Life and Death in the Sea of Cortez

After striking out with the fishermen in La Paz we headed north. For the past few days we have been camping on the beach near the dusty little town of Mulege about a third of the way up Baja’s east coast. Initially we thought that this would be a place that we could shoot all the species of round stingrays that are common in this region but after chatting in my terrible Spanish to the longline fishermen that work the bay I managed to convince one Captain (Martén) to let me accompany him and his crew on one of their longlining trips.

The boats mostly bring in tiny Pacific sharpnose sharks and (over the winter) juvenile smooth and scalloped hammerheads. When I told the fishermen that I wanted to jump in the water with the sharks they thought that I was a little crazy but they were ok with it as long as I didn’t get in the way.

We set out early in the morning but it took a long time for them to get any sharks. In total they put out four kilometers of longlines containing 1400 hooks baited with chunks of yellow striped fish that looked like some kind of grunts. For their effort, the fishermen landed 7 sharks weighing a total of around 20kg. I asked José, the other fisherman who has been in the industry a long time, what it was like in the old days. He told me that 20 years ago on his best days he could land over 1700kg of sharks.

Rows of shark hooks ready to be baited

I spent my time swimming around the panga shooting the sharks as they came up the line. It was a depressing thing to document. The sharks were still alive but beyond recovery by the time they were tossed into the bottom of the boat.

I took some shots of the carcasses and then sat there wondering if I was really cut out for this kind of thing. I believe that getting images of long liners doing their work is important from a conservationists perspective but to sit idly by while sharks are left suffocating in the bilge of a panga is a tough gig.

80cm long Pacific sharpnose sharks piled in the bottom of the panga

While I sat there, José pulled up a very lively sub-adult sharpnose shark and tossed it at the others. It immediately started flapping around so I figured this one still had a chance. I asked Marten what he thought this shark weighed and he said around 1.5kg. They had already told me that they get just over a dollar per kilo from the traders that periodically show up to buy the sharks so I explained as best I could that I would like to buy this particular shark. They got the idea and from the bemused look on their faces they obviously thought that I was completely loco but they agreed to sell me the shark and I grabbed it gently in front of its tail and dropped it back in the water before it could beat itself senseless on the deck planking. Two bucks for the life of a shark! What would it cost to keep these fishermen home for good?

Possibly these are the first images of a free swimming Pacific sharpnose shark

I know that I didn’t really achieve anything by liberating one little Pacific sharpnose shark but maybe my token act had some effect even if it was a small one. After I released the shark we talked as best we could in broken Spanish about the problems that sharks are facing and their important place in the ecosystem. They already understood the big picture maybe even better than me. I asked them what they would do if they couldn’t fish for sharks and they shrugged and said that they would fish for something else. Doing anything other than fishing seemed to be a bizarre concept that they did not want to entertain. If any real change is to take place it will have to come from the next generation.

Marten’s son in Law Aaron proudly holds up a sharpnose shark

After bidding farewell to the fishermen Claire and I went for a long hike along the rocky shore north of Mulege. Just before sunset we spotted some birds in the distance and went to investigate. What we found was a shoreline littered with discarded shark and ray heads. It was a tragic site. They were mostly Pacific sharpnose sharks and small smooth hammerheads but there were also a number of guitarfishes and the carcass of a butterfly ray. All in all it was a grim day.

Discarded shark heads littering the shoreline north of Mulege

The next day we returned with our cameras to photograph the grizzly remains and then spent the afternoon chasing round stingrays in the shallows next to our campsite.

In 5ft of water the stingrays were everywhere. It was a refreshing change to see so much life after so much death. We must have seen two or three hundred rays. Mostly round stingrays and a few Cortez stingrays.

The rays were very skittish and exploded out of the sand and darted away as we approached their hiding places but one older male round stingray let me get really close. I followed him around for a good half an hour and just as I was planning to head for shore he ducked down and latched onto a female ray that was sleeping under the sand. For the next 5 minutes I was able to watch an amazing spectacle as the male ray struggled to subdue his mate. The female put up a valiant fight as they spiraled around and around each other oblivious to the flashes emitting from my camera system.

That night I slept a lot better. The balance of species may be shifting but at least there is still life in the Sea of Cortez.

