It is vacation time for me as I head to the boat at the end of my rotation. It is goodbye for now to Revillagigedo. I will miss the diving and sharing a bond with the magnificent sea creatures but while I am gone, there are so many beautiful memories to hold on to. I will be back soon, doing what I am best at – diving into the ocean depths for sea animals.
On the last day of my rotation, I completed two incredible dives.
First Dive off the Boiler
My group dropped on the south side and went deep in search of a tiger shark, but instead, we found one large Galapagos shark and a small group of about 5 or 6 hammerheads. Then we swung around the east side of the rock to the sheltered northeast side (the current was running southwest to the northeast today) and hung out between the Boiler and the Mini Boiler.
Soon, we came across three beautiful mantas putting up a show. Two chevron females were swooping and diving around all the divers while they followed each other about. There was also a more elusive black female who made a couple of close passes but was mostly content doing her own thing out in the blue.
Second Dive off the Canyon
The Canyon has always been one of my favorite spots for diving. Today, my group dropped by the cleaning station to maximize our time there, and we were able to enjoy the place to ourselves for about 10 minutes before the other two groups arrived. There was hectic activity at the cleaning station, which is generally not there on the late second dive of the day.
We found this cleaning station quite fascinating now. Many Galapagos and Silvertip sharks were making passes and my divers did an excellent job of staying down-current from the cleaning station so that our bubbles would not interfere with the sharks coming to be cleaned there. As we were hanging out on the wall on the east side of the cleaning station, maintaining a low profile, we were surprised to see a large group of perhaps two dozen hammerheads come very close to us! Several passed through the cleaning station but they swirled off into the ocean depths pretty quickly.
We continued to watch the Galapagos and Silvertip sharks come for cleaning for a short while but another group came on the other side so we decided it was time to leave.
We were about to start heading to manta rock when suddenly those hammerheads were back again! This time we came off the wall a bit, swimming north (in the same direction the hammerheads were traveling). We managed to mingle with them for a couple of glorious minutes, always making it a point to try to swim with them and not towards them. When they swirled back south again and went off into the blue it was time for us to come up as we were nearly out of bottom time!
We made our way to manta rock and then to ¨the chimney” for our safety stop, watching the reef fish there. One Moorish idol was very entertaining, chasing another one aggressively around the chimney and making us all wonder what the problem was as it harbored no hostility toward the three or four other Moorish idols also in the vicinity. After these two incredible dives, I am headed for a break but will come back soon to be among the sea creatures I so love.
