Cocos Island, Costa Rica -- Sept 6-16

[Dr. Doug Ebersole]

I just returned from a 10 day trip aboard the Undersea Hunter (Scuba Diving Cocos Island Malpelo Liveaboard Cruises Costa Rica) to Cocos Island. What a great trip! We had tons of hammerheads as well as whitetip reef sharks, silkies, Galapagos sharks, and a tiger shark. The last day we even had a whale shark spend about 20 minutes with us at Alcyone. Here are a few photos. Thanks go to Ethan Gordon (Ethan Gordon - Underwater Photography, Destination & Fishing Images) for the shot of the whale shark with my wife.


Hammerheads

School of jacks

Night dive with whitetip reef sharks hunting in "packs"

Frogfish

Photo credit to Ethan Gordon -- and, no, my wife was not touching the whale shark!

Cocos Waterfall

Cocos Sunset

After the trip we spent a couple of days on the mainland in Costa Rica.

Arenal Volcano (shot from our hotel room)

Red Eyed Tree Frog

 

[Larry C]

Wow! Fantastic Doug. The Whaleshark pic is amazing, what a fantastic opportunity having one hang around for so long. The one we saw in Utila was a little younger and smaller, but we had all of about 30 seconds with it.

 

[Darnold9999]

A rare shot of Arenal in sun. Have been three times and only seen it once like this - the very first day of the first trip. Wonderful country. Great shots.

 

[AndyT]

Great pics Doug - love the Hammerheads !!!

 

[alcina]

Love the shot with the Jacks and the tree frog bestest!

Nice piccie with the whale shark...he looks a little lean

Fantastic way to tempt people to do the trip - looks fantastic

 

[BobSch]

]awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!! [/B][/I][/U]its on my list!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[parabolic]

Fantastic Doug!! Brings back great memories. Do Avi and/or Yosi make the trip any more?
++Ken++

 

[Dr. Doug Ebersole]

Thanks for the kind words, everyone.

No, Avi and Yosi were not on the trip. Our guides were Toby and Manuel -- both were great.

The whale shark was clearly a juvenile -- about 15 feet long -- but was very curious. She (no claspers) stayed with us initially for about 10 minutes and then left for about 10-15 minutes and came back and stayed another 10-15 minutes. It was definitely magical.

 

[parabolic]

Frogfish

Doug was the frogfish at Manuelita by any chance?? It looks hauntingly similar to one I found there 20 years ago. It was at the inside of Manuelita, closest to the island, at about 50fsw. You got its right side, I got the left, but they sure do have similar markings. Do they live that long?

 

[Dr. Doug Ebersole]

The frogfish was on a coral head on the inside at Manuelita. We saw it on our "checkout" dive the first day. There were actually two of them, this smaller male and a larger female. I don't know their life cycles. Neat coincidence, though! I'll bet Cocos was pretty spectacular 20 years ago before the shark finning explosion!