Argo Sept 24 – Oct 04, 2021

The star dive site this week was, without question, Dos Amigos Pequeno because of the epic orca encounter we had there. A small pod of these whales followed our skiff all the way to the dive site! We were able to get some amazing GoPro footage from the boat (video coming soon!). After enjoying a beautiful dive with hammerheads coming in close, as well as many Galapagos sharks, two orcas zoomed by at the very end! For many of us it was our first-ever encounter with these majestic creatures.

Other highlights included a giant manta ray at Dos Amigos Grande and a sea turtle at Manuelita Outside (an unusual sight at Cocos Island given that turtles are the tiger shark’s favorite meal!). An immense school of thousands upon thousands of jacks stuck to the pinnacle at Dirty Rock, and we saw schooling hammerheads out in the blue.

At Alcyone we dove with an incredible quantity of Galapagos sharks (around 15 of them at once!) as well as schools of at least 100+ hammerheads passing overhead, mesmerizing us with their iconic silhouettes.

We had a tiger shark sighting at Punta Maria, and many whitetip reef sharks schooling in the current. However our favorite spot for whitetips was Submerged Rock, where we were able to watch them on the hunt.

In terms of small stuff, we found octopuses at Alcyone as well as frogfish, moray eels and mantis shrimp at Paraja. There were countless colorful fish swimming about Manuelita Coral Garden as well as the occasional hammerhead.