Location: The Boiler, San Benedicto Island, Socorro/Revillagigedo Archipelago, Mexico
Comments: And so we embark on a different sort of charter to the Socorro/Revillagigedo Archipelago. Our guests on board the Nautilus Explorer are usually recreational scuba divers in search of interaction with some of the friendliest giant manta rays in the world. We typically visit three of the four islands in the Revillagigedo oceanic volcanic archipelago; namely isla San Benedicto, Socorro Island and Roca Partida. We show them the variety of life in these three different oceanic oases in the Pacific Ocean; the sharks, mantas, dolphin, humpbacks, octopus, pelagic fish and eels.
This trip, however, was all about San Benedicto and the giant mantas. We were lucky enough to be able to take Gregory Colbert and his underwater film team from Ashes and Snow to meet, interact and film our mantas with their three freediving models. We left San Jose del Cabo on the morning of the 5th of March and had a calm ride down to San Benedicto where we arrived at 9am on the 6th. Our first priority was to remove the fishing net that was caught on the Boiler and had been found on our last trip. The crew of the Solmar V had done a good job of removing a large part of the net which made our job a lot easier. As we were finishing up a pod of dolphin and two mantas showed up. We like to think that they were thanking us for our work. The first day of the photo shoot was auspicious. Two giant mantas chose to interact with us, one kept coming back to the camera and the divers, turning and swimming loops around us as the film team and freedivers got used to the conditions and the interaction.
–DM Tricia
Weather: air temp 85F, clear, light breeze, low swell
Water: water temp 74F, visibility 70-80 feet
