They 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!!
Read MoreCaptain 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!
Read MoreWe 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.
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