Hola amigos!
Since we got to Roca this morning with very smooth seas and a beautiful sunrise we knew it was going to be a great day!
Loaded the tanks on the zodiacs and at 8:15 we went for our first dive. We started the dive on the south end of the rock as the light current was hitting the rock right on that point and as we dropped into the water we felt a very nice warm water, 77F/25C. The south was covered with clouds and clouds of fish, creole, trigger, different kinds of jacks like cotton mouth, black and big eye trevallies surrounded the rock, and among them a lot of white tip reef sharks patrolled the area, we dropped down to 100ft/30m and first thing i saw on the distance hammer heads! A small school swimming close to the rock, so i turned around to signal my divers that we had sharks and as soon as i turned back we had a 20ft/6m whale shark right next to us!....so i screamed trough my regulator and pointed out, we all swam to it and gave it its own space and it swam very slowly in front of us, we got great shots of it by the way, but that was not all after those magic 5 first minutes of the dive we swam out to look for the hammer heads and we found some! A school of about 12 was swimming a little ahead of us and were shy, so we looked down and we had another school of about 20 swimming probably 15m/50ft below us! A great way to start the day I would say! So after that we went around to the east side to all the little ledges packed with white tip reef sharks and relaxed there for a few minutes, got some great pictures of this great sharks that lay down to rest during the day and hunt during the night, then we kept going to the north and there we spotted a huge Galapagos shark on the distance before we headed up to our safety stop.
For our second dive we went in in the south west corner and again went down in between all this thousands of fish, headed out into the blue looking for hammer heads but we only found one this time, something that we would forget a few minutes after. So after swimming all the way to the east with no luck we headed to visit the ledges of the white tips and then headed north were we saw 6 silver tip sharks and a Galapagos shark swimming about 10m/30ft below us, so almost the end of the dive and we decided to just drift and see what we could find out in the blue, the first few minutes nothing, but then a silky shark showed up, checked us out and left, then more minutes went by and no luck so we headed up to our safety stop where we started to hear some dolphins but out in the distance, then the sound started getting closer and closer and suddenly one dolphin appeared and started playing with us, we did our dolphin style swim and it like it, and started swimming around us for several minutes, then another one came, but this one was not interested on us, then we could hear more of them so we turned around and yes! 4 more were right there so the 6 of them started playing, we were having so much fun and suddenly i turned around and saw more dolphins and a huge shadow right at the surface, kicked a few meters/feet closer and 2 HUMPBACK WHALES where right behind these dolphins, all swimming together like a big family, very relaxed the y went up to the surface, took a breath swam in front of us and then started heading down, all this very slowly so we could enjoy, then after stopping at about 20m/60ft then disappeared into the deep, we were so happy that you could see our huge smiles even with the regulators on! But that was not all! The dolphins came back for a few minutes and then we surfaced, once there talking about how great it was and how lucky we were, two dolphins came and started doing somersaults right next to us and I mean 6ft/2m await from us! What a show!
On our third and last dive of the day we took it easy and stayed on the west side where we were entertained by some tunas hunting and a few sharks, then we headed to the east side to finally drift away into the blue going east, and a few meters of the rock there they were again! The 2 humpbacks were just hovering at about 70ft/21m, let us see them for a couple of minutes and then they disappeared into the blue waters.
Now back on the boat we see the whales swimming around us and the rock, getting close to the boat, being friendly, so we hope they stick around and com to check us out tomorrow on our second day here in Roca Partida.
Stay tuned!
Antonio Romero
Dive Instructor
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