The Lunar Eclipse Brings Out the Sharks!

As we were getting ready in the full moon, the lunar eclipse started to form and by the time we got dry with all the guests enjoying hot chocolate and Baileys, it was nearly complete. What a sight!! It seemed like the sharks noticed it too.

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Hammerheads and Dolphins Delight at Socorro

Sharks for Christmas at Socorro

We descended right down to the cleaning stations and were greeted by a school of juvenile silvertip sharks, 2 chevron mantas, a hammerhead, and lots of cool fish.

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A Manta Ballet and a Wall of Hammerheads

Today I got the chance to witness two Bottlenose dolphins playing with an oceanic manta and some other divers saw a wall of hundreds of hammerhead sharks, just to make the day even more epic!

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New Diving Site at Socorro Island but Lack of Charismatic Megafauna

Punta Tosca on dive day 4 was also surprisingly quiet and the visibility was low so after 2 dives at the outer point we decided to move the Nautilus up a couple of bays and try a new site. A series of small rocks sticking out of the water with a sheer drop to 120 feet on one side and shallower bays on the other. It proved to be fascinating and several guests saw sea turtles and a “fly by” with a giant manta. Definitely a site that we will repeat but once again the “charismatic megafauna” was elusive.

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NafNaf – the fearless baby silky shark

We all fell in love with a really tiny baby silky that had to be a newborn, and couldn’t have been more than 20″ in length – AT MOST! He was very, very cute and our guests promptly named him NafNaf. NafNaf was certainly a fearless shark, and he kept on getting in the way of the larger sharks to the point of snatching a piece of fish out of the mouth of one of the big guys! All of our hearts went out to him.

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Silky sharks under the ship’s lights

Dave reports that the divers saw 7 silver tip sharks between 5 and 7 feet in length circling at the north end of Roca Partida, along with at least 10 silky sharks and some good-sized Galapagos and hammerhead sharks. One interesting note is that one small silvertip shark apparently chased away 4 larger silky sharks (4 – 5 feet in length) that were hanging around a tag line hanging off the back of the Nautilus Explorer. Not sure on the dominance behaviour of silky and silvertip sharks, but that strikes me as highly irregular behaviour.

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