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From the Chairman & CEO:
Date: Sept. 24 - Oct.. 4, 2011
This charter to Cocos we had one of our very best Dive Centers customers, International Scuba from the Dallas Texas area, bring a large group and they were joined by the 2 managers from Dive BVI that are old friends plus four guests from the UK and four from California.
Everyone had plenty of time on the 30 hour crossing to get acquainted and share their personal diving experiences and what they wanted to see at Cocos as well as watch our dolphin escorts at the bow. Everyone was experienced divers so we jumped right in to the signature dives that Cocos offers.
Casey ensured that those up early and wanting to be stretched and ready for the advanced diving that Cocos offers held a yoga class at 6AM most mornings on the sun deck. There was also no end to the practical jokes that these long time Texas friends would pull on each other!
Our first dive was at Manuelita where we encountered the great numbers of white tip sharks that are everywhere in Cocos plus, as an added bonus, two black frogfish! Although black frogfish are a photographers nightmare, the Okeanos Staff found two orange ones later in the charter that every photographer was able to capture with success.
On the deep, advanced sites such as Dos Amigos, Dirty Rock and Alcyone, we encountered the large schools of Hammerheads and the cruising Galapagos sharks that has made Cocos so famous. There is no thrill better than watching hundreds of hammerheads right in front of you, especially when one decides to come closer and give you a perspective of just how large this fish are!
We also had spectacular encounters with large numbers of marble rays, some so massive you could not stretch your arms out from wingtip to wingtip. They would gracefully swim amongst all the divers and presented some amazing photo opportunities.
And just when you thought the photo opportunities were winding down, along comes a Tiger Shark that Graham photographed as it checked out his wife Linda!
If you wanted to take a break from viewing all the hammerheads, there were always octopus, schools of leather bass, resting white tips and walls of yellow stripes to check out. I setup my Nikon D7000 camera for super macro on a couple of dives with a 105 Macro attached to a 1.4 convertor and a +5 diopter. There were plenty of blennies, gobies, shrimps and juvenile fish to capture.
We ended the charter with the best night dive of any destination worldwide. This dive at Manuelita has hundreds of white tips using your light to find prey and when one does, it is starts a feeding frenzy that cannot be duplicated anywhere else. It is such an awe inspiring sight to be just on the fringe of this excitement that you have to remind yourself to trigger the shutter release!
For any one wanting to explore the top side of Cocos, we provided two land excursions. One in Wafer Bay where the main ranger station is and one in Chatam Bay where the smaller ranger outpost is located. Views of beautiful waterfalls, local fauna of deer, red footed boobies with their snow white young and the ever interesting frigates birds could be spotted and photographed.
Thanks to all our guests this week, thanks to Captain Beto and his amazing staff and thanks to Franchisee Jorge for continuing to uphold the high Aggressor standards!
See some select photos here:
Okeanos Aggressor Oct 2011 | Facebook
Date: Sept. 24 - Oct.. 4, 2011
This charter to Cocos we had one of our very best Dive Centers customers, International Scuba from the Dallas Texas area, bring a large group and they were joined by the 2 managers from Dive BVI that are old friends plus four guests from the UK and four from California.
Everyone had plenty of time on the 30 hour crossing to get acquainted and share their personal diving experiences and what they wanted to see at Cocos as well as watch our dolphin escorts at the bow. Everyone was experienced divers so we jumped right in to the signature dives that Cocos offers.
Casey ensured that those up early and wanting to be stretched and ready for the advanced diving that Cocos offers held a yoga class at 6AM most mornings on the sun deck. There was also no end to the practical jokes that these long time Texas friends would pull on each other!
Our first dive was at Manuelita where we encountered the great numbers of white tip sharks that are everywhere in Cocos plus, as an added bonus, two black frogfish! Although black frogfish are a photographers nightmare, the Okeanos Staff found two orange ones later in the charter that every photographer was able to capture with success.
On the deep, advanced sites such as Dos Amigos, Dirty Rock and Alcyone, we encountered the large schools of Hammerheads and the cruising Galapagos sharks that has made Cocos so famous. There is no thrill better than watching hundreds of hammerheads right in front of you, especially when one decides to come closer and give you a perspective of just how large this fish are!
We also had spectacular encounters with large numbers of marble rays, some so massive you could not stretch your arms out from wingtip to wingtip. They would gracefully swim amongst all the divers and presented some amazing photo opportunities.
And just when you thought the photo opportunities were winding down, along comes a Tiger Shark that Graham photographed as it checked out his wife Linda!
If you wanted to take a break from viewing all the hammerheads, there were always octopus, schools of leather bass, resting white tips and walls of yellow stripes to check out. I setup my Nikon D7000 camera for super macro on a couple of dives with a 105 Macro attached to a 1.4 convertor and a +5 diopter. There were plenty of blennies, gobies, shrimps and juvenile fish to capture.
We ended the charter with the best night dive of any destination worldwide. This dive at Manuelita has hundreds of white tips using your light to find prey and when one does, it is starts a feeding frenzy that cannot be duplicated anywhere else. It is such an awe inspiring sight to be just on the fringe of this excitement that you have to remind yourself to trigger the shutter release!
For any one wanting to explore the top side of Cocos, we provided two land excursions. One in Wafer Bay where the main ranger station is and one in Chatam Bay where the smaller ranger outpost is located. Views of beautiful waterfalls, local fauna of deer, red footed boobies with their snow white young and the ever interesting frigates birds could be spotted and photographed.
Thanks to all our guests this week, thanks to Captain Beto and his amazing staff and thanks to Franchisee Jorge for continuing to uphold the high Aggressor standards!
See some select photos here:
Okeanos Aggressor Oct 2011 | Facebook
