Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Lots of sharks, dolphins, mobula and more on our 3rd day at Roca Partida!

Jan 12, 2015 at Roca Partida
We had an amazing morning watching sunrise sky, with very intense colors, in the distance we could see a tiny glance of Socorro Island and as the morning gets brighter Socorro disappears from our sight!
Early morning air temperature of 24˚C/76˚F. 3days here show how good Roca has been! Our first dive started at 8:00 am, 50 minutes underwater and everything was at the north eastern point! As a welcome to the first dive of the day, before even we get in the water dolphins were already leaping high out the water, excited maybe?! And of course first thing we hear underwater is dolphins chirping! We don’t see them yet but they sound so close and louder as they're getting closer! One thing really helped to feel very safe while playing with them was the zero current in the area. Finally, we see at least 15 of them in small groups, 3, 4, 3, 2 etc, and a mom with her calf. It is impressive the way mom really takes care of her calf. While they were near us there was not a separation in distance, just like adults do, they had physical contact to feel moms care and safety! And of course that dolphin smile was always there. They were surrounding us really, with divers in the center and dolphins surrounding us, the chirping, clicking was constant, a mobula ray came across the center to check us out before leaving. In deep water, we could see tips of silver tip sharks, above some silky sharks that with so much action here are very interested in getting closer to us! For a minute the dolphins disappeared, but again the chirping was still there, once again they showed up in small groups. A single one adopts the vertical position just in front of me and stays like that for over a minute, letting me get very close, there were no scars on the body, we made eye contact, the dolphin blew some bubbles and I blew some bubbles of course! Close to the wall the schools of cotton mouth jacks making formations and 3 hammer heads under slowly swimming towards North, what a way to complete on this dive, which was also dive numbers 700 for Nancy Graff and dive number 400 for Marcia Massironi!
Our surface interval was very clear sky with air temp of 23˚C/73.4˚F, being able to have a glance of Socorro Island means we had 124km/67 miles visibility!
Second dive, we decided to go find that school of hammer heads on the south western area which after some time of swimming we did, at least 50 individuals, but they were in very deep water, at least 50m/164ft or more! We actually made it back to the rock since our current was still zero, the west side of it offered lots of lobsters, green moray eels, white tip sharks, jacks, red and yellow trigger fish, moorish idols, barber fish, the chirping of dolphins still around we just did not see them on this dive!
A third dive took place on the south eastern point of the rock due to a mild current from the south there were, lots of fish there, blue water with 30m/100ft visibility, the high light of the dive here was the yellow fin tunas hunting so actively for the 50 minutes we spent in this corner, jacks were there with a few hammer heads below us making small circles, so close to the wall to see lots of white tip sharks, and so this is the end of our 3 days spent at Roca!
Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata, Solmar V.

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