Diving Cocos

On arriving at Cocos island you are met with a beautiful tropical island covered in thick forest with clouds lingering in the hills and waterfalls cascading down steep island cliffs. The island is quite simply beautiful and builds your anticipation for what lies beneath the water. You will initially be moored in one of two sheltered bays, Wafer Bay or Chatham Bay, the latter being the location of the permanent ranger station. You will then go through the initial dive briefing and be issued with a GPS tracking device, to initiate in the event of an emergency or being lost in a current and drifting out to see, its a large ocean and you would could soon be miles out to sea in a strong current.

The Diving.

#1. Our first dive was at Chatham Bay, and after a short panga (rib) ride out and back roll entry as are all dives at Cocos we immediately knew this place is special. We were initially greeted by an uninspiring hard coral and boulder reef, but immediately started seeing white tip reef sharks, dotted around, specially on the sandy flats that meet the reef, lobster and several large marble rays cruising past. The first dive is always a check dive for you and your kit and of course for the dive guides to see if you are up to the diving, which can be in deep water, strong currents and choppy surface conditions. This first dive being shallow also allowed you to get really close to the white tip reef sharks that were sleeping on the sandy flats.

#2. Our second dive was adjacent Isla Manuelita, a fairly large outcropping of rock separated from the main island by a small gully. The dive was our first encounter of “real” sharks, they were not there in massive numbers, but we saw several larger Galapagos sharks and several Hammerheads. By finding a cleaning station (usually a large rock formation inhabited by butterfly and angel fish) you are able to settle down and watch the sharks cruise in for their daily clean of dead skin and bacteria, a mutually beneficial arrangement providing food for one and a healthy skin for the other. The underwater landscape was also quite spectacular with large gullies, boulders, steep sloping rock up towards the island and flat sandy plateaus.

#3. This was also at Isla Manuelita, however how a place can change in a couple of hours, the cleaning stations were empty on this dive and there were only a few distant sightings of and type of shark.

#4. Dirty rock is probably one of the signature dives of cocos, so this was a highly anticipated dive. A little longer panga ride out as the rock, which is actually a small outcropping covered in guano (giving it it’s name) is around a kilometre out from the main island. This dive gave us large numbers of shoaling fish, Jacks and Tuna and a small number of Hammerheads and White Tip reef sharks and at the safety stop one Hammerhead came really close, but there was not much action on the cleaning stations on this dive. Still a beautiful dive.

#5. Punta Maria is a dive site on the north west corner of Cocos Island, quite a long panga ride around the north side of the island. Here we experienced very strong currents and visible thermoclines. These conditions made it hard to see the few Galapagos sharks and occasional Hammerhead as most were in the distance. We moved over pinnacles and were surrounded by masses of fish and White Tip reef sharks.

#6. Pajora Island is again a small outcropping of rock on the north side of the island. This dive was a really interesting dive, the sea floor was covered in broken hard coral, purple in colour that reminded me of gob stoppers as a child. We had large shoals of colourful Purple Surgeon fish that apparently is a really unusual sight as they were congregating to spawn. These large shoals were constantly being interrupted by White Tip reef sharks swimming by, buzzing the shoal and swimming through to break them up. They were happy for us to swim through them, parting and rejoining as we passed through.

#7. Bajo Alcyone is on the south east side of the island, its an exposed seamount that can become rough at times, but for us it was great, it was the first dive site where we saw any great number of Hammerheads. The cleaning stations were busy with sharks patiently waiting their turn to get a clean and lots of Hammerheads around during the safety stop, but it was out in the blue where there were hundreds of shoaling Hammerheads that just kept their distance, but close enough for most of us to see.

#8. For this dive we returned to Isla Manuelita, it was a last minute change as we were now hungry for more Hammerhead action. Again we were not disappointed, this dive brought plenty of Hammerheads cruising through the cleaning stations mixed with Galapagos sharks. We also had White Tip reef sharks, Tuna and a very large Tiger shark that came very close. On the 5m safety stop we had a large school of Hammerheads cruise by around 15m below us.