Stingray porn – a male Round stingray (Urobatis halleri) latches onto the tail of a female before mating

We were planning to look for Mexican Bullhead Sharks further north in Baja but it appears that they are so rare that no one I have spoken to has ever seen one. So we have decided to spend a couple of days slowly driving north and then cross the border into Southern California. San Diego here we come.

For the sharks,

Andy Murch

Shark Pictures

Leaving La Paz

For the last few days we’ve been based in La Paz trying to hook up with the artesanal shark fishermen that ply the waters on the north side of the bay. Last time we were here I managed to get some good shots of smooth hammerhead sharks but this time the fishermen are even more illusive than the sharks and we have had a great deal of difficulty tracking them down. I was hoping that we could document them while they fish for Pacific sharpnose sharks. This is their main target species that lives year round in La Paz bay and elsewhere along the coast. It is a fairly abundant little shark but it still needs to be carefully monitored to make sure that the sharpnose stocks do not fall to critical levels.

The fishermen average about 5 sharks per trip at this time of year but they take considerably more in winter. The sharks are too small (max one meter) for the Asian fin market but the locals relish the meat and the sharks fetch around 60 pesos (4US$) per kilo at the fish market. That makes their trips worthwhile even if there are not that many sharks around.

We’re planning to try one more time tomorrow to catch them at their fishing camp and then give up and move north.

The Easter holidays (Semana Santa) ramp up over the next few days. Easter is a massive event in Mexico and in Baja anyone with a tent heads to the beach. That means that the beaches around the main population centers down near La Paz will be zoos for the next few days. We want to get as far north as possible in the hopes that we’ll miss the flood of Mexican holiday makers but the chances are that wherever we end up we’ll probably still be swept up in the festivities. That’s ok; ‘when in Rome’ and all that.

I haven’t been in the water much since our last blog but I’ve still been talking sharks. A few days ago we met up with Documentary Maker Mike Hoover at the La Paz opera of all places. I haven’t seen Mike since our last trip to Guadalupe Island. Mike is a fascinating guy. His career in the film industry has been colorful, exciting and tragic in equal measures but his resilience and no nonsense astute personality are what I like about him the most. He is best known for his frontline work in Afghanistan during the Russian invasion and his cutting edge mountaineering films (among others) that have been well received by audiences around the world for decades. He has also worked on blockbusters like Forest Gump, Crimson Tide and The River Wild. More recently, he has been involved with numerous films about Great white sharks aboard his expedition ship the Captain Jack which is how I met Mike for the first time last year.

This time we only managed a short conversation before the singing started so I hope that I get another chance to talk and work with him soon.

Our next stop will be a day’s drive north on one of the white sand beaches around Bahia Conception. There are many beaches that we have never had the time to visit and some that are old favorites. All of them are home to hundreds of tiny Round and Cortez stingrays so we’ll be strapping on the snorkels once again and chasing rays until the sun goes down.

We wanted to keep this tour as fluid as possible but everyone we plan to visit has schedules so we’re slowly having to nail down dates for each adventure. The good news is that we have had a great response from all our friends and some once in a lifetime offers to do some very exciting diving. It now looks like we may be able to take a crack at sevengills in the wild with our shark tagging buddy Walter Heim. And, when we finally get to the Mississippi Delta we have an invitation to join a field trip with Dr Eric Hoffmayer from the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory. The GCRL is conducting an abundance and distribution study on coastal sharks and rays so that means that we will get to photograph lots of hard to find species like finetooth, Atlantic sharpnose, juvenile bulls and who knows what other sharks, not to mention all the illusive ray species that inhabit that part of the coast – I’ll be in elasmogeek heaven.

You can now follow our schedule at the following link:

http://www.elasmodiver.com/northamericansharkdivingtour.htm#Itinerary

For the sharks

Andy Murch

Shark Pictures

Mobula Rays Don’t Play Nice.

We have just left the sleepy village of Cabo Pulmo which is at the end of a very bumpy ‘washboard’ dirt track in Baja California Sur.

