Sunday, March 1, 2015

Day 2 at Roca and the humpback whales were all around us!

Hola amigos!

Today was our second day at Roca Partida and it had a great start! The humpback whales were all around us and the sea was so calm that we could see them even if they were far, we saw them swimming around, breaching out, males competing for females, baby humpbacks learning how to breach, it was a great show to watch!

On the diving side, the water was as still as it was yesterday 75F/24C, visibility of 80 to 100ft/24 to 30m and a very mild current coming from the east-northeast. Our first two dives were quite slow lots of creole fish and jacks but not many sharks others than the white tip reef sharks that as always were all packed on those little crevices around the rock and a school of about 60 hammerheads that made their appearance by the end of the second dive on the south west end of the rock at about 120ft/36m, before we headed out to our safety stop in the blue waters as we listened to the humpback whales singing. Today this rock surprised us once again!...after 2 slow dives on our third dive the action did not stop, we dropped in and as we descended on the east side of the rock we notice some sharks swimming in  deep water so we went down to check them out and for our surprise there was a bunch of them! 4 big Galapagos sharks and 2 silver tip sharks started swimming around us and the thousands of creole fish, then a silky shark showed up and joined the show before we decided to go out into the blue to follow a big school of black jacks waiting to see some hammerhead action, and our patience was rewarded, after a few minutes of following the jacks a few hammerheads showed up from the deep waters, probably 4 or 5 at the beginning, and then the whole school of about 30 came up to 140ft, too deep for us to go closer but still a very nice view from the top! After enjoying that for a few minutes we headed back to the rock to check out the ledges where the white tips lay down, we took a few pictures and video and headed out into the blue again, hovered at about 60ft/18m for a few minutes right in the edge of this gigantic school of creole fish and suddenly they all disappeared, in less than a second that huge cloud of fish left us hanging in the blue waters when we realized that yellow fin tunas were hunting, we saw them passing by in front of us and going deep and then 4 huge tunas showed up! They swam right in between the group of divers, changing colors and looking for a prey, it was awesome, I even screamed trough my regulator a big woohoo, and my divers laughed haha! Anyway, a great great dive to finish our diving in Roca Partida. After the diving 2 groups of divers went whale watching on the zodiacs and now we are all heading to Socorro Island where we plan to dive “Cabo Pearce”, so stay tuned because there is a lot more action coming!

Hasta la vista!

Antonio Romero
Dive Instructor

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