Cocos Islands

2008-July-18
The 10 night live aboard dive to the Cocos Islands ended today and I got dropped off at the airport. I called the hotel where I was staying to come get me and ended waiting an hour before I got picked up. At this very moment, I am still in a state of disbelief that I have been privileged and fortunate to have dove with hammerheads, a whaleshark and silver tips. Wow! A diver's dream come true. Tomorrow I kill the day on a day tour to Volcan Irazu, Lancaster Botanical Gardens and lunch in the Orosi Valley. Sunday I have an early morning flight back to the USA. Well, I am not going to account for each of the 7 days of diving because so much happened and my mind is still so overwhelmed at having seen a hammerhead on every single dive. Hands down, Cocos is by far the best diving I have done. Although my opinion is that the Red Sea is in its own category. I think having dove the Galapagos and Cocos, Cocos wins hands down. This is a dive trip I will return to.

TRIP REPORT

WHERE IS ISLA DE COCO (COCO ISLANDS?)
It is about 360 nautical miles off the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. The dive boat picks up and drops off at Puntarenas, a 2 hour drive from San Jose. On a good day the trip is 36-40 hours each way. On this trip the outbound and inbound crossings were relatively calm. But then I figure by the end of the trip one is very used to the ocean movement after diving for 7 straight days.

THE BOAT (Okeanos Aggressor)
I really enjoyed it, though having my heart originally set on the Undersea Hunter, I really have nothing to compare to now since I have not been the Undersea. Perhaps on my next trip. The meals were spectacular. One definitely ate like a king and we all felt like we had our personal butler. The crew butler always had a professional and very pleasant demeanor with the guests even on some days when he was operating on 2 hours of sleep from the night before! He come around at breakfast and take our orders for how we liked our eggs. At all meals he took our drink orders and any other meal needs. I always asked for salsa tomate (ketchup) with my eggs. He started just leaving it out for me on 4th day. Overall, the crew was very pleasant, very helpful, and I give them a thumbs up. Some days I felt like I wasn't just on a dive trip but on a 10 day spanish conversational course. The boat guy of the panga I was on was a very good listener and very patient in correcting my grammar during our many conversations between and during his boat chores. The cook was excellent. 5 Stars - on one evening, the boat belonging to a brother of one of the crew stopped next to our boat and delivered what we had for dinner that night - fresh tuna sashimi. It doesn't get any better than that! At the same dinner, they also served lobster. So seafood lovers - this was a dining paradise! Accommodation wise, I wouldn't recommend a quad. I ended up sleeping in the main salon(TV room and dining room) other than the first night. My roomies were 2 older lades from Chicago, and a Russian lady. The cabin set up was the 2 doubles on the ground, and 2 smaller than normal single upper bunks secured right up against the bow of the boat. Imagine sleeping the 1st night on 1 of these upper bunks smacked against the bow during the crossing. I will say in short that both my lunch and dinner from departure day made their way out during the night, and just in the nick of time! from having to jump down onto the lower bed then onto the ground, then stumbling in total darkness in trying to locate the head (toilet in boat speak). You see, the 2 Chicago ladies had arrived early and "reserved" the lower beds. This of course, pissed not just me off but whose action was deemed inappropriate by some other divers whom I had conversations with. Anyway enough of that.

COUNTRIES REPRESENTED
The following countries were represented on this trip: Costa Rica, USA, UK, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, New Zealand, Canada

TRIP HIGHLIGHTS
Hammerheads, hammerheads and more hammerheads.
Day 2, Dive 1 - Whaleshark! Infant about 7 meters
Day 5, Dive 3 - Silvertips at Silverado
Too many others to remembers. All I can think of are the whaleshark and the hammerheads.





TRIP DISAPPOINTMENT
Did not see the Tigershark, but then again, I came to see the hammerheads!

