Cocos Island Expedition AUG 20-30, 2009: Day 3

By September 1, 2009Sea Turtles

Shark Day—Lots of hammerheads at Big Dos Amigo and Alcyone, but none close enough to tag.  The afternoon dive was at Silverado and two silvertips circled us repeatedly, sometime coming within 3 feet of me, obviously checking me out, as we hung out at their cleaning station.  The larger of the two had a left pectoral fin with a significant bend in it… posiibly a past injury?  A handful of jacks followed them around  rubbing up against them, a similar behavior I have been seeing between rainbow runners and white teip sharks. On the way home, we found a downy brown booby chick floating in the open sea.  Nonie scoped it up and the Park Rangers came later to take it to land. I don’t know its fate…

Meanwhile, the other team tagged its first hammerhead at Dirty Rock and Edwar caught three green turtles, an adult male (missing 1/2 of its right flipper), a female and a juvenile.  We measured, weighed and tagged them, and brought them back to Dirty Rock for release before dinner. When we got there, three more greens were hanging at the surface, but we left them alone… for now.