When Vancouver Island divemaster Carl Sorensen went looking for giant octopus in the waters off Parksville the afternoon of August 17, he never expected to come face-to-face with a large blunt-nosed six-gill shark. “This was not on my bingo card that day. It was not something I expected to turn and see coming right at me,” said Sorensen. “They’re actually a pretty common shark in our waters. But because they’re a deep-water shark, we rarely ever see them.” The rare encounter with the 10- to 12-foot-long shark startled the veteran diver and underwater videographer. “I kind of swung my flashlight out on the sand in the dark water, and she was coming at me with her mouth wide open like five feet away. So I screamed in my regulator and kind of shifted. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing at first, but then I remembered I had my camera, and I had to hit record,” said Sorensen. The diver kept his cool—and his distance—to record the shark with his zoom lens. “It was a pretty gentle giant. It. Once it came in, checked me out and realized that either I wasn’t food or I couldn’t fit in her mouth, she just kind of swam by me and continued on doing what she was doing,” he said. The shark was swimming at a depth of around 100 feet, which is unusual. “They’re usually way deeper. Usually they’re found up to 2500m, so 8000-something feet. But from what I know, in the summertime they come into shallower waters to mate and give birth. So I’m not sure if that’s what she was up to, but she was definitely in shallower water than normal,” Sorensen said. The incredible underwater encounter lasted about 3 minutes. “When she left, and I started swimming away, I’m not going to lie, I kept looking over my shoulder just to make sure that, you know, she didn’t think I was prey or something,” he said. Sorensen has nearly 1,200 dives under his belt, most of them with giant pacific octopus, but this one was special. “That’s the top of my list,” he said. “That’s the pinnacle of diving here, if you can see a shark.”
