We all fell in love with a really tiny baby silky that had to be a newborn, and couldn’t have been more than 20″ in length – AT MOST! He was very, very cute and our guests promptly named him NafNaf. NafNaf was certainly a fearless shark, and he kept on getting in the way of the larger sharks to the point of snatching a piece of fish out of the mouth of one of the big guys! All of our hearts went out to him.
Read MoreI recently noticed that the highest pinnacle at the north end of the ridge sticks up into the current and seems to be somewhat of a “magnet” for giant manta rays – I suspect that it is a cleaning station for mantas. So I dubbed it “manta rock,” and have been encouraging our guests to hang out there as well as the other cleaning station. Everyone has been having very good luck finding giant manta rays there.
Read Moreow! Yet another flat calm day on the open ocean. We’re on our way back to San Benedicto Island after turning the ship around, and it’s even calmer than our last trip. It was rougher in Cabo San Lucas harbour with all the pangas, dive skiffs and jet skis flitting around than it is out here!
Read MoreHad a great run from Roca Partida straight back to Cabo San Lucas. Sometimes it is a rough crossing with 6 – 8ft seas. Most of the time it is pretty nice, with the ship gently pitching up and down and an easy roll from side to side. And sometimes it is flat calm. This crossing was so calm that it was as if we were already tied up to the dock!
Read MoreDave reports that the divers saw 7 silver tip sharks between 5 and 7 feet in length circling at the north end of Roca Partida, along with at least 10 silky sharks and some good-sized Galapagos and hammerhead sharks. One interesting note is that one small silvertip shark apparently chased away 4 larger silky sharks (4 – 5 feet in length) that were hanging around a tag line hanging off the back of the Nautilus Explorer. Not sure on the dominance behaviour of silky and silvertip sharks, but that strikes me as highly irregular behaviour.
Read MoreWe have never seen so many yellowfin tuna in one place. They all seem to be 100 pounds or more, which is a very big tuna! The action got especially hot off the back of the Nautilus Explorer yesterday afternoon as the tuna and wahoo literally exploded out of the water in giant leaps as they chased down their prey. It is quite something to see a 100-pound tuna jump out of the water 200 feet away from the ship.
Read MoreIt was a sunny, hot and cloudless day. The visibility was great, we could hear the humpback whales singing underwater, dolphins were interacting with us, we saw lots of really cute juvenile silky sharks as well as white tip reef sharks hiding in caves in the coral gardens, turtles, loads of fish, aggressive Socorro lobsters, schooling wahoo and, of course, giant manta rays.
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