Location: Canyon and The Boiler dive sites, San Benedicto Island, Socorro, Revillagigedo’s, Mexico
Finally on Day 4 of this trip we got our giant mantas! You never know when the big animals are going to show up on these trips. Sometimes it’s right at the beginning. And sometimes it’s not until the last 2 days. It’s not Disneyland and that is part of the magic. The mantas come up at us after the second dive and started to pose infront of us just direct of the back of Nautilus Explorer. So it is very comfortable scuba diving. For some of us who went out exploring a bit further out we got sourrounded of a big school of yellowfin Tunas swimming round and round of us and like sitting in a giant well formed by tunas and from the bottom of the well a school of scalloped hammerhead sharks came up!! We looked at each others and clapped our hands of excitement. Lots of Wahoos this day.
Then we thought we spotted dolphins..? No I recognise that fin and blow , false killer whales!! mini orca’s!! A group of 7-9 animals caught interest of us and stayed with us for a 10 -15 minutes. They just stayed 1 foot beside the boat and we could smell their breath. We could hear them squeaking and whistling and getting close they made their clicking sound checking us out. Very impressive to see their curiosity on us, 1 baby was with about 2 m long. It really warms your heart seeing them but as well a bit intimidating with a big animals as the about 4-5 m long. The False orcas went and instead 6 silky sharks started to get in closer and they wanted to come back on board
Last dive the swell had picked up a lot a very long but deep swell un usually big for this area , it is affected by a storm that is taking place up the Californian coast. The visibility was so low that we did not even dive the boiler instead we decided to dive in a pocket of better viz beside the nautilus looking at wahoos , Big school of big eyed jacks and Yellowfin Tunas.
The waves where impressive! They crashed in to the west shore of San Benedicto The spots where up to 40 to 50 m high up in the air!!
Next day we went on the Canyon and stayed here the rest of the day. First day gave hammerhead sharks ,but no manta rays. Viz was down cause of the swell so we tried a new kind of diving we done before. We went BLUE!! With a buoy and 3 teams staying tight to the line of the buoy. We had 44 min of nothing more then a few Tunas and Wahoos, and on the 45th minute the giant manta ray that was tagged last trip called Obama a big black manta started to play with us, So it ended great. An other group had hammerheads. Always fun to try different diving . The 3 dive was just great under the Nautilus we had two Giant mantas at the cleaning station and we stayed and played with them the whole dive one was a small chevron female manta that also was tagged last trip and so friendly she totally stopped. And a huge easy 18 ft black manta. It was probably the best dive of the week,/ last dive we had silkies and a couple of hammers, the visibility dropped a lot of the huge swell , letting up silt.
We are expecting heavier swell and Captain Mike has been closely watching and worrying about the weather in the shore office. One of the biggest storms on record for this time of year is pummelling California which makes us to the decision to move up to Baja Peninsula before it get worse and save our crossing to be safe and comfortable and end up diving our last day up in the Sea of Cortez. Not much to do about it then do the best of it! We have worked enough time at sea and with experience of not challenging the mother of sea to much cause she can have temper!! I am personally curiouse of some of the dive sites we are going to tomorrow, they are new for me even living here in La Paz diving Sea of Cortez luckily we have our old time diveguide Pedro Cervantes who lives in San Jose del Cabo since long time. He will show us his back yard tomorrow. So loocking forward to that. Divemaster Sten.
Surface condition: 30 C big huge long swell sunny , no wind
Underwater: 24C to 77F Viz from 60ft to 10 ft A bit of surge close to bottom or underwater obstacles.
Yes, we really were approached in the water by curious false killer whales!! Divemaster Log. January 22, 2010