We were there to shoot mobula rays but unfortunately mobulas do not like to be photographed. There were certainly plenty there to shoot (they were schooling in their thousands) but as soon as we slipped into the water they would descend as deep as they could and stop breaching until we were so exhausted from chasing them that we had to get back on the panga. Then, they would start jumping again a few hundred meters away. It was fantastic to be in the water with such an enormous biomass of animals moving below us in formation but utterly frustrating to not have the chance to get close enough to record the encounter. If I was a better free-diver I might have been able to swim around at 40 or 50 ft and nail the shot but breath hold diving is not one of my strong points. If anyone out there wants to try the same thing next season I have one piece of advice; bring a rebreather. I believe that it is the only tool that can really do the job. We did manage to take a few snap shots of them both breaching and some murky shots of them gliding by in the darkness but none that are print worthy.

While we were out on the panga we tracked a humpback for a while and shot some pretty tail pics and then swum with sea lions and played with a giant school of big eye jacks but all told it was meager pickings for jaded shark divers.

The highlight and most productive session in Cabo Pulmo came right on our door step. While snorkeling off the beach where we were camping we came across a very accommodating banded guitarfish. It picked up and swam a little at first but eventually it got used to the flashes and let me shoot frame after frame. The pics are some of the best I have of this ray.

Camping on the beach outside town was a great way to start this adventure. There were no ‘facilities’ so it was a big change from crewing and living on a megayacht! All went well until I drove a little too close to the sea and my VW camper van got bogged down. After much wheel spinning things went from bad to worse. I’ve played this game on ice and snow but I’ve never been stuck in sand before. Unlike snow, sand just gets deeper. We started digging and thought we were making progress but the wheels continued to spin and then I realized that the wheels were no longer touching. We had sunk so low that the floor pan of the van was sitting on the sand! After about an hour more digging and a push from some passers by we finally managed to reverse back onto the hard pack. It was a tense couple of hours!

Claire digging us out (I helped too)

A VW shaped hole in Los Frailles beach!

North of Cabo Pulmo we tried navigating another dirt road and almost exactly the same thing happened but this time we were able to get a tow from a passing truck. Kimberley currency (cold beer) got us out of that fix.

I don’t think that VW had this kind of off roading in mind when they came up with the Eurovan! Fortunately, what goes around comes around and we were able to squeeze a family of six onto the bed in the back of the van to give them a lift into Cabo Pulmo when their rental car broke down. My van (which is missing a bushing on the front axle) groaned and clanked most of the way but we finally arrived in the village in one piece.

Next stop will be the artesanal shark fishing camps north of La Paz (along another dirt road). We’re not sure what reception we will get or how much we’ll be able to communicate with the fishermen in our rudimentary Spanish. Hopefully they will let us accompany them on their fishing trips but more about this in the next update.

Since we posted this blog about the trip we have had many emails from friends old and new asking when we will be in each area. It’s great to know that we will have the chance to catch up with so many people and we’re looking forward to every encounter. Unfortunately it is really tricky to estimate exactly when we’ll get to the next town let alone when we’ll be in Miami or Massachusetts! But, don’t let that put you off if you want to catch up with us. we’re going to cram as much diving and socializing into this tour as we physically can.

It now looks like we will get a chance to go out with a Mexican researcher on the Pacific coast of Baja that works with smoothhound sharks. We also got an invite to socialize with shark tagging veteran Walter Heim and maybe hunt for sevengills in San Diego. That would be amazing if we can pull it off.

Sean Van Sommeran of PSRF up in Elkhorn Slough also agreed to give us the skinny on Gray Smoothhounds where he conducts his research so our west coast agenda is looking fantastic.

A quick thank you to our friends in Cabo Pulmo: Muchas Gracias Javier and Juan for trying everything they could think of to help us get the mobula shots. If anyone wants to take up the gauntlet and carry on where we left off, these brothers will get you to the mobulas. The rest is up to you. You can contact Javier at: Javycastro@yahoo.com.mx he says Fidel is his uncle but I didn’t notice a resemblance.

For the sharks,

Andy Murch

Shark Pictures

North American Shark Diving (Farewell) Tour

We’re leaving. The owner of the boat we were working on turned out to be a tyrant and life is simply too short to waste time tiptoeing around angry people. Consequently we are free. We have a little money saved and we’re hell bent on embarking on the craziest, most ambitious road trip that we have ever dreamed up.

After this epic adventure we will fly to Australia, get married and spend the foreseeable future photographing the hundreds of shark and ray species that call Australia home so this trip is our last chance to take in the incredible sights and diverse elasmobranchs (sharks and rays) that North America has to offer.

