Socorro

We spent a week on the Socorro Aggressor, final trip before it went into dry dock.  The final few trips of the season were cancelled due to the issues the boat had during our trip.  

Boat conditions aside.

The crossing to Socorro was long and very rough.  Due to the number of boats in the area, we lost out on 1-2 dives per day.  While there, strong north winds, which blew ash into the waters, very cloudy.  Most dives were between 75-90 foot.  

We got to see what we came for though, a few hammerheads, a whale shark and several manta rays.  Overall, for the time and money spent for this trip, I would recommend alternatives such as the Maldives or Galapagos.  

do you attribute the missed dives primarily to boat crowding, or to the unfavorable weather?  

It does seem as though there are more liveaboards for this area now than ever before.  Galapagos spreads it out by forcing boats to specific itinerary, but at cost of flexibility to deal with conditions.  

Unfortunately they now have 9 dive boats that go there (Recently, three new ones from one owner). One of the boats can actually can have up to 30 passengers. When I was there in January 2018 the weather was great and we spend some time at Roca Partida. The diving was fantastic, except for the fact there were way too many divers in the water at the same time. There is suppose to only be 1 boat at a dive site at a time and a maximum of 3 boats at Roca Partida. These rules didn't seem to apply any more. I wish they would have kept the number of boats to 4 or 5 and not ruined the experience.

That's sad.This was a great trip a few years ago.