Great White Shirk gives High Five
A video has created a buzz on the internet not only with its massive size, but by interacting with a deep-sea diver. The shark gave the high five using her fin to Joel Ibarra, the dive master of an ecotourism boat.
The dive master was attempting to push the shark away, said shark researcher Mauricio Hoyos Padilla, director of Pelagios-Kakunja A. C., a nonprofit organization that focuses on sharks and other open-water species. The shark had a big cut mark on the right side.
"It was really close to the cage, and they have pointy ends. It is so big it couldn't turn properly. So he was trying to push her away, because he didn't want her to get hurt", Padilla told Live Science.
For about 13 years, Padilla has been conducting studies on sharks off Guadalupe Island, off the coast of Mexico. Padilla says that the pregnant females wait for elephant seals in the waters there in November and December to kill them for needed sustenance.
He said female sharks are well capable of attacking the seals at a depth of 330 feet. Padilla along with his team, including scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, made the amazing footage of Deep Blue for one of the Discovery Channel's 'Shark Week' shows last year.
The scientists tagged her with a transponder after they encountered Deep Blue. Signals from the transponder were picked by an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) equipped with several cameras. The researchers tracked the signals and followed the shark to record her movements and other data.