Buenas Tardes from Roca Partida.
It's been a fabulous second day here at my personal favorite dive spot. Our first dive of the morning started bright and early at 8am. As we moved into position on the pangas, we watched bottlenose dolphins bound in the early morning sun. The conditions looked good with very little current, 75 degree (F) surface temp., and 60 foot visibility. My group entered on the East side of Roca, as that was in the vicinity of the dolphins. Within minutes we had eleven dolphins swimming circles around us. They were very playful this morning and allowed very close interactions. Chirping and clicking, they allowed us to get close enough to touch. The dolphins were playing their favorite game of stalling mid-water, with their nose pointed to the surface, and slowly falling back to the depths. Over and over they did this in front of us as if trying to bring us with them. Needless to say, we had to watch our maximum depth on this one. Adil, our videographer, got some excellent footage of the entire episode. After about 15 minutes of play time, the dolphins brought the rest of their pod. Thirty dolphins in total circled the group, some with very young dolphins. It was 25 minutes before they swam off into the blue. The group was ecstatic and so we continued our dive to the south point. There we noticed the creolefish were "walled-up" in the blue. This "wall" is a great spot to look or sharks. It wasn't long before I saw a single hammerhead, then the school of hammerheads apparated. They were thirty strong and made two close passes. As they swam by, everything went quiet and you had time to consider all the details that make these sharks amazing. And just as unexpected as they appeared, they were absorbed by the blue. We returned to the Solmar V with huge smiles. Everyone couldn't stop talking about our amazing first dive. We were hoping for more dolphins on the second dive, but this dive brought sharks instead. We rounded the north point to see 10-15 Galapagos going in and out of the baitfish. Some were staying very close to the rock, while others were making slow passes underneath at about 80ft. So we dropped in tp take a closer look. There the visibility open up and we sat and watched these 10ft. Galapagos go back and forth. There were also silvertips and hammerheads passing here and there. We moved to the west side and spotted a nice school of hammerheads. It was a smaller school of 15 hammerheads but we all still got a good look. The sharks were great, but I didn't even mention the countless yellowfin tuna. Overhead we spotted a few giants, without a doubt 100 lb.+. Our third dive showed some diminished conditions with 40 ft. visibility. However, we still made the best of it seeing many Whitetips, Galapagos, and Silvertip sharks. We ended the day taking pics in front of Roca Partida with our dive groups as the sunset. When we returned Luis, our steward, has already made margaritas for all who wanted.
Until next time.... Dave Valencia
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