Roca Partida sits about 70 miles west of its closest neighboring island, and is 350 miles south of Cabo San Lucas, your launch point for your journey to the Socorro Islands. It is the smallest of the Isla Revillagigedos (otherwise known as the Socorro Islands) at only 3.5 acres. What the island lacks in land mass it makes up for in underwater marine life.
Being so small and sitting out in the middle of the Pacific, this site can either be very calm or completely undivable. On this particular morning in March, we were awakened by the clatter of kitchenware falling, along with a myriad of other things flying around the boat, as it was rocked by a very large swell on its approach to the island.
Loading into the zodiac was a little challenging because of the large swells rolling through. Once underway we slipped into our gear, timed our approach to the island with the swell and performed our negative back-rolls off the side of the zodiac in unison, then met up underwater.
As I descended down to 118 feet I took in my surroundings. Roca Partida underwater was a sheer wall as deep as the eye could see, mostly covered by urchins. There were crevices carved into the wall at various depths, each of which seemed to be packed with white tip sharks stacked on top each other and huge trophy sized spiny lobster. Once I peeled my eyes off of the life on the amazing wall, I noticed the water surrounding the island was in action overload. Even with the 80 feet of visibility, it was hard to see very far due to how much life was enjoying the current sweeping past the island. You could almost fall into a trance by the movement and flow of all the marine life in the remarkably blue water, all the while being serenaded by the passing humpback whales whose singing could be heard throughout the entire dive.
As we neared the southwest corner of the island, the current was slamming into the wall, creating very strong down currents. So strong that you had to kick with all your might while at the same time inflating your BC so as not to be shoved down beyond your depth limits. Once we stabilized ourselves by finding a sweet spot along the wall with minimal down current, we could enjoy the show taking place in front of us.
Off in the distance was a huge school of scalloped hammerhead sharks closing in toward us. In no time they were over our heads, then again fading off into the distance. We were in awe of the close passes by silky, silvertip and Galapogos sharks as we swam along the wall. Mixed in this marine life parade were huge jacks keeping pace with the sharks. As we started our slow ascent up the wall, we were greeted by an enormous pacific manta ray with a wingspan that must have been over 20 feet. Sweeping right over our heads, this manta seemed to love being caressed by our expelled bubbles on its belly.
It is generally standard practice of boats travelling to the Socorro Islands to spend 2 days diving Roca, but due to the large swell and strong currents we were only able to stay for less than a day and only get to do 3 dives. Despite that, we were rewarded with lots of big animal encounters and a challenging but very rewarding set of dives that we will never forget.
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| Photo credit: Norbert Probst |
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