#9. Triangle rock was a slow dive in comparison, lots of White Tip reef sharks and a good number of fish so it felt like a bit of a let down compared to other dives (It would have still qualified as an awesome dive in somewhere like the Red Sea), but it also gave us some time for a selfie or two

#10. The time had come for the first night dive of our trip, the boat negotiates with the rangers to see how many night dives they will allow, luckily we were given two and what fantastic dives they were. Our first night dive was in Wafer bay and we were a little dubious about the conditions as there had been heavy rain throughout the day and the run off from the island was thick in the water, we thought this would affect the visibility; it didn’t. The run off stuck to the surface and once we were around 2m down the vis cleared up. When the dive started there wasn’t much action, White Tips cruising up and down the reef looking for their evening meal, but after around ten minutes of our dive lights penetrating the dark the White Tips began to gather using our lights to help them hunt. As the dive progressed the number of White Tips built up into the hundreds, they began charging around like a pack of angry dogs and were joined in their hunt by large Black Jacks with teeth the size of nails. At times the sharks attacked parts of the reef when they thought they had located a fish causing quite a lot of damage. It became a real feeding frenzy and as we were close to the bottom we were at times completely surrounded by fast moving sharks. We also saw free swimming Moray eels hunting through the rocks and a couple of large Eagle rays cruising around. This was without a doubt the single best dive of my life, nothing short of spectacular!

#11. Big Dos Amigos is on the south west of the island, where we found big surges and strong currents, there was very little big stuff here, plenty of fish and a large swim through.

#12. Again back to Isla Manuelita, another quiet dive with one large Galapagos shark and a Hammerhead cutting close in front of Tracey.

#13. Back to Dirty Rock, here we found bad visibility again and no real action until the end of the dive where we had four Hammerheads that kept coming up to us out of the blue.

#14. This was our second and final night dive. This dive was similar to the first but without the intensity, there were plenty of White Tip reef sharks about, but they seemed longer to build in number and never quite got up the the frenzy of the previous night, however still an awesome night dive.

#15. Manuleita deep only brought us a few Hammerheads in the distance and a few Galapagos sharks.

#16. Took us back to Baja Alcyone, and again this dive site brought a parade of Hammerheads continuously swimming through the cleaning stations, some coming really close as our group of divers split up a little, we also had two huge Marble rays gliding around.

#17. This was our second dive at Manuelita deep, and the visibility had dropped from the first. There was one huge Galapagos shark in a cleaning station and then nothing else really until close to the end of the dive where four Hammerheads came swimming up a rock wall right below us. A few other Hammerheads popped in and out of our visibility on the safety stop.

#18. This was a morning dive in heavy rain and saw a return to Punta Maria, the dive was a bit of a wash out with poor vis and no real action on the reef.

#19. Was our second trip back to Dirty Rock and this time it gave us a show to remember. Within the first 10 minutes, as we were waiting at the first cleaning station we had a huge Whale shark approach about 5m above us, seeing our bubbles it moved its giant body around and slowly swam away in the opposite direction. There were Hammerheads and Galapagos sharks everywhere about the cleaning stations and off into the blue and the Whale shark made a second appearance, this time Tracey was lucky enough to swim along side it down at around 20m. Towards the end of the dive we swam out into the blue and encountered a huge wall of Hammerheads. There was also a huge ball of Jacks that joined us for our safety stop. At the surface whilst waiting for the panga to pick us up we were bombarded by Frigate birds. Wow what a dive!

#20. After the last dive we persuaded the Captain to allow us to go back to Dirty Rock and what a difference a few hours makes, the current had but up and the vis has dropped and the only thing we saw were a couple of Hammerheads in the distance, we should have listened to the Captain.

#21. This was our last days diving and with a little negotiation we decided to return to Dirty Rock to see if we could capture a little of the action from the day before. It was not the same but still a great dive, we spent most of the dive swimming through tens of thousands of shoaling Jacks, at times they were allowing White Tips to swim through them giving a brilliant show. Towards the end of the dive we had a huge wall of Hammerheads our into the blue, but these were at a distance.

#22. Our next to last dive was back at Isla Manuelita, here we again had lots of Hammerheads swimming through the cleaning stations, we encountered another Tiger shark, which apparently cruise up and down Isla Manuelita and Manuelita channel waiting for the nesting Blue Footed Boobie chicks to fall into the water. We also had a a group of large Eagle rays (known as a fever of Eagle rays) cruising around like a formation of stealth bombers.

#23. Our last dive was at Manuelita Channel. We started the dive with the group, but as they moved on from the first cleaning station we hung back and waited, this allowed time for any sharks that had seen the group of divers to return to their business. This tactic worked and the Hammerheads returned and came in very close to us, we then continued through the channel and were gifted by another close pass with a larger Tiger shark that swam away towards the surface, we then spent the rest of the dive chilling out around the reef amongst lots of sleeping White Tip reef sharks until a final lone Hammerhead cruised right past, a lovely last dive to end our trip.

Can I also say a big thank you to Alberto better known as Beto a TDI instructor and dive guide on the Okeanos, he’s an incredible underwater photographer and he gave us a copy of some of his photos at the end of the trip, many of the pictures on this page were taken by him.

I’ve included a link to YouTube of our video of the trip below, a great moment in the video is at 9:15 where a poor fish makes a break for it from the reef and is torn to pieces quite literally between my legs!