Diving with Giants

Three hundred miles off the coast of Baja, California exists the remnants of an ancient volcano known as Roca Partida. Discovered by Spanish explorers in the early 1600s, this tiny uninhabited island is just a speck in a vast and empty seascape. Its only topside inhabitants are the birds that flock to the area, but beneath the surface it boasts one of the most impressive spectacles of pelagic marine life on the planet.

- Darryl MacDonald

My journey took me from the marina in Cabo San Lucas, on a 30-hour boat ride with a sea that was anything but calm. The excitement of the journey ahead was temporarily dulled by a lack of sleep and a constantly churning stomach. After our first night’s dinner, Eric, our dive guide and inhouse marine biologist, briefed us on what to expect in the coming days and discussed some of his ongoing research in the area.

This buoyed our spirits, and we headed off to sleep with a renewed excitement for what was to come.

The following morning,we boarded the small zodiacs and sped off towards the rock for our first dive. What struck my attention initially was the uniqueness of the underwater landscape. With visibility of several hundred feet, the tiny pinnacle that hardly breached the surface of the ocean continued downward into the blue beyond visibility. There was less coral than I had imagined, with the wall looking like barren rock covered with deep gouges forged along its flanks from millions of years of current and surge.