Our starting point is the southern tip of the Baja peninsula in Mexico. We have our ailing VW camper loaded to the gills with diving and camera gear and enough tunes on our IPods to last for 37 days. Our first stop driving north will be Cabo Pulmo. Home of diamond and longtail stingrays, banded guitarfish, schools of pacific cownose rays and (at present) jumping mobula rays that seasonally converge on this isolated reef system in their thousands.

Next stop La Paz to join shark researcher Mauricio Hoyos for one more visit with the artisanal shark fishermen that ply the bay for smooth hammerheads and Pacific sharpnose sharks. Then up to the beaches south of Mulege; Urolophid central. Camping on the beaches by night and snorkeling with round, cortez, and bullseye stingrays by day.

We’ll skip through the rest of the sleepy towns in the lower Sea of Cortez and cross the desert into Northern Baja. Then cut back east to the remote village of Bahia de los Angeles where I have a hunch we can find Mexican bullhead sharks near the sea lion colonies.

After that it’s time to cross the border. First stop in Cali is San Diego. Leopard sharks at the marine room in La Jolla, possibly soupfins in the cove, and horn sharks at night in La Jolla Canyon. Its all shore diving so we can dive our hearts out and still have enough cash for a feed. Gotta shoot the harbour seals too.

North to Santa Barbara. Camp at Refugio Beach north of the city and hunt for swell sharks in the kelp forests. 15 minutes further north, Tajegis Beach is one of the few places where angel sharks are reliably found but the vis is often horrendous.

After Tajegis we’ll drive along Big Sur and resurface in Monterey. Hit the aquarium (the sevengill sharks are awesome) and then go play with the seals and sea lions and look for big skates. Then cruise north as far as San Fransisco.

San Fran pier fishermen report that they catch brown smoothhound sharks by the bushel (mostly at night). We’d like to do some exploratory dives under the piers to see if they’re approachable. SF Bay may be like diving in coffee so if anyone has some experience diving there, I’m all ears.

Then its adios west coast. Death Valley, Grand Canyon (hey, Claire is an Australian tourist) and then Texas. Maybe dive the gulf on the way to Venice, Louisiana. Splash out in Venice for some big critter diving. Scalloped hammerheads, duskies and silky sharks are common on the humps about 70 miles from shore. It will be a real highlight because we’ll be hooking up with the Shark Diver Magazine crew: Eli Martinez, Paul Spielvogel and Nathan Meadows. Haven’t seen the whole gang since we shot Summer of the Sharks so it’ll be a great reunion.

Mississippi beckons with the promise of numerous little sharks in the estuary. Finetooth sharks and Atlantic sharpnose sharks among others. I don’t have any contacts in the Gulf of Mexico so if anyone reading this blog can introduce me to some friendly researchers willing to let a coupla shark photographers tag along on a field trip please let me know.

Next stop Panama City, Florida. Camp at the state park within camera schlepping distance of the pier. This is a great place to shoot Atlantic stingrays and occasionally bluntnose stingrays too.

We have to stop at Crystal River on our way down through Florida. I know that manatees are not sharks but come on, manatees! they’re so cool! Down to Tampa, visit Mote Marine, kick up a few prehistoric mako teeth on Venice Beach and then head through the Everglades to Miami.

Would love to go look for smalltooth sawfish but they’re pretty tricky to find. Through the keys for a couple of days to dive with nurse sharks, southern stingrays and yellow spotted stingrays then we’ll head up the east coast.

We will probably drop in on some old friends in West Palm Beach that regularly go spear fishing among bull and lemon sharks and then we’ll say goodbye to the oppressive heat of Florida and drive directly up to the outer banks of North Carolina where sandtigers rule the wrecks.

Further north still, in and around Maine, there are plenty of blue sharks and spiny dogfish to keep us entertained. If possible we’ll try to stay posted on the basking shark migration. If they’re in town when we head up the New England coast we’ll have to find a way to get out to where they are feeding.

Our final stop in the US will be in Massachusetts. The beaches around the Cape Ann Peninsula are home to winter skates in the winter and little skates in the summer. I’m not sure when the transition takes place but if we’re lucky we’ll be able to shoot both species. Cape Ann also has a population of Atlantic torpedo rays but so far I haven’t seen any.

