It’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 MoreThey had a great trip to the Revillagigedo Islands (Socorro Island), with lots of giant manta ray sightings and behaviour, some pretty darn good sharking (including our first-ever sighting of 100 plus schooling juvenile silvertip sharks) and good humpback whale behaviour.
Read MoreIt’s the last dive day of this trip and everyone is sad that it’s going to be over shortly. The diving conditions at the Canyon and the Boiler dive sites at San Benedicto Island can be highly variable and Captain Dave reports that the diving has been quieter than usual over the last couple of weeks. It’s still “very good” with large biomasses of fish, silvertip, Galapagos, silky and hammerhead sharks and, of course, our friendly giant manta rays.
Read MoreJust to top things off, four giant manta rays came into to the rock and spent “quality time” with our divers, gliding by close enough to touch. Interestingly, there were very few silky sharks, and divemasters Sten, Tricia and A.J. speculate that the silkies may have been intimidated by all the other sharks. Diving the Revillagigedos (Socorro Island) is not always hot but man, when it’s on, it is RED HOT DIVING!!
Read MoreA group of guests also went out in a skiff to get a closer look at four adult humpback whales and one juvenile and were rewarded with 15 minutes of dramatic tail lobs (smacking their tails on the ocean surface). While tail lobs can be a “back off” message directed at humans, or a “let’s get together guys and stay close,” it seemed much more likely that there was some male to male competitive behaviour going on here. ‘Tis the season at Socorro Island for humpback whales to mate and breed!!
Read MoreThey started the day out at the Canyon dive site at San Benedicto Island, and on the first dive, two guests took some fantastic images of an adult female humpback whale and her calf. Divers also saw five Silvertip sharks at the main cleaning station. One closed circuit rebreather diver had the fantastic good fortune of sighting something that none of us had ever seen before – a verified school of approximately 100 juvenile Silvertip sharks. Incredible!!
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