All blogs from Nautilus. Get inspired before your trip.
I think that we sometimes forget the basics of our scuba diving training ie. before ascending always look up, reach up, go up. One of our guests forgot all this on one of his morning dives and was surprised as heck to ascend right into a giant manta ray that was hovering above him. The diver had no idea the manta was there and had the surprise of his life when he bumped head first into 4000 lbs of manta!
Read MoreIt’s always a bit of a funny feeling to be on our little 116ft steel island, surrounded by ocean, without land or any other boats in sight. This is one deserted stretch of ocean and on a number of our transits from Baja California to San Benedicto Island, we have steamed for 24 hours without seeing another vessel. It’s like another world out here.
Read MoreWe are berthed in the harbour of Cabo San Lucas and in the midst of turnaround day. Our guests disembarked at 0900 and we are now hurriedly cleaning, washing, tidying, provisioning, fixing stuff and generally scurrying around getting ready for our next group at 1700. After that, we’ll be sailing off into the sunset for a lovely dinner at sea and overnight run down to Isla San Benedicto.
Read MoreWe had a moderately rough crossing from Isla San Franciscito to Los Islotes (close to Espirito Santo) but were rewarded with an amazing sighting of a baby blue whale. At Los Islotes, we surprised some underwater harvesters fishing illegally. Unfortunately, they took off before we could get a good picture of them. Our divers had a couple of great dives and saw lots of neat stuff including California sea lion pups who came over to play with the divers.
Read MoreWe ventured inside for over a mile and saw amazing upside-down jellyfish and tiny oysters in the mangroves. We also saw osprey, egrets, ibises and herons. We then steamed over to the protected bay at the south side of the small island of San Franciscito where some of our guests went beach walking.
Read MoreOur divers had two great dives and saw lots of sea fans, horn sharks, guitarfish, stingrays and yellowfin tuna. Dave went looking for a blue whale that had been spotted nearby and instead, found a huge school of thousands of mobula rays on the surface, jumping and flapping their wings (pectoral fins) and leaping up to 6 feet out of the water!
Read MoreToday’s dive sites included the wreck of the ferry Salvatierra and Suwammee Reef with its enormous biomass of fish, sea lions and cormorants. This is where Peter Schalwyk, one of our favourite divemasters, shot his famous sequence of a determined cormorant chasing and finally catching a bait fish.
Read More
