Photo: Erick Higuera

Roca Partida Dive Trip Report: May 25

Today we are at Roca Partida after diving in Socorro Island this place is such a marine paradise and our guests finally got what they were waiting for, the "mythical Roca" with all its magic and magnificence.

The day started with a beautiful sunrise with the light crossing the clouds, calm sea and the great rock inviting us to get in the water and explore whatever is down there this time, so we grabbed our gear, got in the pangas and headed towards the site with the best intentions to have fun and interact with the marine life. The conditions underwater were great with 30 mts / 90 ft of visibility, the current pushing slightly from the southwest, water temperature of 76 F / 25 C and the place full of life everywhere!

On the first dive we planned to keep it simple and showed the white tips gathering at the caves on the east face of Roca, a bunch of them laying between lobsters and moray eels; the schooling of jacks, creole fish and yellowtail trigger fishes were everywhere, at some point we could spot a big cloud of "bonitas" with the black jacks under making the visibility a little murky due to the amount of fish life. The first manta of the day showed up shy in the beginning but close enough to have a good shot, then some other sharks came by, silkys, a silvertip hunting along with some tunas that surrounded Roca the whole day. We cannot forget the big schools of rainbow runners and the wahoos swimming close to the divers.

For the second dive we were determined to see some big sharks, so we started at the south point trying to see as much as we could getting deeper, so the divers started swimming among the jacks and immediately we spotted the first Galapagos shark, then a silver tip with the peculiar triangle shape, and like it was written 3 hammers showed up, with the big school behind, we got pretty close maybe 5 mts / 15 ft and when we thought we had seen all, deeper we could see the fantastic Galapagos sharks swimming close to the bottom, about 10 or 20 individuals. When the schooling disappeared we got back to the rock and we immediately heard dolphins so we looked up and there they were, 6 dolphins started swimming among us and one of them showed us the tummy. Once at the pangas, we spotted a big group of them, so we joined them at the surface and what was our surprise when we counted about 30 dolphins, just incredible!!

For the last dive we tried the same profile, but this time we only spotted some sharks but the highlight was the big tunas and the friendly manta at the end of the dive swirling and looping between the divers, but we have to say that this place is just boiling with life, so we have decided to stay one more day!! Lets see what´s gonna give tomorrow...

Rodrigo Marroquin, dive instructor, SOLMAR V.