Location: Roca Partida, Islas Revillagigedos (Socorro Island)
Comments: Captain Dave reports an outstanding day of world-class diving at Roca Partida! Divers saw a large school of scalloped hammerhead sharks, estimated at 150 animals with some of the females exceeding 9 feet in length! They also saw a school of Galapagos and silvertip sharks and extremely unusual behaviour in which the hammerhead sharks appeared to be chasing off the other sharks (note from Captain Mike – this seems to have been an extraordinary week, and I have never seen anything like it on any of the trips that I’ve led. I’ve certainly never seen large schools of silvertip sharks or hammerheads chasing off Galapagos sharks. I can’t believe that I’m not on the boat right now!).
A school of 50 large yellowfin tuna then passed by the rock and our lucky guests were also treated to the presence of five inquisitive and friendly bottlenose dolphins all day. It is very definitely humpback whale season, and guests were able to listen to singing male humpbacks on every dive. Breaching, fluking and tail lobbing whales could be seen from the deck of the Nautilus Explorer all day long.
Just to top things off, four giant manta rays came into to the rock and spent “quality time” with our divers, gliding by close enough to touch. Interestingly, there were very few silky sharks, and divemasters Sten, Tricia and A.J. speculate that the silkies may have been intimidated by all the other sharks. Diving the Revillagigedos (Socorro Island) is not always hot but man, when it’s on, it is RED HOT DIVING!!
Weather: Clear skies, low 4 foot swell anchored in the open ocean, winds from the north 10 knots, air temperature 78°F.
Water: Visibility 150 feet, water temperature reported as 74°F.
