Great White Shark Scuba Diving Nautilus Explorer, Guadalupe, Mexico 2010

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Dad and Daughters take Family Vacation Diving with Great White Sharks Undercurrent Magazine Rating: 5 Stars PADI and NAUI Professional Divemaster and Assistant Instructor Roger J. Muller, Jr. takes his Daughters on a Trip to Remember By Sally Deering Muller Family in shark cageSome families vacation in the mountains, some visit Florida’s Disneyworld, but Roger J. Muller, Jr. of Hoboken, New Jersey, Professional Divemaster and Assistant Instructor who holds 80 PADI, NAUI, TDI, SDI and SSI certifications decided to give his daughters Kelsey, 19, and Taylor, 15, a trip to remember. Muller took his daughters, who are also certified divers, aboard the Nautilus Explorer to Ensenada, Mexico’s Guadalupe Island where they plunged 40 feet below the water’s surface to observe the behavior of the mysterious Great White Sharks. Muller chose the Nautilus Explorer, which takes small groups of scuba divers on unique diving expeditions to give his daughters a memorable vacation away from the daily demands of their busy lifestyles. Muller, a Certified Professional Insurance Agent oversees Muller Insurance, the family business, in Hoboken, and in his spare time serves as General Manager and Captain of the Hoboken Rockets Ice Hockey team; Kelsey is a sophomore studying economics at Harvard College in Cambridge and Taylor is a high school sophomore. “It’s a wonderful bonding experience,” Muller says. “They get the opportunity to see Great White Sharks in their natural habitat and learn about shark advocacy. It’s also five days on a boat with no Internet access or cell phones to text boyfriends.” Based in British Columbia, Canada, the Nautilus Explorer takes divers to the giant mantas and dolphins of Socorro Island and adventures into Alaska, British Columbia, the Sea of Cortez, the California Channel Islands, Baja California, San Benitos Island and Clipperton Atoll. Guadalupe Island is the top destination for Great White Shark encounters, says Jason Crabb, Director of Marketing for the Nautilus Explorer, and the best way to observe Great White Sharks is by descending into their world and interacting with them on their terms in a natural way. With four submersible aluminum cages that descend to 20-foot and 40-foot depths, the Nautilus Explorer takes divers down to where the sharks naturally travel and without chum to attract them the encounters between humans and sharks are an equal exchange of curiosity and respect. That’s exactly the experience Kelsey and Taylor shared with their dad, who taught them how to dive in 2001, while training for his PADI Assistant Instructor certification. Muller trained his daughters to become certified divers in the family’s backyard pool. “They became my students,” Muller says. “Kelsey started at 6 and two days after she turned 10, she was the youngest to ever become a PADI Open Water Certified Diver. At 12, she became the youngest Junior Master Scuba Diver, that’s the highest non-professional rating that you can get. Taylor started at 5 and she now has 21 certifications including Master Scuba Diver.” Muller says his daughters’ training and his experience as a diver made it easy for him to take them on the Great White Shark diving expedition. “My kids trust me when they’re with me, they know I’m looking after them,” Muller says. “We have spent years practicing. Scuba Diving is a dangerous sport. You need to respect the water and respect the things living in the water.” At 19, Kelsey holds 38 diving certification, earning her Open Water Certification when she was 10 and her Junior Master Scuba Diver certification at 12. Witnessing the awe-inspiring presence of one of the world’s greatest predators was a diving experience like no other. Kelsey says: “I felt rather small among them, as if we were the entertainment for them and not the other way around. While observing them from our cages, limited to the tiny expanse of water we could see around us, they had the vast oceans around them to explore and master. I realized that no matter how long we observed them, we would probably never procure all the Great White’s secrets; for they could simply disappear into the distance, nothing betraying their position but the reflection of the silver sun on the Pilot Fish that hung close to their sides.” Shark cages setupDuring their trip, Kelsey and her dad were together in one of the submersible cages with Kelsey shooting video and Muller, who is also a PADI Digital Photography Instructor, taking photographs. At one point Muller stuck his head out between the bars of the cage just as a Great White Shark passed by – his head just inches from the shark’s mouth, which startled but didn’t surprise Kelsey one bit.