Socorro Island – January 3,2009 – the best dive of my life was today.. Guest blog

Lynn: The best scyba dive of my life was today!  I descended to 50 feet and took a picture of 8 or 9 whitetip sharks resting on a balcony in the rock.  Then I turned around and there was a whaleshark!  It came close enough to get great photos.  As it moved off, a pod of 7 or 8 dolphins showed up and played in the water right in front of us. No sooner were they gone, than a hammerhead shark swam past.  Then we saw some silvertips, and a Galapagos shark.  Then a huge (5 feet long) tuna swam past.  The last 20 minutes of the dive a giant manta played with us, circling around and around, then the whaleshark swam past in the distance. All this along with hundreds of fish, clear water with sunlight streaming down, and dozens of whitetip sharks in view most of the time.
Fantastic, albeit brief, encounter with a whale shark this morning, on a dive which also brought us hammerheads and silvertips, all against the spectacular scenery of Roca Partida. It doesn’t get better than this!  Maggie Cowing 2/1/10
It was with sadness that we took our last dive on the Roca Partida (literally cleft rock).  It’s been our home for the last 8 dives (2 days) and has given us everything that diving has to offer.  Along with the myriad of smaller fish we have had visits from mantas, dolphins, whale sharks, various other sharks, tuna and jacks.  Some of the visits have been interactive to the delight of those divers involved, some have been less so, to the delight of the underwater photographers among us, but for a place to offer multiple dives that go immediately into my top 50 of best of all time dives, is truly amazing!  Robin Eccles 2/1/10
Tammie:
Ditto to all that Lynn said – we shared an amazing dive!  What a day!  What a trip!  I am truly awed.  The early morning dive today was perfection – couldn’t possibly ask for more than whaleshark, mantas, hammerhead sharks, dolphins, sharks and more sharks, and so many fish they look like a thick cloud in the water.  We were so busy looking at the pelagics that we didn’t have the time to properly appreciate the life on the wall – huge green morays, octopus, sharks, lobster, and such a myriad of fish that I couldn’t possibly hope to name them all.  And all this with the beautiful morning sun shining down on the amazing wall of Roca Partida.  Totally incredible!  And, to top it all off, I finished the day celebrating my 100th dive as the last dive of trip.