By the time we cross the border it should be warm enough in eastern Canada to go diving without having to break the ice first Before we get there, I’ll check in with the porbeagle shark fishermen to see what they are up to. I’ve done two trips to the Bay of Fundy and the water is always like green tea so I am hoping that this time I can shoot porbeagles in NS where the water is much clearer.

Then northeastward to Gaspe to shoot harbour seals (they’re different to the californian ones) and then a ferry north across the Saint Lawrence River to chase Greenland Sharks in Baie Comeau.

That pretty much sums it up. After that we’ll drive west to Ontario and sell my camper (assuming it makes it that far) and fly to Western Australia. We figure that should take around three months unless we stop to work along the way. If we’re frugal, we have enough cash to keep the van fueled up and pay for groceries, tank fills, the occasional dive charter, truck stop showers and the odd campground.

Along the way we will try to hook up with as many of our old friends as possible. We’re also looking forward to bumping into other shark divers, shark researchers, and anyone else out there that wants to talk shark. We’ll be updating our blog once or twice a week with pictures and stories of our encounters both underwater and above and posting them on a new page on Elasmodiver.com where you can follow our progress: northamericansharkdivingtour

Our first stop Cabo Pulmo is totally off the grid at the end of a long dirt road but as soon as we make it into a town we’ll upload the first progress report. Well, it’s 1.30am and we’re leaving in the morning so I guess I better call it a night.

For the sharks,

Andy Murch

Shark Pictures

Bull Sharks!

I talked to Eli Martinez (Publisher of Shark Diver Magazine) last week about the bull shark shoot that he had just returned from in Playa del Carmen. He was raving about how good it was but said that the if I wanted to go I was gonna have to hustle because the bull sharks are seasonal and they were gone by March 1st last year. From his description of the feed I started to get really excited but I had to go to sea on the yacht that Claire and I work on so there was no chance to arrange tickets. I thought that we had missed the boat for this year.

As soon as the yacht got back to Cabo we raced into town and found some cheap flights but the plane was scheduled to leave only three hours from when we bought the tickets so we had to scramble to get all the photography gear together and get to the airport in time. It was a crazy morning but we made it.

We were met at Phantom Divers in Playa Del Carmen late that night by Jorge Loria (Chino to his friends) who pioneered the bull shark feed. He showed us some video of what to expect and we spent the night tweaking the cameras and getting ready.

The sharks were spectacular. It was the very end of the season so there were only 7 sharks on the first day and 4 on the second but it was still worth the effort to get there. The sharks were all big females around 6 to 8ft long. It was a very deep feed in strong currents and the sharks were a little hesitant to take the bonito that Chino was hand feeding them with but we eventually had enough opportunities to shoot some pretty good Bull shark pictures to replace the low resolution ones that I had on Elasmodiver before.

Chino is really keen to find out where the sharks go at the end of the season so I put him in touch with my buddy Mauricio who conducts the Great White Shark tagging study at Guadalupe Island. Hopefully next year they will be able to gather some interesting data.

Now I’m back on the boat trying to get all my shark and ray pics sorted out. I have been busy shooting around Cabo whenever I have free time and I’ve got some nice new images of a number of species. I also have a new shark but I’m saving that one until I’ve got a story to go with it.

Elasmodiver has been expanding again. With Mauricio’s help I have converted my Shark Picture Index into Spanish so that it is easier for native Spanish speakers to browse through the shark and ray species. Now I need to find some French and German marine biologists that would like to help me load the index into their languages too! Click on this link Imágenes de Tiburones y Rayas to take a look.

Lastly, Ekrem from Spain sent me a link to his fun but sad sharks in danger of extinction cartoon that I promised to share with everyone.

If time permits, I’ll be loading new ray shots every few days so keep checking back.

For the sharks,

Andy Murch

Shark Pictures and Shark and Ray Field Guide

An unexpected find in the Sea of Cortez

A few days ago I went out snorkeling with my friend Mauricio Hoyos. He is a shark researcher based in La Paz. He has a number of projects on the go including a distribution study on Great White Sharks at Guadalupe Island. From September through December each year he camps on the remote island west of Ensenada to track white shark movements and document predations from his little panga. It is a lonely and sometimes unrewarding project but he is fanatically dedicated to the task.

