Location: Roca Partida, Socorro Island, Islas Revillagigedos, Mexico
Comments: Our first dive at Roca Partida, often the crown jewel of the dive sites at Islas Revillagigedo. This tiny speck of rock, covered in birds, sits 70 miles west of Socorro Island, rising up from over 10,000′ to a plateau at 240′, and from there to what we see at the surface. At this very unique dive site, in the middle of the open ocean, all the pelagic animals in the nearby ecosystem are bound to make a stop eventually. When we first arrived, the weather was excellent, and fortune smiled on us as conditions only got better over the next two days. By the time we left, the ocean was a mirror. There was a coldwater current running past the island steadily for the whole two days, and with it came excellent visibility and a great amount of hammerhead, silky, Galapagos, whitetip, and silvertip sharks. That’s on top of the friendly wahoo, the massive schools of tuna, the unique photographing opportunity of a moray eel wrapped comfortably around resting whitetip sharks, and big schools of triggerfish, big-eyed trevally, jacks, and other familiar faces. The only question on our minds as we enjoyed these spectacles was: where’s the giant mantas? The entire day we had only brief and distant glimpses of mantas by a few divers, and it reaffirmed the fact that when diving for migratory pelagic creatures it can often be a boom or bust experience. Never the less, the diving was spectacular all day, with some extremely cooperative and photogenic schools of hammerhead sharks stealing the show.
–DM Sandy
Weather: Long swell with an easy motion, scattered clouds, air temperature 80°F, light winds
Water: Water temperature 72°F, visibility 120ft in very blue water.
