Thursday, April 30, 2015

A shark filled 2nd day at Roca Partida!

April 29, 2015
Hola amigos!
Today was our second day of diving at Roca Partida, the conditions this morning indicated another great day of diving, and it was exactly like that! The water was still very warm, 77F/25C, and clear, with about 80ft/24m visibility. The current was coming from the west and it stayed like that during the whole day.
On our first dive we went into the water on the south west corner of the rock and we went straight out into the blue looking for the hammer head schools and we found them! At about 120ft/36m there they were, a school of about 50 sharks circled in front of us back and forth slowly getting closer and closer, suddenly they got a little shy and they started going away... The school actually split about 20 headed south and the rest north, so it was time for us to head back towards the rock, once on the rock we went around the south end where we found several galapagos sharks, all of them quite big, especially a couple of pregnant females! After checking them out, we headed to the west side where we went to check out the white tip reef sharks laying on the little ledges, and they were packed as usual, and not only with sharks, also several lobsters were in there!
For our second dive, we dropped in on the west side, this time we stayed closer to the rock in between the thousands of creole fish, and after waiting patiently for a few minutes sharks started showing up, some silver tips and Galapagos were cruising a little deep and 3 or 4 silky sharks would patrol shallower waters.  While the huge yellow fin tunas would make their appearance looking for a prey, shooting from deep waters straight at the fish, and actually swimming very close to us! It was a nice show to watch! After that excitement, we went around the south end again to check out the Galapagos sharks, and they were still there! It was time to start coming up and once we got to about 30ft/10m a chevron manta showed up, it came close and we thought that it might wanted to play, but then it then dissapeared into the blue.
On our third dive we decided to go look for the hammer heads again, but this time we had no luck, so we came back to the rock on the west side and there we found many silver tip sharks, a couple of silkys, and galapagos, not as much action as we were hoping for so we headed north, and there the action started! It was only for a few minutes but it was worth it to watch! A school of little anchovies came close to the rock being chased by 4 huge yellow fin tunas, those tunas are really really fast! It seems like they got tired quick as well and they came to check us out, before going for a second try at the anchovies. Next we headed back to the west followed the wall all the way to the south end, on the way we saw a couple of silver tip sharks and huge schools of black and cotton mouth jacks, once we got to the south we found another school of black jacks and we noticed a couple of hammer heads among them so we followed them and suddenly our patience paid off a school of about 30 hammerheads came from the deep and circled right bellow us for a few minutes, like they were saying "Goodbye and come back to Roca Partida!"
Awesome day and the best way to finish it... with a sunset BBQ on the bow of the boat!
Now we head towards Socorro island to dive Cabo Pearce, so stay tuned because there is more action coming our way!

Antonio Romero
Dive Instructor

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