t remember much about the solemn ride back to San Diego. Today, at 38, he’s an accomplished free-diver, proud to be following in his father’s wake. But he has no desire to return to Guadalupe.

The next incident, 11 years later, involved Schneppershoff’s longtime friend, Harry Ingram. Ingram was fortunate to see the shark charging. He pointed his gun and pulled the trigger on impact. The shark plowed into the tip of the gun, driving its butt into Ingram’s shoulder and launching him clear of the water. Help came fast and Ingram suffered only a bruised shoulder. He has not been back either.

Those are the only two verified reports of white shark attacks on humans at Guadalupe Island. But locals--there’s a small Mexican navy garrison and a seasonal fish camp--have told stories about an abalone diver who went down but never surfaced; of a skiff that went out with two fishermen and was later found adrift, minus the fishermen.

Such yarns don’t sit well with Searcher deckhand Joe Fernandes, the newest crew member and thus the one who has to do the dirty work. On a trip earlier this season, “They made me take the skiff and tow a seal decoy around in the middle of the chum slick,” he said, shaking his head. “Man, I felt like I was the decoy. I’m never going to do that again.”

A Fleeting Glimpse

Dive operators offer no guarantees anywhere white sharks are targeted, even at Guadalupe Island, which has long been considered a feast-or-famine destination by fishermen and free-divers, and will probably turn out to be one for shark divers as well.

All aboard the Searcher were aware of this--”It’s the nature of the beast,” Brauer said--and they leveled no criticism toward Groth or Taylor and their crews as Days 1 and 2 produced no sharks of any species, despite an oily chum slick that spanned several miles behind the stern, looking like a highway sure to bring in at least one curious predator.

In the distance on both days, schools of tuna could be seen leaping after baitfish and beaked whales could be seen shooting plumes high into the sky. Elephant seals lined their favorite beaches, their blubbery faces pointed toward the sea. Fur seals and sea lions were the boldest of the pinnipeds, floating on their backs and bellies, shooting only casual glances downward.

The island itself, though it was so alive, and with its colorful layers of rock sculpted so magnificently over the years by the forces of nature, seemed so alone. The only visible buildings were those of an old abandoned prison on the northeastern shore. Vegetation was sparse, having been gobbled up by goats that have overrun the island since the species was introduced more than 150 years ago.

What few people there were on the other side of the island had not made their presence known. The divers and the crews, which had wined and dined together during two beautiful evenings aboard the Searcher, had only each other and their pinniped friends for company.

The thought of sharks, by the time the third and final morning rolled around, had all but faded away.

The cages, though still submerged, remained vacant long after breakfast. The divers had taken up fishing, but not even the fish were cooperating.

Co-captain Kevin Ward, standing by a large barrel of chum, had become preoccupied with the closest sea lion, one that seemed all too comfortable as it rolled around before the salty old skipper.

“I was just sitting here thinking, ‘I’d like to see a shark come up and eat your [butt] right now,’ ” he would say later.

He got his wish, but the shark’s hit was not a telling one.

After the strike, it abandoned its prey and raced mightily behind the boat and along the starboard rail.

That was the last the divers would see of Whitey. From the cages, all they could make out was a single sea lion, sticking purposefully close to the boat, fright in its eyes and a freshly torn gash on its neck.