Sal Jorgensen, Gulf of the Farallones. After three weeks of challenging weather, on Sunday we finally had one of those rare days in the Farallones with sunshine, clear water, and no wind. Luck was really with us -- in addition to the conditions being just right, we were fortunate to witness white sharks feeding. In the Fall, thousands of elephant seals and sea lions haul out on the rocky shore of the Farallon Islands and white sharks gather here to patrol the surrounding waters for their next meal. The pinnipeds have to "run the gauntlet" -- from the rocks, past the sharks and out into the open ocean where they look for their own food, such as squid. On their way back, they have to evade the sharks again.

The strongest and fittest seals are the most likely to make the passage fast enough to avoid being caught, and they survive to reproduce on the island. While the thought of a 17-foot white shark capturing and eating a young elephant seal may seem cruel or savage on the surface, it is humbling to consider that this dynamic relationship between predator and prey has been the same for many millions of years. Between the 16-foot male white shark that captured the seal and the 17-foot female that swam in to steal what the male hadn't eaten, the 200-pound seal was consumed in under 10 minutes.

By floating a seal decoy on the surface, we're able to entice some of the sharks to come by our boat and have a closer look. When they approach the decoy we reel it in and try to entice the shark over towards the boat where we can tag them. Here are Barb Block and Scot Anderson with the decoy.

And here's a curious shark.

While we're waiting for the sharks to show, we do a little fishing. That's Scot Anderson, Jim Omura and Barb Block.

Eventually we were able to tag two sharks, one with a pop-up satellite tag and another with an acoustic tag. By mid-afternoon, we reluctantly we headed back to the Baylis, our mother ship, pull the skiff aboard and set sail back to San Francisco. Jim Omura is at the helm with Captain Homer, and the Farallon Islands in the background.

On the way back, we wondered what secrets the tags will reveal about these sharks once they leave these cold and rich feeding grounds in a few weeks and head offshore to the warm open ocean.