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Plunging through the hazy layer of surface water, beyond a sharpy defined thermocline, the eyes adjust to the sudden deep blue clarity below, and the trove of Cocos Island’s submerged treasures reveals itself almost casually. Forget the legends of pirate booty on shore; clutching the submerged rock pinnacle at Alcyone, and gazing up and around, one sees far richer gems as the sinuous, ghost-like shapes of three hundred scalloped hammerhead sharks slide sedately and closely overhead.
 Coco Island The swirling ocean around this tantalizing island has become a dive destination par excellence. Off the submerged rocks, on sandy ocean floors and tumbling down sheer walls, unrehearsed marine shows play to an occasional human audience. Marbled rays gyrate their sinuous wings as seductively as a flamenco dancer's petticoats; barber fish attend to their potentially murderous pelagic clients, picking parasites off sharks and other predatory fish in a symbiotic harmony that benefits all. An endemic rosy-lipped bat fish hovers with its clumsy application of garish lipstick looking like a gawky infant caught with mother's cosmetics until those attractive crimson lips snatch out and devour their unsuspecting prey. And just possibly, this life-enriching experience will peak as 50 feet of gentle, lone whale-shark glides by, second after heart stopping second.
Lying some 300 miles from Costa Rica's shores, the Cocos National Park has garnered impressive recognition as a United Nations Heritage Site and Ramsar Convention Wetland of International Importance, reflecting its uncompromising isolation and impressive ecology. The island releases its secrets with whimsical reluctance. Its weather patterns are unpredictable, the current grabbing waters and teasing visibility are not comfortable conditions for novice divers. That said, the experience of Undersea Hunter's dive operation and its meticulous attention to safety, not only attract diving veterans but help boost the confidence of less assured underwater explorers. A week on the live-aboard MV Sea Hunter, or sister vessel MV Undersea Hunter, is to combine superlative hi-tech diving with cruise-ship pampering as dive master and crew guide guests beneath the surface into a stage-packed theater of movement, grace and underwater drama.
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