Location: The Canyon and The Boiler, San Benedicto Island, Socorro, Baja California, Mexico
Back again in to the Canyon divesite at San Benedicto Island and our checkout dive started with watching hammerhead sharks at the cleaning station. We had several sightings of small groups of 3-5 hammerhead sharks slowly swimming around in circles. Under the Nautilus Explorer on our swim back, a black giant pacific manta passed by. Some of the scuba divers where even luckier and had a good encounter with two mantas. We moved from the Canyon to the Boiler for our last two dives and we were lucky . We had 5 different individual mantas and they were really good players. We are noticing that if you are a group of divers , the best way to have the manta with us is to stop and gather closer to each other so if it is a player she will stay many times until you are back at the surface. A normal reaction is to follow the manta and the only thing you do is to push her out in to the blue. But if you slightly give her space, or even swim away a bit from her she probably will come after you and turn to you. If you slow down and stop she can do the same. She stops as well and she start to slowly sink on top of you as she is negative..If you lift up your eyes and let the light shine in to your eyes and open them up, she might come up and inspect you eye to eye. You can see her pupil moving side to side inspecting you. That’s what we call interaction here in Socorro!! Sten
Surface conditions: Mostly sunny, not much of wind, calm seas 27C
Underwater conditions; Colder this trip, 74-75 F 23-24C. Viz not so clear but 40-50ft, mild current.
