It’s Sharktober! Join Shark Conservationist and Naturalist David McGuire and other wildlife specialists celebrating sharks in a life-changing experience searching the Gulf of the Farallones for whales, wildlife and our finny friends.
Join us exiting beneath the Golden Gate on the US Coast Guard certified vessel AMIGO, for amazing photo and wildlife opportunities and crossing 28 miles across the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary on a modern day Natural History expedition.
Sharktober is the period when the large adult sharks reappear on our coastline after six months or more of absence. After migrating thousands of miles from the Central Pacific ocean between North America and Hawaii called the “White Shark Cafe”, the mature white sharks return in late summer to their feeding grounds off the Central California coast.
In the Gulf of the Farallones, the most common ecotype is known as the Transients or Biggs Ecotype. The Transients were the group identified in the humpback whale event last month. These orcas eat mammals, but are known to occasionally prey on seabirds, possibly squid, and occasionally even great white sharks too.
Highly intelligent, Orcas are also adaptable. It is believed that the resident Orcas may be moving into southern waters to seek alternate prey sources due to a decline in salmon. With an abundance of anchovies in the Greater Farallones and Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuaries, hundreds of humpback whales are feeding nearshore. Overlapping with the whale season is Sharktober, when the adult white sharks return to feed on pinnipeds off the Farallon Islands. Shark Stewards leads public education trips out to the Farallones each fall helping collecting observations on whales and sharks. Although we love orcas, speaking from a shark conservationists’ point of view, we hope they pass on through and white sharks aren’t on the menu this year!
Crossing the Gulf of the Farallones is always an eventful experience. Currents and tides aggregate plankton and planktivorous (plankton-eating) fish, which in turn attract harbor porpoises, seabirds and humpback whales. The rich seawater upwelled from the deep waters, feeds a proliferation of plankton, attracting marine life from across the Pacific into the Sanctuary waters. One of the most unusual fish is the giant ocean sunfish.
Sharktober is a celebration of white sharks to our Sanctuary offshore, and to educate and motivate the public to save endangered sharks and rays. Our first Sharktoberfest events were intended to drive support for the now successful California Shark Fin Ban introduced by Shark Stewards, and the USA shark fin trade ban passed in 2022. Since that time we have used these events with our partners at the California Academy of Sciences, the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, the California Ocean Protection Council and other NGOS and agencies to reach over 100,000 public and youth directly in the Bay Area and beyond to celebrate and save sharks. Join us for our 15th year celebrating and saving sharks!
Shark-diving tourism can be a controversial issue. Images of svelte, swimming females fending off assertive tiger sharks, armored divers hand -feeding bull sharks for tourists, and shots of white sharks slamming into cages: these scenes are not aways favorable for the average diver, or even the sharks.
Join Shark expert David McGuire on a unique exploration into the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, observing, photographing and recording marine wildlife from seabirds to whales, and maybe even a great white shark! We are scheduling trips beginning September 2023.
Looking west on a clear San Francisco day a smudge of jagged peaks can be glimpsed on edge of the horizon. A rugged archipelago of wind and wave-worn rocks form the Farallon Island chain. Located 30 miles from shore, Farallones composed of SE Farallones (the tallest), Middle Rock, the Island of St James to the North, and Noon Day rock, the islands host a history of shipwreck, murder and the birth of millions of seabirds and seals. Known as the islands of the Dead by the native Miwok, who viewed them but did not leave any evidence of visitation, the islands have a rich and sometimes tragic history of human occupation.
