Dávid Mucsi won an international photo competition (our featured image), and thus, the young biologist from Szeged received a tour in Mexico and the opportunity to take photos of white sharks.
According to szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu, he was the only Hungarian among the 180 contestants and received the most votes. He has been diving for seven years and works with the sharks of the Budapest Zoo and Botanical Garden.
He told the news portal that the photo competition was announced by DivingSpecials which has its headquarters in Munich and organises diving tours all around the world. The task was to upload a photo take during diving and the one who got the most votes on their photo won.
The prize was a tour to Guadalupe which is the El Dorado for the divers because of one
can even swim together with white sharks.
Guadalupe is located 400 km away from Ensenada, Mexico. Its surface is 244 square km, and it is approximately 1,300 metres high. It is tough to get there because the government of Mexico city protects it with every means. For example, the number of ships that can permanently remain there is less than 10.
For a shark expert, there are only three perfect places on Earth: Australia, South-Africa and Mexico. However, Mexico is the best because it has the cleanest water and
animals can be spotted even 50 m away.
The island has a unique seal species (Arctocephalus townsendi) living only there on Earth and since there is a cold stream in the water coming from Antarctica the water is 18-21 Celsius degrees every time of the year on the surface.
On the international competition, there were more than 100 divers. In the last 3-4 days, Dávid was in the second and the first place together with a Brazilian guy, so it was fascinating. All relatives, friends and colleagues were working on recruiting as many votes as possible for which Dávid cannot be thankful enough.
Finally,
he got 4,443 votes
on his award-winning photo taken of a blue shark while the guy who finished in the second place fell behind with only 45. He took the photo in South-Africa when he was able to dive with 12 2.5 metres long sharks near the Cape of Good Hope.
The ship cruise took 15 hours to Guadalupe, and they arrived there before sunrise, which is very beautiful on the island.
They spent three days on the island, and the daily routine was the same every day. There were two surface cages open all day, and a cage let down 10 metres deep and open between 11 am and 6 pm. Photographers could work in shifts in the deep while on the surface, there was no working time limit. Dávid told that in the 20 Celsius degree water everybody starts to freeze soon, but the view compensates for the inconvenience.
Regularly
there were 6-9 sharks each day
and on the second day, they saw a whale shark which is very rare even near the island. At the end of each day, they showed their photos to each other and tried to identify the species they saw.
Dávid hopes that he will have the chance to go back again and take photos of the sharks even without a cage.
Source: szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu
