six gill

[sheck33]

Hi all,

i never really write dive reports but i'll make an exception for this last dive i did.
i just came back from a leisurely night dive at Alki Cove 2.
my GF was my buddy. trying out my new doubles, the new '104's' (i have to tell you i need to go work out, these things are heavy .
it was high tide and we swam out a little to one of the little buoys and descended from there. at first i thought 'oh, no this is going to be a 'soup' dive' as visibility was pretty bad.
swimming down the line it cleared up a bit, at around 50 feet we ran into a large pacific octopus searching for food. we followed this octopus for a while, they are so elegant. we then swam out a little deeper when at 70 feet i couldnt believe my eyes as we almost literally bumped into a large six gill shark,
awesome. we were hovering about 10 feet above the bottom as it swam underneath us. The shark was just swimming
back and forth and seemed to have no intention of leaving, it must have been no more than about 5 or 6 feet away and
was, my best guess, about 6 feet long. these are just such amazing and graceful animals.
this encounter must have lasted between 5 and 10 min. i must admit we were a little anxious, i know they are not
agressive but they are still very powerful animals very capable of doing some serious damage.
I felt privileged to be so close to this beautiful shark.

after this we made our way back up the line. at about probably 25 feet we stumbled on another octopus that was
considerably smaller than the first one we saw.

all in all an awesome dive that i just wanted to share.

 

[bwerb]

Sounds just awesome...thanks for sharing!

 

[docmartin]

you are now one of a very exclusive club. congrats!

 

[DanBo]

Great dive! I've always thought that six gills are nocturnal, cold and deep water fish (thousands of feet). I've seen pictures of them in the Discovery Channel and one can only see them thousands of feet deep while baiting them and turning off the lights on the ROVs.

The one they featured in Discovery Channel broke through the bait cage like it was nothing. Strong jaws on that fish.

Dan
Dive Safe, but Dive Often

 

[sheck33]

they are not usually seen that shallow, as with octopus, best chance of seeing cool marine life is at night.
i love night diving

 

[SirStoneyOfBow]

What an amazing experience that must have been. I'm jealous my friend. Six Gill encounters are rare but i have heard they are considered a dangerous species due to their opportunist feeding reputation and that they can reach nearly 20ft in length. But generally they are sluggish. At 6ft that could have done some damage.
Night diving is definately far cooler but obviously you are more at risk too. Some of the the nocturnal predator fish are attracted to any strong light source ie. your torch and can inflict wounds. So be safe sheck, and i hope you find some more sixgills!

 

[James connell]

I just ran into this thread. six gills at alki are rare!
good luck there. an almost garrenteed encounter is hornby island on vancover island's inside passage in summer. it's deeper than 50 ft ( ~100) but i've seen ~10 Big sixgills on a single dive.
if you ever get to that area (the diving IS worth it) contact bill at pacific pro diving (i think, the name escapes me right now) in courtny.