Director of West Coast Shark Operations Greg Barron has been racking up charges
on IA's bank card this week. He's been busy picking up supplies
and making sure everything is ready for our first San
Francisco shark dive adventure of 2011. White shark season
in San Francisco officially opens this Saturday, September 24th
and continues on select dates through November 20th.
In case you're curious,
divers will be breathing from new air hoses and drying off with
some new towels this season. Our seal decoys will also be getting
some new stuffing. (A surprise change in Sanctuary rules means
our seals need emergency surgery to replace their insides.)
Demand for trips has been so high this season that we recently
added four additional dates to this year's schedule, including
two special Friday trips. That means it's not too late to book
a dive with great white sharks this season.
Cage divers pay $875 and topsiders pay $375 for a full day adventure
in the Farallones. For a list of available dates or additional
info, please contact
us at 800-644-7382.
Our shark dive adventures
in San Francisco take place within California's Gulf
of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. In 2009, regulations
were enacted making it illegal to attract white sharks within
the Sanctuary without a permit.
We're happy to report we've been issued permit GFNMS-2011-005,
granting us the right to use seal shaped decoys to attract white
sharks this season. We go to the Farallones hoping to witness
natural predations (sharks feeding on seals), but decoys help
increase the likelihood of seeing a shark near our cage or boat.
Regular readers of our news may remember that last year, a white
shark left a pretty big bite mark in one of our seal decoys.
That said, we'd be a whole lot happier this year if we'd actually
received the permit we requested from the Sanctuary. We
asked for permission to use scent attractant, which could significantly
increase the number of near shark sightings at the Farallones,
but they said no.
We know from experience that decoys can work, but statistics
confirm they work much better when used together with scent attractant.
That's why researchers at the Farallones use a combination of
scent and decoys and why Incredible Adventures has been fighting
NOAA for three long years for permission to let sharks smell fish.
A top researcher who has extensively
studied shark brains believes the use of scent would be no more
disturbing to sharks than the use of a decoy. Several other researchers
have also voiced support granting our request. (When you use scent
attractant, you're using food to produce a scent in the water
which sharks can choose to investigate, or not. You're not feeding
sharks or putting food directly into the water. It's a method
of shark attraction commonly used by shark researchers hoping
to observe sharks in their natural, relaxed state.)
Incredible Adventures will be appealing the Sanctuary's most
recent denial to the Assistant Administrator of NOAA. That means
IA President Jane Reifert is gearing up to write another 6000+
word appeal brief.
We're telling you all this so that you understand the lengths
we go to in order to insure every one of our adventures is as
incredible as it can be. And, because we need help. If you're
one of the many reporters on our list and can help to make the
story of our permit fight public, please call Jane at 800-644-7382.
We need all the help we can get. (Thanks!)
We update the videos on the "Featured
Videos" page of our website often. Visit the page now
to see great new MiG video from Russia and a fun birthday video
featuring the incredible L-39.
![Incredible Adventures is on Facebook](facebook-badge.jpg)
We just posted photos from this year's
MAKS Air Show in Russia to our company's Facebook
page. Getting to see them is your reward for liking us :)
follow
flymigs on Twitter
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![Dive with Giant Mantas in Mexico](mantanews1.jpg)
If you've always talked about
getting dive certified but just haven't gotten around to
it, here's all the motivation you need to call your local
dive center and sign up for classes.
You don't need to be dive certified to cage dive with great white
sharks or tiger sharks,
but you do need to be dive certified to get into
the water with the Giant Mantas of Mexico.
This incredible underwater adventure takes place an ocean
crossing away from the popular cruise port of Cabo San Lucas.
Travel
with the wonderful crew of the Nautilus Explorer to Mexico's
Socorro Island, for a very personal encounter with giant
manta rays, dolphins and sharks. (The Nautilus Explorer
is the same great vessel used for our great white shark
trips to Isla Guadalupe.)
With a typical fin span of
5 to 6 meters, these friendly mantas are truly gentle giants.
(For those who've forgotten their metric system, that's
roughly 15 to 19 feet in size. They're not just bigger than
a breadbox, they're bigger than a lot of kitchens!)
Choose from a variety of itineraries and cabin choices.
For complete details, call or email
Sheri.
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Today,
our edge of space flight in the MiG-29 is our most popular
MiG offering. Many don't realize we started offering high-altitude
flights in Russia completely by accident.
The year was 1993. A
writer named Peter and an investment banker named Sarah
were in Moscow, preparing to fly the MiG-29, when a mechanical
problem was discovered with the jet. Our friends at the
base asked permission to substitute the little known MiG-25
for their flights.
Suddenly, the jet no one had heard of and no one wanted
to fly became the jet everyone heard of and everyone wanted
to fly. It didn't take long for word to spread about the
jet's unique ability to fly very high and very fast.
You can take a trip down MiG memory lane and read
about Peter and Sarah's incredible 1993 adventure here.
(We love it that the New York Times makes the old article
available online.)
Today's high-altitude flights are performed in the MiG-29
Fulcrum. If you'd like to experience the thrill of flying
to the edge of space (at 2011 prices), contact
Greg today. Winter is one of the best times to schedule
a high-altitude jet, because the MiG-29 flies its highest
in cold weather.
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![San Francisco Shark Dives, Farallon Islands, September through December](/banners/sharks-farallons004-150x130-date.jpg)
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