This July Turtle Island and a group of citizen-science divers embarked to Cocos Island, Costa Rica to explore, dive with, and better understand and protect the marine wildlife that make this ocean paradise their home.

Cocos Island

Photo by Marc Merlin, http://marc.merlins.org.

Our team saw lots and lots of  sharks such as  hammerheads, silver tips and tiger sharks.  The team was able to attach 3 tags, and get 1 tissue sample. This important scientific data will be used to track where the sharks swim and help create a science-based marine protected ‘swimway’ in the Eastern Tropical Pacific that protects the most used migratory routes from industrial fishing.

Dolphins swiming underwater

Photo by Marc Merlin, http://marc.merlins.org

On this trip, our team was fortunate enough to see many tiger sharks, a small whale shark, giant manta rays and mobula rays, and schools of dolphins, tuna and marlin. All in all it was an incredible showing of marine wildlife and a successful trip in terms of collecting new data.

Watch Diver Marc Merlin’s incredible dolphin footage from the trip below and see more of his beautiful photos on his blog here.

Join us on our next scientific diving expedition and become part of the team involved in underwater action to research  sharks, rays, sea turtles, dolphins and whales! Learn more about how you can get involved here or call us at 1-800-859-7283.

Schooling Hammerhead Sharks

Photo by Marc Merlin. http://marc.merlins.org/

(Special thanks to Marc Merlin for sharing his photos and videos with us. Please visit Marc’s blog here to see more incredible shots and footage).