THE BEST MOMENT BETWEEN DIVES
The boat had a roof deck with deck chairs and a hammock. It doesn't get better than this. Anchored off a remote island, 360 nautical miles off the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. Ocean all around. No traffic noise. No souvenir shops. No crying and yelling kids. Paradise in the open ocean. Your boat is all alone, except for the Undersea and Sea Hunter dive boats. But really, the boat was out there all ALONE. Just coming off a dive. Showering. Donning off the wetsuit and chilling before the next dive. It seemed no one had discovered the hammock. Most people stayed on the 2nd level deck. This was paradise at its best, grabbing a soda and throwing myself into the hammock to nap and dream of hammerheads on the next dive. Honestly. It doesn't get any better than this. A diver's paradise. Fish below. Sun above. In the evenings, it was a cerveza(spanish for beer) and looking at the stars, well, until the rain came and the stars disappeared.

MY STUPIDITIES
I think that it was around the 4th dive day that I landed my left hand on a sea urchin on my 1st dive of the day, and the spines and venom swelled my left hand to the point that the pain was unbearable and my hand was very swollen. I could not roll my fingers inwards and I felt angry. But shit happens. This was just one of them. Noting my somewhat unknown condition for the rest of the day, I made the decision to sit out the remaining dives for the day. Oh well. The crew was attentive and immediately provided me with vinegar in which to soak my left hand. In total I must have had my hand in vinegar for about 6+ hours. I was so desperate to cure my hand for the next day's dive that I just did it. Well, it paid off for I was back in the water the next day. I think it was the evening of Dive Day 3, that I caught my right foot between a rung and the wall while climbing down from the 2nd level deck. Thank goodness, I did not twist or break anything as a fall was very possible. I did however, spend the remaining evening with an ice pack on my right foot. So, between the right foot and the left hand, Dive Day 4 was a somewhat a painful day. During meals I could barely hold back my frustration as the others talked in awe and enthusiasm at what they saw in the day's dives. Day 5 when I resumed diving, I began to dive with a glove only on my left hand. I kept my right hand free because I needed it to operate the camera. Come to think of it, there was a diver who had repeated jelly fish stings. I wander if this is even a comparison with my sea urchin encounter. Wearing a glove would not made no difference, because sea urchins poke right through the leather knee pads on a wetsuit.

THE DIVES
Before leaving for the trip I had been reading the captain's trip by trip reports and truth to word, hammerheads were in abundance. Except for the night dives, and Silverado dive site, there was at least one hammerhead spotting on each dive. I had learnt from other divers that the liveaboard operators do not advertise that Jun-Aug are the best months to dive. But I was aware of this while was scouring the net. The Undersea Hunter had offered me a slot in November 2008, but I knew that in November, hammerhead sitings are few. Weather wise, Costa Rica is in its wet season in July, and it is CR's winter time. It rained every single day. The temperature would drop when the rain came, and in a 3 mil, I felt chilled on deck. The water temp, however, remained a comfortable 25-27 C. I did not experience many thermoclines. There was a lot of current and for this reason, Cocos Islands is not recommended for novice divers. At times, I felt overwhelmed by the current and in one instance I have to admit that I felt like I was holding onto dear life! Overall there the divers onboard logged at least a 100 dives per person. This reduced the risk factor and concern among the divers had a novice been among us. One of the divers who was on his 2nd trip to Cocos mentioned that on his last trip there were 11 novices, out of a max number of 22 divers. I can't even begin to imagine the chaos then! Among the divers, the camera equipment ranged from my dingy Casio Exilim in a water case to the most sophisticated set up with the 2 external back light arms. Everyone took great photos. I have to admit that my underwater photography is not the greatest but as I learn on each dive trip, it isn't just about pointing and clicking. I think toward the end of the trip, I was able to better control the speed at which I hit shoot coupled with my balancing act between the currents. Overall many pics were out of focus. All the dives were generally rollover from the pangas and immediate descent just because there was current most of the time. We all dove nitrox because the 1st 2 dives often times went below 100 ft/33m. For 2 reasons - currents at the surface and hammerheads like to swim at the bottom.

THE DIVE SITES
Alcyone - 100+ ft / 30+ m. An undersea mount. Immediate drop from panga on a buoy line. This famous well reported(on various blogs) site is noted for its hammerhead sitings. In total we dove this site 5 times. The best dive was when schools of hammerheads passed overhead in the 100s! Hammers tend to stay low near the bottom or stay relatively shallow from the surface. So if you are at a depth of 30+ meters, and you happen to look up when the different schools are passing, it is one of those rare sights in a lifetime!

