Six Gills in Vancouver waters

[Pippen]

Kind of an interesting story.


https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/sixgill-sharks-vancouver-1.5195910


"Over all the years I've been doing this, since the 1970s, I've only seen maybe two or three juveniles. I think that's what made the experience off downtown Vancouver so amazing," he said in an interview.


Get your hoochies out.

"There was lots of dogfish, lots of ratfish, tons and tons of squid species that we don't really see much of in shallow water in that part of Vancouver," he said.

 

[Peahead]

Above is a video showing the video footage done from the Aquatica subs ( Aquatica used to have office at my marina, now at Lions Gate Marina I recall) Very cool to see these juveniles fond right off Vancouver

When I did alot of scuba diving, one of the trips we would do in the summer was to head over to Bowser on VI, and take the zodiac over to Hornby Island area to dive with the infamous Sixgill Sharks. They would come in from the deeps into the shallow water around Flora Islet. Our first visit will be something I will never forget. Down on a ledge in about 80' of water kneeling on the bottom banging a rock on our scuba tanks ( the method to "bring them in") . Expecting them to come up from the depths off the edge of the cliff but to our surprise and to my momentary shock, I spotted one heading from above me coming right at me. Very slow controlled movement so nothing too scary except for its truly massive size. The first one came right up to me on the bottom and turned slowly to go around me. It was about 9-10 feet long but it is their girth that was even more startling. A few minutes later a bigger one joined us as well and I estimated the second one to be about 12 feet long with a truly massive girth. The second one I couldn't resist to touch it. It seemed fine with that so I held onto it with two hands ( no large dorsal fin typical in sharks, so just held onto it's incredibly rough sides) It pulled me along about 5-6 feet but then whipped its tail hard to shake me loose. Once it got me detached it seemed fine with sticking around for the whole dive and not at all aggressive whatsoever. I will never forget how rough the skin felt ( but it allowed me to hold on) - like a 40/50 grit sandpaper. They are incredible creatures for sure. Below is a link to the Hornby Sixgill diving.


http://www.divingbc.com/hornby.htm

 

[halimark]

They are awesome fish. I have caught 2 on rod and reel in my life (so far). First one was about 6ft long and in Saanich Inlet a long time ago and the other about 6 years ago North Island. This one was over 12 ft long, took about an hour to fight from 400+ ft. Fishing hali, thought we had a monster till it "felt" different. Both were released unharmed, even let me pop jig from mouth. I have heard others who say they have hooked them also. Good to see they are still down there.

HM

 

[Dogbreath]

I'm not going to stop swimming in the ocean...I'm not going to stop swimming in the ocean.....