- REBREATHERS - SPORT DIVERS ... - Stingray Divers

make maintaining a specific depth impossible.
On the upside, it is a magnet to passing pelagics.
Especially sharks.
This trip I was determined to photograph the
Wall of Hammerheads, should I see it again.
Luckily, perhaps, my resolve wasn’t tested.
During the four dives I made on the Rock this
trip, I saw lots of sharks, at least five different
species. And though schools of hammerheads
were always present they were way below us, at
the edge of visibility.
Whitetip reefs, on the other hand, were easy to
photograph. They were always found lying about in the
same shallow depressions on one side of the Rock.
Schools of bigeye jacks large
enough to blot out the sun
are a common occurence in
the Socorro Islands.
Five large Galapagos sharks had a certain
rocky promontory they liked to circle. On one
occasion we rounded a corner and came face
to face with them. The sharks recovered first
and moved to shallower water. In addition to
this regular cast of characters, there were also
appearances by silky and silvertip sharks.
While we didn’t see a whale shark at Roca
Partida, divers on the trip before ours did. We
also didn’t see humpback whales underwater,
though there was plenty of activity on the
surface, typically just before sunset. That’s
when the city bus sized giants seemed to rouse
from their slumbers and begin blowing and
The Socorro islands
(islas revillagigedo)
Comprised of only four islands,
this covers 320 square miles. The
northernmost of this small archipelago
is San Benedicto, a sleeping volcano
(2.6 miles across), 180 miles southwest
of Cabo San Lucas. Socorro (Spanish
for “help”), the largest (10 miles long,
9 miles wide), is 40 miles south of
San Benedicto. Roca Partida (300 feet
long, 115 feet tall) is 60 miles west
of Socorro. The fourth major island,
Clarion, is 250 miles west of Socorro
and is rarely, if ever, visited by dive liveaboards
today.
Above water, the islands are home to
birds and other endemic and introduced
species; humans live only at the Mexican
naval bases on Socorro and Clarion.
The Mexican government declared the
islands a Biosphere Reserve in June
1994 and banned fishing within 12 miles
of land. According to Wikipedia.com,
the islands were named after Don Juan
Vicente de Guemes Padilla Horcasitas
y Aguayo, 2nd Count of Revillagigedo,
the 53rd viceroy of New Spain.
Long known for their friendly manta
rays, the Socorro’s are also the winter
calving and mating grounds for
humpback whales, which make the long
journey here from Alaska and the U.S.
West Coast.
www.underwaterjournal.com June/July 2007