Cocos Island, Costa Rica

Cocos Island, Costa Rica  05,32N 087,03W

Arrived on 22 Feb around 5pm to a glorious bay with the Sea Hunter tied up, a live aboard dive boat that brings divers from Costa Rica and stays for about a week to 10 days. Next morning, we awoke to a most amazing view in a bay surrounded by lush covered hills and rocky old volcanic mountains emerging from the sea. The mountain chain extends all the way under the ocean back to Galapagos.  The same magma hot spot created this chain similar to what is going on in the Hawaiian chain.  We all couldn’t wait to don our gear and jump in to see what we could see and organize ourselves for more serious diving. Anyhow, its also really pretty hot. There was a big school of circling jacks under the boat waiting for some scraps. We later found out they love onion skins or any kind of organic refuse. There was also a couple of white tipped reef sharks, the usual variety of reef fish and I spotted a ray in the distance. Not bad for falling off the back of the boat. We couldn’t wait to go for a real dive.  Robin took a pic. of a shark during a dive..............

Dive 1: I’m so sorry to say I forgot to fill Robin’s weight pockets with his appropriate weights so he missed the first dive after plopping in with all of us and then not being able to get down. Sorry Robin!!! We were patiently waiting for him below around 70’ checking out the rock boulders, and getting comfortable with our new environment. This is apparently a regular hangout for hammerheads but they were not around and the white tipped reef sharks were taking advantage of their chance to be the big shots on the block for once. Lots of them everywhere. We circled the rock island looking for hammerheads but none to be found. We ran into a couple of hawks bill turtles getting cleaned by jacks. The viz wasn’t so great. We had stayed so long deep waiting for some sharks to show that our guide got low on air and we went up after only 33 min.

Dive 2: We got out to the dive site and Ken realized his computer had gone dead so he didn’t dive. So we dropped down to about 70’ and went along the channel’s edge where a tiger shark was reputed to hang. Lots of white tips not paying any attention and viz not so great but suddenly, in my face a BIG shark belly!! White as snow, I saw his head just for a second probably the same time as he saw me and then veered up, thank goodness, to avoid me!! It all happened so fast and then it was over! So were cruising along and I looked around and could count only 3 when there was 4. We’re missing Robin! Ok, so another dive aborted, the name of the game for today…at least, I saw my first tiger shark and lived to tell the tale!!

We got to the boat and Robin was there, whew! He was wearing my old Aladdin computer , one of the least conservative but had come straight up and missed  his safety stop due to buoyancy issues and inexperience. OOOOPS!! So the computer locked him out for 24 hrs.  Now we had 2 computers down!! Got back to the boat to make a veggie curry and while making dinner was feeling kind of funny.   After eating we watched Incendies, a 2010 movie from Lebanon, and I started itching like crazy!!  UH, oh, skin decompression sickness.  Luckily, after a few hours it let up and I could sleep.   In the a.m. I felt ok but called DAN and they said “don’t dive that day” so seeing we only had one computer working and a sicky that became the new plan so here I am writing to you!!!

We moved the boat to get some wifi here it goes!! Also, Sea Hunter(the live-aboard boat that is currently here) has a battery for Ken so we’re all set for tomorrow’s diving.  We hope to go to a site discovered by Jacques Cousteau, an underwater pinnacle, that you drop down a line to and the action there is supposed to be amazing. Dolphins, sharks, rays, fish and even a whale shark was spotted only a day ago so keep your fingers crossed for us!!

Robin has just found a link to a short video of the Panama Canal crossing of our neighbor Matt's boat, Mojomo, same kind as ours, who left just one day ahead of us. One of his line handling crew members, Axel from Germany, filmed it with a Go Pro camera.  It’s only a few minutes long and really interesting so have a look!!  If you’ve seen it already in our Panama Canal crossing section, just disregard as I’m adding it just today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0-PHGGBcVg.

If you are wanting more info, here are a couple of links to the Cocos Islands and for the live aboard dive ship Sea Hunter which has some underwater shots and video:
<embed src='http://www.underseahunter.com/general/longtail/player.swf' height='406' width='610' allowscriptaccess='always' allowfullscreen='true' flashvars="&file=http%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FaVFAGbz9-GU&image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.underseahunter.com%2Fimages%2Ftripreports%2Ftri001629_tiger-shark_manuelita_-herreno.jpg&plugins=viral-2d"/>
http://www.underseahunter.com/tripreports.html?vessel=123&year=2011which is sitting next to us
and the Cocos Island official website http://www.cocosisland.cr/