When he is back in La Paz he spends his time writing proposals for funding and finding creative ways to finance his work. He is also studying the movements of Scalloped hammerheads in the shallow bays north of La Paz. Mauricio thinks that the area is a nursery ground for this species and the sharks probably stay there for a long time before moving out to a more pelagic environment. If he is right then his work may lead to stricter regulations for the fishermen that long line along the coast.

To track the baby hammerheads Mauricio goes out with the long liners. If they bring up a live scalloped hammerhead shark he implants an archival tag into the torso of the animal and releases it. The tag records temperature and depth information which can be analyzed later (if the animal is caught again) to estimate the sharks movements.

Mauricio invited me to join him on one of these trips and we spent the day north of La Paz with a couple of local shark fishermen. It was tough to watch them work. They did not have much success but all of the little sharks (none were longer than one meter) that they did bring up were already dead. Some shark lovers may have reservations about a shark photographer and outspoken conservationist working among shark fishermen but I believe that I did not contribute to or encourage the deaths of any sharks and the understanding that I gained about the shark fishing industry will stand me in good stead for future arguments. In the words of the warrior philosopher Lao Tzu “Know your enemy”.

We waited on the panga while they slowly pulled in their lines. They brought up a couple of tiny Pacific sharpnose sharks and then the line began to jerk and spin. The fisherman pulling it in indicated that something big was coming up so I slipped into the water with my camera and stared down at green nothing. The Sea of Cortez is heavily laced with plankton and visibility rarely opens up. A pinkish blur solidified below me and swam in agitated spirals around the line.

Mauricio had told me that the long liners sometimes catch rayas violaceas but I had never heard of Violet Rays and nothing fitting that description was in any of my local fish i.d. guides. Once the ray was close enough to see it clearly I recognized it as a Pelagic stingray Pteroplatytrygon violacea.

It is a unique animal among stingrays because unlike other whiptail stingays it swims in open water instead of hiding under the sand.

It is rarely if ever encountered by divers. I have never seen one and thought that I never would so I was thrilled to get the chance to see it in action but wondered what the fishermen would do with it. I assumed that they would add it to the catch which was piling up in the bottom of the panga but they carefully pulled it along side and removed the hook without causing it too much damage. The ray turned and flapped quite slowly back into the green. I gave chase for a few kicks and then let it go.

The unexpected care with which the fishermen released the ray was quite surprising and it made me think a little harder about who they are. Their job is certainly destructive to the environment and devastating to the future of sharks but I believe that they mostly do not fully comprehend or believe this. They are proud fishermen that have chosen to fish for sharks and consider themselves no different from other hard working fishermen. As we watched them set their lines they told us about some of the strange creatures that they have encountered over the years like the 5 meter long oarfish that swam by one day. It is clear that at least some of them are just as fascinated by the wonders of the ocean as I am but they choose to exploit its resources where as I believe that the ocean has given up too much of its wealth already.

Change does not always come from forced legislation or a big stick. Sometimes the most productive change comes from subtle discussions intended not to offend but to educate. So, I will go out with these fishermen again if Mauricio invites me and perhaps in time we will have a chance to discuss why their shark catches are dwindling and what they can do to help shark stocks recover.

For the sharks,

Andy Murch

shark pictures

Cabo (finally).

Our long overdue exodus from Canada has finally finished. I am writing this aboard the motor yacht that I work on part time which has just arrived in Puerto Los Cabos in San Jose del Cabo right down near Lands End at the bottom of the Baja Peninsula. It was surprisingly smooth sailing all the way from British Columbia; clear skies, huge pods of Pacific white-sided dolphins, and even a shark on the surface as we sailed south.

During the trip I had the chance to clean up some of my new Cortez round stingray pictures and Banded guitarfish pictures that I took a few weeks ago in Baja when we were driving my camper van down. That trip was short and sweet but this one is basically a one way trip. Now that we are in Cabo we’ll be putting down roots for a while and I’ll start calling some of my contacts that have promised to show me some new sharks and rays.

Rays abound in the Sea of Cortez but sharks are now few and far between due to over fishing. My friend Mauricio Hoyos (a shark researcher from Mexico City) has invited me to come shark tagging with him in La Paz next week. This is very exciting news because Mauricio tags the little sharks that divers rarely (if ever) see. I have some idea of what species to expect but I’m keeping it to myself until I have some shark pictures to load onto Elasmodiver.

