leadweight
Contributor
I recently returned from Cocos Island on the Aggressor. The diving out there is very good, but this trip is not for everyone.
The Good:
You will see a lot of hammerhead sharks here. Sometimes twenty five or thirty at a time. It often looks like the Imax movie, Island of the Sharks. There are also Silky, Silvertip and Galapagos sharks. On one night dive about 200 white tips were hunting in shallow water. On every dive (except at night) I saw at least one Hammerhead.
I also saw a Manta, several eagle rays and one dive a pod of dolphins showed up and checked us out. Fish, morays and lobsters are abundant. I mean all kinds of fish from yellow tail to exotics like the Moorish Idol to large snapper and Tuna. In one crack in the rocks there must have been 40 lobsters.
Food was good. I ate like a pig and lost weight somehow.
The Bad:
Because of its remote location, Cocos Island is a difficult 36 hour boat ride from Costa Rica. I found the mattresses to be on the thin side so my back side hit the plywood bunk every time the boat went over a good sized wave.
The park fee is a hefty $245.
Diving is not done directly from the Aggressor. You have to transfer to a semi rigid inflatable and it takes you to the dive sites. Some of the rides are long and bumpy. All are very wet.
There are 3 day dives instead of the usual 4 that many liveaboards have. Considering how deep you will be diving, and the effort involved in using the RIB's, that will be enough for most.
You pretty much must dive nitrox for the week. There is no way to keep up on air unless you want to come up after 10 minutes. Fortunately they give the course on the way out and have rental computers. Nitrox is mixed from big oxygen tanks on board, eliminating the potential for a membrane system to break down.
This time of the year it will rain every day for nearly the entire day. Visibility is not all that great. Often it was only 40 to 50 feet, sometimes better. However, the restricted visibility is due to large amounts of plankton which attracts larger marine life. That's life in the ocean. Water temperature is unpredictable at best. It was usually a warm 82F, often dropping to 77F. On one dive at Alcyone the temperature was a frigid 67F. It is difficult to suit up for such a wide range.
My last comment applies to all of the high end live aboard boats. If you do not have an underwater camera, you might not fit in as well as if you did.
The Good:
You will see a lot of hammerhead sharks here. Sometimes twenty five or thirty at a time. It often looks like the Imax movie, Island of the Sharks. There are also Silky, Silvertip and Galapagos sharks. On one night dive about 200 white tips were hunting in shallow water. On every dive (except at night) I saw at least one Hammerhead.
I also saw a Manta, several eagle rays and one dive a pod of dolphins showed up and checked us out. Fish, morays and lobsters are abundant. I mean all kinds of fish from yellow tail to exotics like the Moorish Idol to large snapper and Tuna. In one crack in the rocks there must have been 40 lobsters.
Food was good. I ate like a pig and lost weight somehow.
The Bad:
Because of its remote location, Cocos Island is a difficult 36 hour boat ride from Costa Rica. I found the mattresses to be on the thin side so my back side hit the plywood bunk every time the boat went over a good sized wave.
The park fee is a hefty $245.
Diving is not done directly from the Aggressor. You have to transfer to a semi rigid inflatable and it takes you to the dive sites. Some of the rides are long and bumpy. All are very wet.
There are 3 day dives instead of the usual 4 that many liveaboards have. Considering how deep you will be diving, and the effort involved in using the RIB's, that will be enough for most.
You pretty much must dive nitrox for the week. There is no way to keep up on air unless you want to come up after 10 minutes. Fortunately they give the course on the way out and have rental computers. Nitrox is mixed from big oxygen tanks on board, eliminating the potential for a membrane system to break down.
This time of the year it will rain every day for nearly the entire day. Visibility is not all that great. Often it was only 40 to 50 feet, sometimes better. However, the restricted visibility is due to large amounts of plankton which attracts larger marine life. That's life in the ocean. Water temperature is unpredictable at best. It was usually a warm 82F, often dropping to 77F. On one dive at Alcyone the temperature was a frigid 67F. It is difficult to suit up for such a wide range.
My last comment applies to all of the high end live aboard boats. If you do not have an underwater camera, you might not fit in as well as if you did.
just activate this puppy and through the use of a radio on board the large boat they can find you, during our trip the captain told us they had done a drill in very poor visibility with a beacon attached to a bouy and were able to find it 7 miles from the main boat. Overall the Seahunter was great and it might be slightly more expensive but it was worth every penny, I would recommend you go this route.
