September 02, 2005- Pirates stole our buoy!

I didn’t sleep well. Had a cup of that superstrong Costa Rican coffee the morning before and was too eager in my anticipation of seeing the school of hundreds of hammerheads at Alcyone. I had a very good feeling about it. We were supposed to dive Alcyone first thing that AM. The boat ride out there was rough- very high swells. When we got there, the buoy was no were in sight. Our buoy & anchoring line had been stolen by pirates! (Or perhaps by the stormy weather) I was very disappointed.



Dive 25: Manuelita (out)

So we returned to this now familiar dive site. Only one hammerhead sighted. But it as Cristiano called it was ‘Galapagos paradise’. There were 5 Galapagos sharks abound and they followed us during our dive, often in close range. Also saw a black tip shark Ended again in open water, swept out by current.



Dive 26: Manuelita (out)

Went in to say goodbye to all our fishy friends- to the big eye jack, the yellow snappers, the blue and yellow snappers, the blue fin trevally, and the white tip sharks. Hopefully gazing out into the blue for the whale shark but she never made the date. We had above average encounters with the hammerheads on this dive. Upon descent, I practically landed myself on top of one. They were mostly solitary ( no schools) but came by in close range. I wish Mike had bought that underwater camera. 1 Galapagos shark. I hit 0 on my no deco time on this dive and was scrambling up the vertical rock face in the strong current to ascend. Overall, it was a decent ending to our adventure in Cocos.

The USH set off into the open ocean shortly after the 2 pangas were reloaded by crane onto the decks. We were towing Marviva the broken ranger patrol boat back to mainland. Apparently the fishermen are going to have quite a week fishing illegally in Cocos!