Location: The Canyon divesite, the Boiler divesite, San Benedicto Island, Socorro, Mexico
Finally back to the strange beautiful San Benedicto Island. I think it gets a little bit greener every year that we arrive since my fist visit in 2004. Well, it means that you can trace a bit of growth on it now after hurricane season has passed. We did our warmup dive at the Canyon (not bad for a warmup dive huh!!). On one of the cleaning stations, we got around 20 hammerhead sharks circling, stopping for a while with juvenile hogfish and barberfish coming up to inspect them. A couple of the female hammerhead sharks were a very impressive size. Our bottom time was finished and we crawled back up the lava flow as quietly as possible because we didn’t want to bother these lovely hammerheads. We then repositioned the Nautilus Explorer over to the boiler. First dive was very fishy with one giant manta swimming past us. On the second dive we got a Chevron female manta coming up to play with us as if she was saying hello, welcome back to San Benedicto and Socorro. The last time the day we did a twilight dive off the back of the Nautilus. Nothing more than three silver tipped sharks cruising by and giving us a nice salute. Oh yes, we also had leather bass, several octopus moving around searching for something to catch followed by hogfish, bluefin trevallies and more leather bass trying to take advantage of the octo hunt. Divemaster Sten.
Weather: Sunny, temperature 90 degrees on the surface, light winds with 1 foot waves at the Canyon and a 4 – 5 ft swell at the Boiler.
Water: Visibility up to 90 feet, water temperature 82 degrees.