To keep everyone happy until I load some new shark species, I have one new species of river stingray loaded. It is the most common species kept by aquarists because of its stunning coloration and comparative ease of keeping. If you’re interested take a look at the new Motoro Stingray species profile and Motoro Stingray Pictures page.

The word is spreading in Mexico that shark stocks are at critical levels and conservation efforts from groups like Iemanya Oceanica in La Paz have gone a long way to help protect the remaining stocks. More about Iemanya soon.

For the sharks,

Andy Murch

Shark Pictures

The ups and downs in the life of a shark photographer

My apologies; for the last week Elasmodiver has been offline. Really it should be Webserve Canada that is apologizing but given their track record that is unlikely which is why Elasmodiver has moved servers. Re-uploading hundreds of pages and thousands of pictures is a slow process hence the interuption. Everything should be back to normal soon except at Webserve Canada who just lost another client. Was that enough of a negative plug for Webserve Canada? You get the point

Ok, onto something sharky:

A few days ago I got some bad news. I had been tentatively invited to pilot a submersible for a film shoot at Guadalupe Island for a few weeks but the project ran into a snag and had to be delayed indefinitely. That was a blow. It would have been awesome to spend day after day under water at the best place in the world to see Great White Sharks. Who knows what new behaviors we would have witnessed. At least the shoot is still a future possibility.

Then I got some great news; a shark diving buddy of mine – Nathan Meadows, is joining my project to build a deep water camera system: Project Deep Shark. Specifically, Nathan has offered the use of his machine shop to help with the construction of the housings. I’m very happy to have his help because it will make a huge difference to the construction time. Perhaps more importantly, Nathan is bringing his usual enthusiasm which is contagious and may have an even more profound effect on how quickly the project takes shape. I met Nathan a few years back (shark diving of course) and then I bumped into him again this summer when he joined the Shark Diver Magazine trip that I hosted in eastern Canada. He also wrote an article in the last issue of SDM and I have a feeling that (like the rest of us) he will become more and more fanatical about sharks as the years go by. Nathan’s wife Lindsay is also a big shark fan and with that kind of support you can achieve anything. And once sharks have a grip on you there is no escape.

In other news, it looks like it will be even longer before we will finally head south. The refit of the ship that I am working on in British Columbia has had a number of setbacks. Nothing too serious just time consuming. So, our new ETD from Canada is December 6th. I believe that we will actually make this departure date unless something catastrophic happens between now and then. But it means that we will not be in sunny Baja until late December. Fortunately the mobula ray migration which we want to document, is at its height in January, so we should still have plenty of time to shoot after we get to Cabo. Its getting really cold here now and the nights are drawing in, but hey, maybe we can get some skiing in before we go! There is always a bright side.

Last night I was walking along the shore winding down after a busy day at the boat yard. Some kind of fox (or maybe it was a coyote) was scavenging at the waters edge. It was lit up by the moon and I got a great chance to enjoy it before it finally became too nervous of my attention and trotted off into the bush. It got me thinking about how isolated we are from nature. I can’t remember the last time I saw anything that big foraging so close to the city. With so little contact with the natural world around us its not surprising that it is so hard to generate support for conservation for our local fauna. And if even that is a struggle what chance do sharks have?

Its been a while since I got on my soap box and I’ll spare you the whole story this time but remember the key points and tell as many people as you can:

Sharks are in decline. They are heavily over fished and can’t bread fast enough to bounce back. Even if you don’t like sharks we need them. Because of their low birth rate, sharks are the only animals that can maintain a healthy balance in our oceans. Without them the food chain will collapse with catastrophic consequences.

Spread the word, boycott restaurants that sell shark fin soup, join conservation groups like The Shark Trust and Sea Shepherd, and try to dispel the myth that sharks are mindless killers. Its a tough message to get across to people but its very important to keep trying.

For the sharks,

Andy Murch

Summer of the Sharks – The Movie

Two summers ago I left on a road trip with Eli (the Editor of Shark Diver Magazine), Rafa Flores (rancher, shark diving fan, driver and part time videographer) and Rusty Armstrong (Film Editor, topside Camera wielder and eventually Director). The plan was to document a typical summer season for us on the road chasing sharks. It began with a three week road trip in Rafa’s RV followed by a series of flights that took us to both coasts of the US with side trips to Mexico and the Caribbean. The trip was a great adventure for all of us. Rusty (fresh out of film school) got his first chance to put a full length feature together, Eli got to fulfill his dream of producing the first movie about shark diving and I got to spend almost a whole summer photographing sharks.

