Unusual encounters?

[northernone]

Starting a thread where we can keep track of and marvel at the unusual/unexpected experiences.

Today I spent a few minutes with a hammerhead shark. The first I've seen here!

Somewhere near Santa Rosa wall. Was cruising at ~150 and saw it come up the wall towards me from beyond the range of visibility (a little turbid today) . Saw the shape moving maybe 100ft below me. I descended and we met at 170. It stopped the ascent and cruised parallel to me along the contours of the wall a few minutes. Comfortably glided into a few overhangs and around an outcropping before speeding up and leaving me behind.

Magnificent experience, and now we have a thread to talk about such things!
Cameron

 

[MaxBottomtime]

I was patiently waiting for a small fish to come out from under some concrete on the Scuba Club Cozumel house reef one night. I was motionless for several minutes when suddenly I was being pulled violently backward. I spun my head around to see Merry yanking my fins, looking very angry at the same time. When we got out of the water, I asked her what was going on. There was an attractive girl in a black thong who was apparently very interested to see what I was looking at. She was hovering about a foot above me with her thong right over my head. I didn't know she was there, but Merry was fuming when she saw her. I still don't know why Merry dragged me instead of the young woman.

 

[Jayfarmlaw]

Today I spent a few minutes with a hammerhead shark. The first I've seen here!

@Streydog....I guess we weren't deep enough....

 

[Pelagicsal]

I’ve heard deeper is more common for hammerhead sightings at Cozumel, but my first was at 80ish and the second 60ish.
Friends have reported sightings in the 60ish range, and one in a surprising 40’ depth.
Always awaiting my next!

There are some pink meanies around, the first I've seen or heard of. They’re large jellies with long tentacles and opaque body parts beneath the bell.

 

[Streydog]

@Streydog....I guess we weren't deep enough....

Lol, I guess the good stuff is always deeper. Last week we saw a pretty decent size reef shark at Bricks on the top of the wall. I am not good a judging depth but we were at 80' and it was quite a bit deeper. One guy in our group decided to get a closer look, I call it chasing it away, and swam down to the top of the wall. He told us he saw 7 sharks down there. I asked him how deep he had gone but he wouldn't say.

What is an unusual encounter for me is probably a common occurrence for many. On a recent night dive I had a reef squid get really close and follow my flashlight around for a little while, I thought that was pretty cool. My professional camera set up, Gopro and a flashlight. I forgot to remove my red filter so colors are off.

 

[MMM]

I've posted this here before, but here I go again since it's one of my very favourite encounters. We were diving Punta Sur Sur and I was doing it without my camera. We were at about 110 feet as I recall (maybe deeper) and an Eagle Ray and I ended up side by side (I forget how it happened). We hung there, facing the current, for what seemed like 5 minutes. It probably wasn't that long. If I had reached my right arm out, I would have touched its wing tip. We looked at one another, neither of us moving. Finally, the DM signalled that we needed to move on. We moved up the reef a bit and the same thing happened at a shallower depth (80 feet maybe) about 10 minutes later. Same eagle ray. For some reason, it liked hanging with me.

 

[Augustus]

About 12 or so years back saw a mola mola off from tormentos wall. Later saw some pics of same fish spotted up around Maracaibo taken by dive paradise

 

[Coztick]

Everyone who dives Cozumel is bound to see turtles but how about two doing circles, gliding and playing on the gentle current coming up and over the wall?


Sorry about the video quality.
This was on my 4th OW dive so skills were low and excitement was over the top.
Over the next few years I come to find that some turtles will go out of their way to pose for the camara...


Now the possibility of hammerheads?
I'm there in 3 days. Whatever I do see, unusual or not, defines the word "wonderful" to me.

Thanks, Kevin

 

[ggunn]

Several years ago on a May dive on Colombia Deep we had ascended to 40' or so for our transit between pinnacles. We were all in a line with the DM in front and yours truly bringing up the rear. The DM started shaking his noisemaker and pointing ahead of him; out of the gloom swimming in the opposite direction at the same depth as us and off to our left was a lone eagle ray. I started angling over very slowly and as I got close to his path I stopped bubbling. The ray's left wingtip passed about six inches from my mask.

No camera, of course.

 

[kmarks]

In December of 2014 we were diving with Tres Pelícanos and all but one of us saw a turtle come down and practically sit on poor @Skittl1321's head. Everybody was frantically pointing at it and trying to get her attention so she could see the turtle that she could have kissed if she looked up. She spun in circles hopelessly looking for it all around her, but never looked up.