From LAUPS member John Gonda:

I returned about a week ago from Guadeloupe Island aboard the Ocean Odyssey. The first 2 days seemed pretty bleak - we had only one shark the first day which only made a few passes between 5-6pm. I was lucky enough to be in the cage during that time and got a few shots. Lighting was lousy and the picures were less than ideal. The second day wasn't any better - we had a large female show up around 9am which only 2 people saw from the cages. I spent hours freezing in boredom the rest of the day waiting for another to no avail.

The third day made up for the whole trip! We had a 16 foot female named "Mystery" show up at approximately 9am. She made continual close passes and went for both hanging baits almost continuously for the next 3 1/2 hours! I finally left the cage after 3 hours after I filled a 6-gig card and my battery went dead on my D200. A 12 foot male ("Shredder") showed up right before "Mystery" left and he hung around on and off for the rest of the day. Great end to the trip.

My worrying about the crossings from San Diego worked out as well. We had relatively smooth seas in both directions. We also had a Shark researcher join us for last evening who gave a lecture and slide show about his work. He's tagging the sharks with with GPS locators and tracking them worldwide among other things. He said they've identified and named 72 individual White Sharks at Guadeloupe.

All shots were taken with a D200 in an Ikelite housing using a 17-35mm lens behind an 8-inch dome.  I didn't have a zoom gear so all shots were taken at about 28mm.  I used a single strobe on a few of them.

John Gonda's Great White Album