Dive Review of Undersea Hunter in
Costa Rica/Cocos Island

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Undersea Hunter: "Cocos Island hammerheads.", Oct, 2023, by Mary Adams, FL, US ( Top Contributor 31 reports with 13 Helpful votes). Report 12672 has 1 Helpful vote.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity
Dive Operation		Shore Diving	N/A
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$	N/A
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	Cocos Island was my consolation prize for not being able to dive Galapagos (yet). I received an a mail that said, “one space available for female share,” so I accepted. The cost was $5000, payable by wire or credit card. I flew to San José from Baltimore on Spirit Airlines and stayed at the Courtyard Alajuela. Spirit Airlines has a 40-pound weight limit for checked bags. Saturday morning, the bus picked us up from our various hotels, loaded our gear bags into a separate van, and drove us to Punta Arenas. There were a couple stops along the way for bathrooms and drinks & snacks. The solar eclipse was occurring, and I had eclipse glasses, so we were able to see the partial eclipse. We boarded Sea Hunter, settled into our cabins, and set up our gear on the dive deck. The deck has spacious tank stations, under-seat bins, wetsuit hangers, and wall cubbies. Sea Hunter capacity is 20 passengers, and there were 19 of us. The cabins are spacious and comfortable, the salon was big with lots of sofas, and the dining room had five 4-person booths. Meals were all buffet style. There is a coffee maker that will make you a latte, espresso, or cappuccino anytime with one button. I often watched sunrise on the sun deck with a cappuccino at 5:30 am, long before breakfast at 7. After a delicious Day 1 dinner, we departed for the 34-hour bumpy ride to Cocos Island, during which many of us, despite scopolamine patches, “lost” our dinners. This crossing might prevent me from ever diving Cocos again. Sea Hunter moored in a sheltered bay on the leeward side of the Island. Divers were assigned to one of 2 skiffs, Blue Team or Yellow Team. There were 9 or 10 divers per skiff, plus 2 dive masters and a skiff captain. The dive sites were less than 15 minutes away from Sea Hunter. For most dives, we back-rolled, negative-entry, and descended to the rocky wall. The DM guided us to cleaning stations, where we held onto the barnacles and waited for the hammerheads to arrive. After 20-25 minutes of watching the show, the DM led us out into the blue to look for schooling hammerhead sharks and big-eye trevally jacks. We were rarely disappointed. At the end of the dive, we surfaced, and the skiff came to pick us up. We handed up our weights and fins, then climbed the ladder. The skiff motored back to Sea Hunter. We left our tanks and fins on the skiffs, and the crew filled the tanks between dives. Cocos Island is volcanic, and most dive sites were steep rock slopes. One dive site, Coral Garden, was a large flat area of pocillopora corals inhabited by more parrotfish, seabasses, wrasses, and other coral reef fishes than were present on the rock slopes. Besides Coral Garden, Cocos does not have very many tropical corals. The pocillopora looked healthy, with no signs of bleaching or coral disease. Surface intervals were typically 3 hours long, which is fine considering the depth of the dives. The food was spectacular, even near the end of the trip. The entire crew was excellent! We saw abundant white-tip sharks, hammerhead sharks, and big-eye trevallies. We saw a few dolphins, Galapagos reef sharks, silvertip sharks, and marbled rays, one green turtle, and only one oceanic manta. I was doing REEF surveys; my impression is that fish variety and populations were moderately good, but not excellent. Maybe that’s because there were so many jacks and other predators around. The visibility was never spectacular. It was mostly good. The sky was cloudy most of the time, so the underwater light was rarely very good. We did 21 dives, 3 per day for 7 days. There were no night dives. At the last day, Sunday, we broke down and rinsed our BCDs and regulators and hung them to dry, which was only moderately successful in the rain. The crossing from Cocos to Punta Arenas was far less unpleasant than at the beginning of the trip. The bus trip to San Jose was a little faster than the first day. I overnighted at the Courtyard again and flew home to Fort Lauderdale on Spirit, nonstop. I highly recommend this expedition!
Websites	Undersea Hunter
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	Over 1000 dives
Where else diving	Cuba, Bonaire, Cozumel, Florida Keys, Clearwater FL, Bimini, Saba-St. Eustatius, Roatan, Kona, North Carolina, Flower Garden Banks, Caymans, Palau, Chuuk, Jupiter Florida, Belize, Costa Rica, Turks and Caicos, Revillagigedo, St. Lucia, Solomon Islands, Fiji,
Closest Airport	SJO	Getting There	Fly to San José, overnight at airport Marriott, outfitter-provided bus to Punta Arenas to board Sea Hunter.
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny, rainy, cloudy	Seas	choppy, surge
Water Temp	78-83°F / 26-28°C	Wetsuit Thickness	2
Water Visibility	10-99 Ft/ 3-30 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	no
Enforced diving restrictions	Stay near dive guide. Dives were typically 25 minutes deep, then 25 minutes shallower “in the blue.”
Liveaboard?	yes	Nitrox Available?	yes
What I Saw
Sharks	Lots	Mantas	1 or 2
Dolphins	Schools	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	1 or 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter		Boat Facilities
Overall rating for UWP's		Shore Facilities	N/A
UW Photo Comments	The dive deck has a dry table with compressed air. Charging was allowed in your cabin when you were present. The salon had several outlets for charging.

Report currently has 1 Helpful vote

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Dive Review of Undersea Hunter in Costa Rica/Cocos Island

Undersea Hunter: "Cocos Island hammerheads.", Oct, 2023,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Undersea Hunter in
Costa Rica/Cocos Island