A Hammerhead shark.
Photo by Dana Africa.

High seas, blustery winds and foreboding, then torrential squalls follow us throughout the 40-hour crossing from Puntarenas, Costa Rica to Malpelo Island, Colombia. The boat searched for any little lee around this big barren rock to safely offload her pangas before anchoring in the only semi-protected dent on Malpelo's vertical coastline...

You still reading? Good, because if you're an experienced diver with a lust for hammerheads and other giant pelagics, you know it's places like this that the big stuff likes to hang out.

Sea Hunter wants everyone on Nitrox and I'm puzzled why they are so insistent that they will thoroughly certify you on the way out to the islands. That confusion ends after the first of 30 dive briefings that all end with our cheerful divemaster saying, “…and wait for me at 80 feet.” The diving is deep with legendary currents. You don't want to get stuck in the tsunami-style surge at 50 feet. You need all the time you can squeeze out of your computer for what you find down there at 90 and 100 feet. Salivating yet?

My first dive drops me in The Fridge, aptly named for its 8°F thermocline from 82°F. As I sit adjusting the F-stop on my ancient film camera, a manta ray makes a beeline for my bubbles, repeatedly face-planting in great joyous circles, his wingspan at least twice my height. As other divers drop in, a curious juvenile whaleshark cruises by to see what all the ruckus is.

The most popular site is Sahara on the southwest tip of the island. It consists of acres of white sand spread out between three towering pinnacles, with the bottom at about 120 feet. Here the current whips, stops, eddies, reverses and whips again. Amidst it all you are treated to armadas of hammers passing below, squadrons of silky sharks shooting past overhead, eagle rays, marbled rays, mantas and mobula rays. Great roiling balls of chub and jack are so densely packed they appear solid.

My buddy and I were swept away on one of these dives. Luckily we only traveled half a mile or so and were picked up in minutes with the aid of our scuba tubas and transmitters. This is because safety is a top priority on the Sea Hunter. The safety briefing aboard the ship covers both safety on the ship and safety as a diver. Nico, the head Divemaster and videographer, manages this long, serious talk with humor and great visuals. He explains to us in grim detail that if you get bent, injured, or lost out here— the trip is over for everyone. Panama is the nearest recompression chamber and there is no airport or hospital for 400 miles. The crew supplies everyone with a little safety bag containing a light, scuba tuba and whistle. But that is palliative compared to the little yellow transmitter everyone attaches to his or her BCDs. It activates with the flip of a toggle and sends a signal to the main ship, pinpointing exactly where you are within an eight-mile radius. That's a long drift, so it's a very comforting little item to have on your body. Nitrox mix is checked before each dive, the diver signing off on his page in "the book." Tanks are marked with our names and a number that stays with us throughout the trip.

Taking care of the divers on the Sea Hunter doesn't end with a safety lecture, though, it extends into everything the crew does. Pedro and Warren know their galley and seem to read their guests' minds. The first few days (heavy seas, a few green faces) they prepare simple, familiar foods with no frills or surprises. Then, as sea legs are acquired, they pull out all the stops. Wonderful concoctions sate us with native Costa Rican themes as well as American standards from hamburgers to bacon-wrapped filet mignon. Each day we are treated to loads of fresh fruit, vegetables and beautiful salads. (Where does that gorgeous crisp lettuce keep coming from?) Javier makes his job of gracefully servicing the dining area appear effortless. But we all know the guy must have an extra set of hands somewhere and that his legs are gimbaled. Somehow, and I am still in awe, the three of them manage to thoroughly please 18 divers' voracious appetites, while catering to a vegetarian, a lactose intolerant, a seafood allergy and a diabetic. Pedro's whimsical and sometimes-bawdy vegetable-carved animals accent the buffet for visual delight.

All the cabins fit two to three people and have bathrooms big enough so that showering doesn't get the toilet paper wet. There is ample stowage and good reading light. The main salon is large and comfortable with a TV and sound system, snacks and drinks. During the three days of crossings (one to Malpelo, one to Cocos and one back to Costa Rica) most of the guests sprawl out on couches and watch a marathon of DVDs from the ship's library. There is also a small, separate library stocked with ID books and some swapped-out novels. There are two computers for guests to download digital pix and play with Photoshop or to surf the Internet for a fee. The sundeck on top is partially covered and, like lizards, we haul the chaises out and bake in the sun, then scuttle under cover when the rain comes. All over, this is a very comfortable boat with an outstanding crew.

After four days of hair-raising, sphincter snapping dives at Malpelo we look forward to Cocos Island with great anticipation. Same ocean, different politics. Cocos Island is vigilantly protected by park rangers in patrol boats, whose goal is to ensure it is allowed to evolve to its highest potential as a marine sanctuary. The effort shows in the effervescent explosion of wildlife below the water line.

