Sunday, March 17, 2002 - Pacific Ocean
Travel day. Up around 7:00 - breakfast isn't until 8:00 today so I went up on deck and stared out at the ocean. The water is a deep, deep blue and very clear. After breakfast, I spent some time on the sun deck reading. I finished Spencerville by DeMille. We had a pasta lunch today: spaghetti with tuna in a cream sauce, penne with either bolognese or tomato sauce, salad, and garlic bread.

In the afternoon, it clouded over and started to rain. We watched "My Cousin Vinnie" - Pedro brought out big bowls of popcorn for us. About halfway through the movie, the engines stopped so we went up on deck - the captain had spotted a whale. Not sure what type - we circled slowly and he surfaced a few times, then left. Very neat.

After the movie, several of us sat up on the bow, reading and enjoying the sun. Gary spotted another whale off the bow well in front of us. The captain headed towards the spout and then turned off the engines, hoping the whale would come close. But he submerged and come up on the other side of the boat. Oh well. After he left and we started forward again, Mario and I spotted another spout. We again moved closer and cut the engines.

Dinner was steak, potatoes, squash, salad, with ice cream for dessert. Afterwards, Mario showed us video he shot in Malpelo two years ago, with huge schools of silky sharks and HH.

Monday, March 18, 2002 - Cocos, Costa Rica
We arrived in Cocos somewhere in the early morning hours and the engines stopped after we anchored off of Isla Manuelita on the NE side of the island.

I got up around 6:00 - quite a different sight from Malpelo - lots of green!

They took the pangas off the sundeck and we had breakfast - scrambled eggs with tomatoes and onions and small sausages. At 8:00 we went to our first dive site, "Roca Sucia" or "Dirty Rock." Nice dive - we had a lovely HH come within 7-8 feet, and there were small (2-4 foot) White Tip (WT) reef sharks EVERYWHERE. Not intimidating at all and after the first few minutes, we all just ignored them. Many were sleeping - in the sand, on the rocks, in groups. There was a pile of three of them sleeping on a rock shelf - one had its fin resting on the back of another - they looked more like puppies than sharks.

We also saw a large group (a dozen or more) of small WT that had found something to eat in a crevasse. John and I were hovering about 3-5 feet above them, watching as they twisted and turned and struggled to get into the small space to eat whatever was there.

Lots of nice puffers, Moorish Idols, trumpet fish. We also saw three lovely Mobula Rays - similar to small Manta Rays - very close. They hovered over our bubbles - a bonus for all of us poor prehistoric "open-circuit" divers!

Second dive was at "Isla Manuelita" - eh. Surge, current, so so vis. We saw just one HH in the distance as we dropped in, tons of small WT, cute little blennies in the barnacles where we were holding onto the rocks. Loads of spiny lobsters out prowling around. On our safety stop, there was a 4-5 foot Black Tip shark just below the surface.

Lunch was chicken/beef/soy burgers and fries - yummy. After lunch our group went back to Dirty Rock. Pretty much the same as before, minus the Mobulas, but we did see an Eagle Ray.

When we came back, they had moved the Sea Hunter to nearby Chatham Bay, which would provide a calmer anchorage for the night. My regulator had been free-flowing a bit, so I mentioned it to Miguel. He and Mario took a look at it and discovered that it had too much pressure running through it, so they corrected it. Read, napped, sunned in the afternoon.

Most of the divers wanted to do a night dive, but I don't enjoy them (the night dives, not the divers). Instead, I watched the sunset and shared a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc with Rick and Les and talked to them. Rick lives in Salt Lake City - born and raised there, and then spent 25 years in England before moving back to SLC. He works for "several charitable family trusts" - whatever that means, other than not having to work very much apparently. He seems to travel and dive much of the time - he and Les were on the Sea Hunter trip to Cocos for the trip before ours, so they will effectively have spent a month on this boat by the time we get back. Rick also has a house in Singapore so he gave me several restaurant suggestions for our layovers for our PNG trip at the end of April.

Dinner was fish soup, followed by steak, veggies, salad. After dinner we watched the sixth episode of Blue Planet. Following that they started watching "There's Something About Mary" but I was pretty tired so I went to bed.

Tuesday, March 19, 2002 - Cocos, Costa Rica

Nico also explained why there are only a few small clumps of coconut palms on the island. They are not native to the island, but coconuts float, so some have been carried on the water from other islands, and they are pushed up onto shore by the tides or storms where they sprout and take root.

