The Pacific Quartet, the Caribbean, and Great Whites: Undercurrent 11/2021

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I'm surprised about how many divers in our Undercurrent community are getting back in the water. And I'm pleased. With the tropical Pacific and Asia destinations widely closed to travelers, the Caribbean and cold Pacific waters are getting increased interest.community are getting back in the water. And I'm pleased. With the tropical Pacific and Asia destinations widely closed to travelers, the Caribbean and cold Pacific waters are getting increased interest.

Our readers have been submitting detailed and helpful reports, and I've selected and summarized a few that should be of great interest when you consider your diving options. Of course, even the vaccinated must keep COVID in mind, and Rick Pavlescak's report on St. Eustatius demonstrates how careful some counties are. And while you may not get any nude diving in, as did our long-time contributor from Germany, Mike Joest, there is still plenty of diving action ahead as these reports show.

Big Fish Action

The Eastern Pacific has the big-fish quartet of Mexico's Revillagigedo Islands, Costa Rico's Cocos Islands, Colombia's Malepelo, and of course, Ecuador's Galapagos. Craig Wood (Radnor, PA) has dived them all and says, "Galapagos had the most diversity: all kinds of sharks, mantas, whale sharks, penguins, marine iguanas, sea lions, mola mola . . . The most big animals probably goes to the Revillagigedos; many sharks, dolphins, and mantas, mantas, mantas. Cocos also had many big animals, hammerheads, tiger sharks, many, many whitetip sharks."

In August, he visited Malpelo aboard the Colombia Dive Adventures' Ferox. He says Malpelo is "the wildest, all kinds of stuff, big and small, and the most challenging conditions. The trip is 30-36 hours. Sleeping was not easy when being rolled back and forth in bed . . . The Ferox is not a luxury liveaboard, but is safe and comfortable and takes just 12 divers in 10 cabins . . . All diving is from two rigid inflatables . . . The food was generally good to very good, often Colombian cuisine . . . There are currents, sometimes strong, often changing during the dive, and on one dive, I would take a kick or two to slow my backward movement, only to shoot forward at a very fast rate. Often, the surface would be 80-81 degrees and would drop abruptly to 72-73 at depth . . . Guide Sten Johansson has 10 years' experience diving Malpelo and an uncanny ability to plan and execute a perfect dive . . . The dives varied from good to amazing. We saw numerous scalloped hammerheads and many Galapagos sharks, once swooping toward us from every direction. We often had huge schools of fish around us: bigeye jacks, bigeye trevally, mullet snapper, leather bass, and cubera snapper. At Bajo del Monstruo, we were dropped on a whale shark, and another came cruising. Reef fish were on every dive: king angels, Chinese trumpetfish, blue-spotted coronet fish, and Moorish idols. One huge school of mullet snapper and bigeye jacks was so dense that we lost track of one another." www.colombiadiveadventures.com/ferox-liveaboard ...

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