Fish Soup

During our dive trip to Cocos Island, we were very fortunate to encounter a bait-ball.
A bait-ball is when the predator fish and dolphins have cordoned off a group of small fishes like Sardines and then began to feed among them, until they are practically all gone. During this bait-ball, the gannet birds will also be feeding among the fishes.

This was quite an amazing encounter, which I have previously experienced during Sardine Run in South Africa but none of my friends who joined on this trip have experienced it before. However, our dive guide was very cautious, as 'officially', we were not supposed to get into the water to dive in this situation but I kept telling him that it is OK that we want to dive there! He reluctantly let us into the water but cautioned us to stay a distance away, so even though we enjoyed the encounter, it was very difficult to get good footages of the actions without being able to get near them.

During this bait-ball feeding, we saw Bottle-nose Dolphins, Silky Sharks, Black Tip Sharks, Galapagos Sharks, Dog Tooth Tunas, Giant Trevally and other predator fishes. A very memorable encounter.