July 8-18, 2026 | Cocos Island Trip Report | Sea Hunter

Vessel: Sea Hunter Diving Days: 7 Total Dives: 21 Dive Sites: 11 Water Temperature: 85°F average (83 to 85°F)Visibility: 62 ft average (30 to 80 ft) Current: Light to moderate (avg 3/10)

Highlights: Schooling scalloped hammerheads, Galápagos sharks, silvertips, silky sharks in courtship, big-eye jacks, mantas, mobulas, and eagle rays

Our checkout dive at Chatham Bay was lovely. Whitetip reef sharks patrolled the reef in numbers, a large Galápagos female cruised close to the group, and macro life was plentiful with mantis shrimp, lobster, and reef fish covering the rock. We moved on to Manuelita Coral Garden and Manuelita Outside, adding our first hammerheads and a big yellowfin tuna. The standout came at Manuelita Outside, where a pair of silky sharks arrived in full courtship, a male pursuing a female at high speed. The female wove through the divers to keep the group between herself and the male, and both passed within arm’s reach again and again in a display few of us had seen before. Not a bad way to kick off the expedition!

Day 2 took us to Dirty Rock, Punta Maria, and Manuelita Channel. Visibility was excellent, and while the cleaning stations were quiet, a school of 500+ big-eye jacks held tight around the pinnacle and small groups of hammerheads passed through the blue. Manuelita Channel gave us the trip’s first real cleaning-station action late in the day.

Day 3, Cocos boosted things up a notch. After a calm start at Manuelita Outside, Alcyone delivered the best dive of the week so far, a school of hammerheads, most of them juveniles, that settled in with the group and stayed with us for the final 10 minutes of the dive.

Day 4 at Dos Amigos Pequeño, Galápagos sharks came up onto the rock one after another, each pass closer than the last, in one of the most active dives of the trip. Shark Fin Rock and Manuelita Coral Garden rounded out the day with big-eye jacks and steady fish activity.

Day 5 brought a spiraling school of hammerheads at Alcyone that one of our dive guides ranked among the finest of the season. The sharks turning in a slow column while individuals rose to pass by close overhead, and a large female drifting up to the divers near the end of the dive. The group came back to Sea Hunter still buzzing.

Day 6 at Porites we searched out the silvertips and found them, three curious juvenile females that circled the group, then a larger female that swept past twice. Manuelita Channel produced two big mantas moving slowly through the current.

Our final day at Cocos saved the best for last. Dos Amigos Pequeño opened with five species of shark in a single dive and Galápagos working both cleaning stations. But it was Dirty Rock that delivered the moment of the trip. After some cleaning-station activity on the rock, we dropped into the blue and found the largest school of hammerheads of the entire expedition, a wall of animals that stayed with the group for 10 to 15 minutes, with an octopus and a hunting tuna filling out an already extraordinary dive! The ocean gave us the same gift it had on the way out, a calm and easy crossing the whole way home. Many of our guests booked their next trip before we even reached port.