The island itself stands in stunning contrast to its sister. Cocos redefines lush. Every cliff, rock, valley and outcropping is draped in thick green vegetation. It seems the island is splitting at the seams with waterfalls. They gush unabashedly from every available crevasse. Fuzzy white baby boobie chicks dot the lower niches on the rocks.

In five days we dive nine of two dozen sites. Alcyone and Silverado are definite favorites. Alcyone is famous for its hammerhead cleaning stations. You know you've arrived when you see the cloud of sparkling yellow butterfly fish waiting for their next customer. Quietly hugging the barnacle encrusted boulders, it is important to check where your legs are. The moray eels are so plentiful they come out of holes in groups of six, push your fins out of their way then free-swim up to your regulator and tell you to move over, you're blocking traffic…then the hammers show up for their bath. They come in slow and cautiously, then rear back, exposing their bellies as a sign that they won't eat the cleaners— today, anyway. Mouths open, they twitch and shake, rolling from side to side until they can't take the nibbling of these tiny fish anymore and bolt for open water.

Drifting out a bit into the blue, a group of juvenile wahoo, maybe two hundred of them, stream past my face, closing rank behind me, followed by a similar sized group of barracuda. Overhead, the surface is filled as far as I can see with the silhouettes of hammerheads. A mass of small grunts are instantly scattered as a bolt of tuna shoots through them, looking for a quick snack. The rock valleys below are filled level with undulating rivers of yellow snapper.

What more could you ask for? Try Silverado. This unlikely looking place consists of a big rock in about forty feet of water surrounded by sand. We are told to settle on the sand in a semicircle about ten feet from the rock and wait. Sounds like a checkout dive in Cozumel to me. Wait. What am I seeing? Slowly, majestically, five silvertip sharks appear, skirting our bubbles to their favorite haunt—the rock. They range in length from five to ten feet. Taking a moment to be cleaned by resident wrasse they form a muscle-bound, glistening-with-health parade past our adulating eyes. They seem to know we are neither hunters nor prey and so comfortably cruise very, very close to those who seem most likely to have to rinse out their wetsuits later. Collectively we are mesmerized, totally captivated, so slack-jawed that regulators threaten to fall from our mouths. Eduardo, who wants us to hunt for the elusive rosy-lipped batfish, cajoles us from our knees. These little beauties are different than the ones in Galapagos— they have a sprouting of white whiskers around their lipsticked mouths. Very fetching. We find three in 55 feet of water along with nesting puffers, triggers, an acre of garden eels, about a million endemic sea stars, snake eels and box crabs.

There are so many big animals around I have to force myself to look down, in, and around the substrate I'm generally hugging. Most obvious are the numbers of white tips lolling about. Everywhere we dive the flat spaces are afoul with them. Totally inured of us, they will move over to share a ledge but give you stink-eye the whole time. My buddy finds a little cave with four baby white tips stuffed in it. They are each maybe two-feet long. Cute, very cute— but they do grow up to be sharks. Ignoring the white tips, the morays and the long-spine black urchins, I find a wealth of smaller fish. There are a bunch of different blennies, buckets of wrasse (ruining the viz with their incessant mating, as usual), a handful of gobies, a few flounder and the well-disguised scorpion fish. The volcanic rocks are colored with coral cup anemones, many species of crab, a variety of live shells, shrimp, sea cucumbers and other invertebrates that have yet to be discovered.

I didn't shoot all the photos I wanted to. It's impossible to see all there is to see here on one trip. This is a place that needs repeating. This is a place to try every anti-seasickness drug on the market to get to. Now is the time to start getting those dives under your belt, get your Advanced and Nitrox Certificate and get on Sea Hunter's list— by the time you're ready, in a year or so, your name will come up. Don't be caught unprepared for the dive experience of your life.

Best Fishes.

As a postscript, Malpelo Island is under siege from longline and bottom trawling fishermen. By law, they are required to stay eight miles off the island, but there is no one there to enforce the laws. When we arrived, there were six boats working the island less than half a mile away— some were at the small outlying rocks rigging nets. Captain Nelson of our ship shot photos, sent them via email, and called the Colombian authorities. The fishermen knew nothing would happen to them (they face vessel impoundment if caught) for the 30 hours it takes the Columbian Coast Guard to get there, and so blatantly continued their rape of protected waters until the 29th hour. Malpelo would make a glorious jewel in Colombia's crown if it could be enforced as a marine sanctuary and better protected, like Cocos and Galapagos Islands.