Advanced Colombia
Malpelo
A bare rock in the middle of the Pacific, surrounded by hundreds of sharks
It's a bare rock just over a kilometer and a half long in the middle of the Pacific, with no beach, no vegetation, and no fresh water. Below the surface is one of the largest concentrations of sharks you can see anywhere underwater.
In this guide you'll find out what this rock is and why it concentrates so much wildlife, which sharks you'll see and which ones are exceptional, what the conditions are like (and they're tough) when to go, and what's required to get in.
It's a World Heritage wildlife sanctuary, and one of the few places where regular sightings have been documented of a deep-sea shark that's almost never seen alive.
Geography and access
Malpelo is a Colombian rocky island in the eastern Pacific, about five hundred kilometers from the mainland, with no permanent population beyond a small military detachment.
The island is the emerged summit of an underwater mountain range. Around it are pinnacles, caves, and walls that drop into very deep water.
Its isolation and the convergence of currents produce a constant upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water, which sustains an enormous biomass.
It's part of the same marine corridor that connects the oceanic islands of the eastern Pacific, and hammerhead sharks travel between them.
Regular sightings have been documented here of a very distinctive-looking deep-sea shark, with strongly marked gill slits, that is almost never seen alive from a recreational dive anywhere else in the world.
Access is exclusively by liveaboard from Colombia's Pacific coast, with crossings of about thirty hours, and it requires a mandatory sanctuary permit and a strict diver quota.
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