We awoke on the morning of arrival to a view of the island through our porthole and as the boat rocked and submerged it yielded a glimpse of clear azure blue water and fish! Through our porthole!! Our desire to dive had to be reigned in until after breakfast. It was difficult. We were there in Cocos Island. Famous as Jurassic Park, famous as Treasure Island and famous for it's sharks - hammerheads especially. I suppose that is what drew us there - having a short but dramatic experience of diving with hammerheads in the Red Sea three years ago, I wanted to see them again and get some photographs this time. And I had to wait until after breakfast!! Into our gear, into the pangas (ribs), kitted up... about to open the floodgates of my anticipation for our check out dive and you must sympathise with my frustration at a broken fin strap. Arghhh! We weren't denied the dive, though it was much shortened as we had to return to the Okeanos for spares.
The water was warm and invitingly clear - there was lots of life - not so much of the reef fishes that you might expect from tropical waters - but then there weren't many corals; the reefs having suffered from El Nino and algae growth but there were plenty of bigger fish and sharks. Every dive yielded white tips - lounging on the sands, cruising through the crystal waters or on the memorable night dives thronging in their hundreds in feeding frenzies. The night dives were certainly memorable - Damien even got his wish of a night dive on a solitary wreck; the bioluminescence shimmering off us, but there were other memorable dives too; Dos Amigos where we had had a delightful dive with our first sighting of an eagle ray - magnificent creatures swooping through the water. We surfaced from the dive as usual - I had taken my fins off and was clambering out of the water, joking with Ken and Duane who were already in the panga ('Did you see the hammer heads?' 'No, we were distracted by the whale shark'), when D urgently called me back into the water. It is a general rule not to enter the water without fins as you are pretty helpless if there was a current but I held onto Damien and saw a magnificent Manta ray passing beneath us. We descended to 5m - we must have looked hilarious as I held onto Damien's first stage without fins but the excitement of simply seeing the vast black ray glide by was sparking through me. It was maybe 4 meters tip-to-tip and was simply majestic as it soared elegantly through the water, accompanied by a remora (I think) that seemed to move in the Mantas wake almost hugging it. I had a brief moment were I cursed the fact that we had already passed the camera into the panga but that was quickly overtaken by the WOW factor and awe of seeing such a magnificent creature. We hung there in the water just mesmerised - I think it was curious about us too as it slowed and for a while I thought it was going to turn around for another pass past us but it gently carried on out of sight into the blue. I felt very lucky to have shared the experience but sorry no pictures...!