Rusty documented almost every aspect of our lives as the story unfolded and originally it looked as though the footage was destined to become a TV series. In fact the first few episodes of ‘Chasing Sharks’ actually made it into the can but for a bunch of reasons the show finally morphed into a full length movie.

I got my hands on a copy a few weeks ago and chose to watch it while Eli was showing it for the first time on the big screen in Texas to a few hundred friends and acquaintances. I was nervous because it was the first time that any of us except Rusty had been involved in the movie industry and I was expecting to wince at the quality of the footage. I was thrilled with the result. It was obviously shot on a budget but the footage was awesome and more importantly it summed up the whole shark diving lifestyle that we have immersed ourselves in.

I guess it is hard to be unbiased about a movie that I am so much a part of but I think it is a landmark movie in the diving world. A little rough around the edges but it stands as the quintessential movie about shark divers. It has plenty of action, a strong conservation message and… its funny!

Eli and Rusty have submitted it to many upcoming film festivals. Hopefully it will be well received and stand up to the scathing cynicism of the professional critics.

Ultimately the movie is destined for DVD release sometime in 2009 so I hope that many of you will pick up a copy. If you’re crazy enough about sharks to be reading this shark blog then you’ll probably enjoy it.

For press releases and further info about ‘Summer of the Sharks’ follow this link: http://summerofthesharks.com

Today I loaded some more images of Porbeagles onto Elasmodiver. Some of the images are of a dead and bloody carcass of a Porbeagle Shark. They are quite gory and I am expecting some negative feedback. The dead shark was presented to the researchers that I was working with by a fisherman that found it wrapped up in a line. The images while provocative show the stark reality of life in the ocean especially when sharks come in contact with humanity.

There are still plenty of images that need to be cleaned up and loaded onto the site but I have been very low on time lately with the refit of the ship that I am working on. Next month we sail for Baja and then I will hopefully have a little more time to dedicate to shark photography. There are many species of sharks and rays in Baja that I have yet to shoot so I am looking forward to a very sharky year or two.

For the sharks,

Andy Murch

Summer of the Sharks / Submersibles

My relaxing summer on Vancouver Island lasted just over a week. I fly to Italy tomorrow to pilot a submersible for two weeks for a prominant VIP. It will be great to get back in a submersible again.

After that I get one day back in BC and then I’m off to eastern Canada to run a couple of Shark Diver Magazine trips. Eli (Editor of SDM) was supposed to lead the trips but he was asked to co-host a shark show on Animal Planet and fame got the better of him. So, I get to go chase Greenland Sharks again and then continue to the Bay of Fundy to join one of the world’s great underwater shooters in search of Porbeagle Sharks. It will be a great adventure. Incidentally, if anyone wants to come dive with me on either trip there is still room. Send me an email if you’re interested.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a long time you will probably remember the TV series that we were shooting way back in 2006. Well, after many changes it has finally morphed into a shark diving documentary that will hit the film festival circuit this summer. You can view a trailer for the show here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8aZw0n-KcY

After the Greenland Sharks and Porbeagles I am heading back to BC for some down time but Seamagine Hydrospace is already talking about sending me back to Europe to pilot again so we’ll see. Then at the end of August I get a week with my boys in Ontario and then fly on to West Palm Beach to jump on a boat to the Bahamas. I’ll be diving with Eli, Paul Speilvogel, and a bunch of shark nuts that want to go look for Oceanic Whitetip Sharks. It should be an awesome trip.

While all this is happening my girlfriend Claire will be in Vancouver supervising the refit of a large motor yacht that is owned by a good friend of ours. Once that is done we will take it down to San Diego and wait for hurricane season to finish in Baja. Then on to Cabo where we will moor the boat and look after it for the owner.

Of course while we are there we will be taking advantage of all the shark and ray action around the Sea of Cortez. I have a friend who has promised to put me in the water with Mexican Bullhead Sharks and possibly Pacific Sharpnose Sharks – new shark pictures for Elasmodiver.com!

Life is looking pretty exciting right now.

For the sharks

Andy Murch