On Sunday September 5 we resumed operation of our annual Sharktober Sanctuary expeditions into our Greater Farallones National marine Sanctuary. Held every fall during the Sharktober months, celebrating the return of the adult great white sharks to our Sanctuary, we missed a year due to COVID last year after 15 years of operation.
We are grateful to our guests joining us on our first excursion observing our COVID policy and safety. precautions while onboard
The humpback whales put on a spectacular show with breaches and lunge feeding galore. Among the abundant forage fish we saw many seals and sealions, puffins, shearwaters, petrels and at least one albatross.
We didn’t see a white shark but we did see a leaping thresher shark as we entered the San Francisco Bay.
We will continue to run these trips throughout October so if you would please join us as we test a new, better decoy! These trips increase support for our Sanctuary and state MPAs and wildlife, and support our mission to increase protection on threatened West Coast sharks, and phasing out harmful fisheries impacting our marine ecosystems.
Special thanks to the International Marine Mammal Project’s Mark Palmer for coming aboard and sharing his knowledge. I will be sharing some images and a blog on the Shark Stewards site, but Mark has already written a blog with pictures.
Read that here.