Buenas tardes from Isla San Benedicto. We had a beautiful day both above above water and below. The sun was shining, the sea was calm, and the diving was great. We started our day on El Canon. The temperature is cooling down a bit to 75 degrees (F). The visibility was good at 70' with a slight current coming from the east. As we made our way to the corner, we spotted many green morays and octopus. Once we settled in we waited for the sharks to appear. First were a few singles overhead, then about ten minutes into the dive we saw a nice group of 20-30 schooling. The approached us slowly and made their way above our group and away. The current was quite strong so we watched a while longer while a few more single hammerheads stopped by and made our way back to the boat spotting more eels along the way. Not a bad way to get the day started. Before our second dive, we watched the local pod of 20 dolphins playing on the surface around the boat. A good omen for the dive to come. The temp. remained the same, but the current changed to a more northern flow. We headed to the corner and within a minute of starting the dive, we had dolphins! A group of 8 dolphins swam over to the group and circled us, posed for a few pics and made their way back to the blue. At the corner there were more hammerheads, but this time a bit skittish. The group made our way to the blue and the current changed yet again. It started moving the opposite direction. So we drifted in the blue, spotting a few hammerheads here and there. After 10 minutes of drifting, a huge school of 50 hammerheads filled the blue in fron of us. They made three passes, just long enough for us to appreciate the size of the school.
Dive three was located at El Boiler. A strong current accompamied the 50' visibility. On one side of the rock we were protected and checked out the whitetip sharks sleeping. At closer inspection of the rock, hundreds of lobsters filled each crevice. At the western end, we saw a large school of jacks. But behind the school were two mantas feeding together. They were somersaulting together in the plankton rich water. At the eastern end of the rock, we found a manta at the cleaning station. We watched on as the bright orange Clarion Angelfish jumped on to pick off parasites.
Similar conditions were experienced during dive four. Unfortunately, no manta sightings on this one. In addition to the Tropical Flounder, octopus, Green Morays, and whitetip sharks we did have a good sightins of two hammerheads swim through a aggregation of creolefish. This is our first full day of diving and a great start of a great trip to come.
Saludos.... Dave Valencia
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