After breakfast we dove "Submerged Rock." There was a lovely underwater swimthrough at about 75 feet. Very nice. I got a foot cramp early on in the dive and it made the rest of the dive rather uncomfortable. I sat out the second dive to "Shark Fin Rock" - the team saw a huge school of 30+ male marble rays trying to mate with one large female.

After lunch we took the pangas close to the shore and hiked to the base of the big waterfall. It was quite a challenge - swimming from the pangas to shore was difficult, as the "sand" needs a few million years of aging before the grains are smaller than a basketball. We clambered over the huge boulders that are strewn over the shore, and then waded upstream over slippery rocks. But when we got to the waterfall - spectacular! There was a lovely pool, and the waterfall cascaded straight down from the top of the cliffs.

We all swam in and sat right in the falls - what a rush!! We banged and bumped our way back down and swam through the surf to reach the pangas. When we got back a few of us went out in one of the pangas to look for dolphins, but no luck.

I sat up on the deck and talked with Mario, Les and Gary while the night divers dove. Dinner was soup and mahi mahi steaks with ice cream for dessert. I was really tired after the hike, so I went to bed pretty early.

Wednesday, March 20, 2002 - Cocos, Costa Rica
Up a little after 6:00 and we dove "Shark Fin" after breakfast. We again found the amorous marble rays that the team had seen the day before. They can smell the female ray, but they don't see her, so when she's around they'll swarm around anything, even divers, until they realize we're not their type. Mario also said he saw sharks mating just at the end of the dive.

The other panga came back from "Dos Amigos Pequero" or "Small Two Friends" - they had seen a WHALE SHARK!! Whale sharks are the largest of the shark family, reaching 35-50 feet, but are harmless, feeding on massive amounts of plankton and small fish and shrimp. This one was young, 17 feet long or so.

Their pix and videos were incredible and we couldn't wait to go to that site and see if we could find her - but no luck. I saw some tiny reef fish mating - the female would swim up off the rocks followed by a whole school of males. She releases her eggs and the males frantically release sperm to try to fertilize them. The dive was pretty surgy. When we got back, a sailboat that had been anchored at the site when we got there said they had seen the whale shark while snorkeling about two minutes before we arrived.

Lunch was meat balls, rice, beans, tapioca bread, veggies and salad. After lunch some of us watched Episode 8 of Blue Planet - "The Coast." Brutal things, Orcas. One panga went out to look for dolphins - no go. The ranger station called and reported an accident with a fisherman, so Gary went over in the other panga to help. Our team decided to go back to "Shark Fin" again in the afternoon. I was a bit miffed that they didn't want to go look for the whale shark again, so I decided to sit it out. When Gary got back, their panga decided to go back to Los Amigos to look for the whale shark, but all my gear was on the other panga. It's OK - no one saw the whale shark.

I got halfway through "The Key To Midnight" by Dean Koontz before I realized I had already read it. It is kind of the "Manchurian Candidate" genre. The boat moved back over to Chatham Bay for the night - the night divers will do Manuelita again.

Dinner was soup and.....oh well, I can't remember. I'm sure it was good though. We watched "True Lies" with Arnold and Jamie Lee Curtis - well, we watched it until most of us fell asleep on the floor and couches.

Thursday, March 21, 2002 - Cocos, Costa Rica
Breakfast at 7:00 - eggs, toast, banana bread, cheese, fruit. The gold team went back to Dos Amigos to look for the whale shark again. Again, the Mighty Casey struck out. We saw several nice HH early in the dive.

The second dive was at a seamount very close to Dos Amigos ("Bajo Dos Amigos") where the blue team had seen a school of mobula rays and two sailfish - very rare. We had an anchor line down to the top of the seamount at 80 feet - the current was very strong, so we needed to use the line to get down. I went down to 90 feet, but my ears were giving me some problems clearing, so I went back up the line and hung at 50 feet. Lo and behold, the mobulas started coming in - two or three of them and then suddenly a manta ray! Huge - about a 15 foot wingspan, like the ones I played with in Socorro, Mexico several years ago. All of a sudden there were ten mobulas, the manta and John spotted the sailfish near the surface! Great dive!

After lunch - pizzas! - we napped, read, and tried to watch the end of True Lies - still didn't make it through that. We dove Manuelita again - fought the current and surge and didn't see too much except a sea turtle and a bunch of lobsters until we spotted two black tip sharks near the surface as we were doing our hang. The thermaclines were very defined - we found the water temps to be EITHER 60 or 80 degrees - nothing in between.

The other team went to look for a red-lipped batfish. And they found it - one of the UGLIEST critters I've seen underwater. They also found a spotted eel that was much prettier.