Monday, April 6, 2015

Mantas, sea lion, clarion angelfish, and lots of sharks on our first day at Roca Partida!

Hi All! April 4, 2015
Out in the middle of the ocean, just Roca Partida in front of us and a gorgeous full moon eclipse happening!
The surface of the water behind Roca denotes how the current is flowing from North West, bringing with it interesting changes in water temp from 23.8˚C/75˚F to 26.1˚C/79˚F, the upwelling as well responsible for changes in vis as low as 12m/40ft and at times over 30m/100ft.
The diving was great! So as we are slowly dropping down on the North West point in blue water a silky shark that was very curious about our divers showed up accompanied by a yellow fin tuna. In the mean time we could hear the chirping of dolphins, it seems they like to show up most of the time in the north east side of the rock! It got louder as they were coming to intersect us, visibility got green in a matter of a second so we are looking thru green water making everything look a bit blurry, not bad its just different! The shadow of 6 playful dolphins came out of that water turning into solid image of smiling mammals, at only 21m/70ft of water a Chevron manta showed us its affection for a bit of time as well! The southern point of the rock was slow in action with a few silver tip sharks, some hammer heads and Galapagos sharks, so we decided to come back to north point. The current did its job and brought us away from the rock on a drift dive that in the end was amazing. A silky shark stayed with us all the way, as well as the same Chevron manta surrounding us, the one we saw earlier in the dive. A gigantic yellow fin tuna and for some time already the new attraction of the Rock was with us a female sea lion!!
During the second dive we discovered that everything was happening on the west side of the rock, it was a world of Pacific creolefish, more shark action, the silver tip with sharks their incredible shape and color coming too close to us! Unfortunately a group of 12 adult size Galapagos sharks were in deep water, it would have been so fun to have them at 18m/60ft of water! Anyway, enough to see the dark shadows in contrast with the white color of sand at depth, dolphins also got here in the area not so playful this time, visible to all of us putting a smile in our faces right away, a section of the dive was planned as a drift dive hopping foe hammer heads, in the end no hammer heads but still fun counting numbers and shapes of jelly fish.
The last dive today we were immersed in a fish tank! This is a good description of the life under the surface by Roca Partida, we swam ¾ of the rock to finish the dive on the East side of it with lots of white tips, big eye Jacks, pacific creolefish, some yellow fin tunas, some of us were already on the surface waiting for the pickup, we put face underwater just to see a bit more while zodiac comes over, to our surprise, about 70 Hammer Heads swimming by at only 18m/60 ft of water, obviously mask back on right away and dive a short one! Others saw them while scuba diving, so we were all are super happy!
Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata, Solmar V.

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