Silverado - 35+ ft / 12+ m. There is a cleaning station for silvertips. Rarely spotted to the abundance of hammers, divers come here to hang out and wait until these guys show up. My group was lucky. The previous group waited 33 minutes before the silvertips showed up. We hardly waited and the silvertips showed up as soon as we were immersed. (see video below)



Dos Amigos Grande - Wall drift dive. 100+ ft / 33+ m drop.

Dos Amigos Pequena - dido as Grande. This is where I landed on the sea urchin. Descent was rough and choppy. I did a rollback and had to fight a constantly flooded mask. By the time I had the mask clear, my hand had hit the urchin. So I never really got a chance to see where my hands were.

Manuelita - 80+ ft / 25+ m. Dove here probably 3 times. This site is noted for the frog fish sitings. The Frogfish is orangy in color and really looks like a frog. A pretty docile critter, it rests on its "feet" flippers. It is quite a site. See my photos to see what I mean.

The following 2 videos were at Manuelita: Chasing a moral eel & swimming with a marble ray





Numerous other dive sites which I cannot seem to remember names off.

Night dive - Chatham Bay - White tips go into a feeding frenzy after the sun sets. In the hundreds, easily, they follow the dive lights to help them gobble their prey. As a dutch diver described it, you could be looking at a fish swimming and it be gobbled up the next minute by a white tip. In all my night dives, I have never seen this. It is truly one of nature's wanders.

Cleaning stations - for non divers, this refers to usually a raised rock plateau where the small cleaner fish "clean" the underbelly of the larger fish who come by to get cleaned. Alcyone, Manuelita, actually most of the sites, had cleaning stations where hammers and rays would come and get cleaned. I feel very privileged to have been able to see a hammer turn on its side and see the cleaner fish clean away the underbelly of a rather large hammer, which I nicknamed "White Spots". I named this guy "White Spots" because I often saw "him" (identified by the claspers below - the shark reproductive organ) and "his" identifiable white spots on the right side. I saw him on each of the 3 dives at Manuelita. Friendly and a show off, he would graze by at a minimum distance of 7m/20 ft with much dignity and elegance. It was easy to see the white spots and size of the hammer, being a little larger than the others.

ANNOYING DIVE MOMENTS
On every dive trip there is at least one annoying diver. On this trip it was with this Polish diver who obviously did not respect the fish of whom he photographed. Even after the captain requested that the divers not to use flash photography directly in front of the fish, the idiot would not only do just that, but block other divers from having their moment of taking a picture before the fish swam away. Not only was he annoying with his fancy flashing, but his bubbles would often be directed at another diver while he/she was trying to take a picture too. My thoughts and observations were confirmed when I started to hear other divers complaining about him. The Polish fellow was a rather big fellow so imagine the additional bubbles in your face. I was so annoyed when he flashed the damn lights right in front of a frogfish which I was trying to get a photo of. So annoyed was I, that I was frozen for a few moments and was close to throwing a rock at him. Once back on the panga, a couple of divers mentioned that he was stressing the fish out with his flash photography and that one could visibly see the fish react in annoyance. This fellow was either deaf or dumb or both, because he continued to do the same thing until the end of the trip. I don't think it was a language problem because he spoke very good English.

MY FINAL THOUGHTS - 2008-July-19
I sit here writing this, the night before I catch my flight, and I am still feeling a great awe for those graceful hammers. It is so overwhelming, the experience, that my mind was oblivious during today's trip to Volcan Irazu. At the Lancaster Botanical Garden gift shop, I saw a poster of a hammer. I think I must have stood in silence in front of it for a good 3 minutes. Those creatures have my greatest respect and will always keep me in awe of their magnificent presence for having survived millions of years in the oceans before we humans even came to be. I will have to pay them another visit. I encourage every diver to do so, at least once in their lifetime.

Click here to view Cocos photos