Tiger shark at The Boiler, San Benedicto Island

Anyways, the visibility this morning 80ft plus and our divers had some great hammerhead, silvertip and galapagos shark sightings. Plus good old Lumpy, our tame leather bass with the broken jaw was there as always. I was very tempted to stay for another dive but flexibility is the name of this game and our guests wanted to move on to the Boiler on the west side of San Benedicto Island.

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Variable diving conditions

It’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.

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World class diving at Roca Partida with sharks and mantas

Just 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!!

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One giant manta ray cruising by divers

The outer cleaning station (one of our favourite dives at Socorro Island, first recommended to us by cinematographer Bob Cranston) had very good dive conditions with calm seas and mild current, five scalloped hammerhead sharks and one Galapagos shark. One giant manta ray cruising by didn’t seem interested in interacting with the divers. And, of course, the ever-present silky sharks shadowed the divers, curious but not aggressive.

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Crystal clear visibility at Roca Partida

The really cool thing was that the currents of cold water brought crystal clear visibility with divers able to see the bottom 240 feet below them!! Divers reported the usual groups of white tip reef sharks hanging out in various caves and oblivious to divers around them. Two of the divers saw a 5-foot long silky shark hunting at very high speed with the “lunch fish” been eaten right in from of them. A Galapagos shark came in very close to the divers and the incredible visibility made it possible for them to identify one great hammerhead and two scalloped hammerheads swimming along the bottom!!

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Schooling juvenile silvertip sharks

Captain Dave reports that on their first morning dive at El Canyon at San Benedicto Island, divers saw two hammerhead sharks swimming alongside a school of silvertip sharks. Some of the Silvertips were very small, measuring less than 2.5ft. Meanwhile, one of the hammerheads was huge for a scalloped hammerhead – an estimated 12 feet!

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Amazingly loud humpback whale song

Captain Dave reports that humpback whales were singing so loudly today that guests could hear the song inside the lower deck staterooms on the Nautilus Explorer!!! It was quite something for our guests while on their dive. In-water visibility was down on the east side of Socorro Island, with lots of phytoplankton in the water column. While this made it hard to spot big pelagic animals off the outer cleaning station at Cabo Pearce, the guests were rewarded with a great show of feeding behaviour by the giant manta rays. 

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