Dive at Dirty Rock | National Geographic

we gear up this morning at 7am and board
a ponga one of the boats that ferries
teams to different sites around Coco’s
for the first dive of the day at dirty
rock as Manu preps his video camera tank
and regulator enrica pulls on his wet
suit and Leandra boards the boat finally
we’re off we’re joined by Wilson a Costa
Rican veteran of hundreds of dives at
Coco’s Pepe who pilots the boat and Dave
the team’s diving safety officer at
first dirty rock is a small speck on the
horizon but soon enough we arrive wait
drenched by the surf which is up today
the team duns their vests and tanks
grabs their gear and tumbles backward
into the water soon it’s just me Pepe
and the rock we back off a safe distance
and are joined by a dolphin plane in the
surf that he calls my attention to a
white shape gliding beneath our boat
which he recognizes as the float
attached to a Galapagos shark that
prowls these waters by a broken piece of
fishing line kyler from National
Geographic hopes to use a critter cam to
film a large shark such as this one so
Pepe calls the sighting into our
mothership the Hansa Explorer after
about an hour in the water two masked
faces emerge it’s Dave and Leandra Pepe
helps haul in their gear and they climb
back aboard mano emerges next and
finally a smiling and wreak as we head
back to the ship we leave a rainbow in
our wake and the divers talk about the
extraordinary things they saw and filmed
beneath the water