We have just completed our 4th day of diving on this special 11-day expedition to the Socorro with 5 more to go. The weather has been great so far with a long, gentle swell, light winds and enough sun to give my pale gringo skin an interesting reddish-brown tint. For the past two days we’ve been diving Roca Partida, a small rock jutting up about 100 ft above sea level and 65 nautical miles from the next closest island. With the surrounding ocean bottom in the neighbourhood of 10,000ft, the topography here allows for large upwellings of cold, nutrient rich water, which supports an amazing number of fish, large and small. The big stuff is why we come here and that’s what we’ve been getting here the last couple days.
Lots of very big galapagos sharks around this week, a small school of silky sharks, several hammer heads on most dives, loads of white-tipped reef sharks, bottle-nose dolphins and a big school of very large yellow-fin tuna. Not to mention the very impressive schools of various smaller fish which really make this divesite feel so alive.
We finished the day today by watching two humpback whales breaching repeatedly over a period of almost 20 minutes as the sun set behind them. Tomorrow we will complete two more dives here in the morning before setting out for Clarion Island, 155 nautical miles WSW of here, to do some more exploration diving of the rarely visited island.
Captain Al
My pale gringo skin has an interesting reddish-brown tint. Socorro, Roca Partida, Mexico.
