It was a great day filled with plenty of excitement... Now off to Roca Partida

What a beautiful, sunny day here at Isla San Benedicto.

We started the day observing as many as 7 Humpback whales in the area. Throughout the day we watched on as the whales displayed behaviors such as head lobbing, pec slapping, tail slapping, spy hopping, and breaching(our favorite). It was nature at its best.

Our diving started at El Boiler with a strong current from the south, 73 degree (F) temp., and 40 foot visibility. We took it slow on this dive, spotting the many octopus, lobster, and green morays. During We even found two frogfish right next to eachother, which is unheard of in the Revillagigedos. the entire dive, we could feel the sounds of the Humpbacks. Next, we made our way to the east side where we made friends with a large Galapagos shark. This shark allowed us to approach very close as we watched her trace the same track again and again. As we made our way back to the ascent line we saw two mantas, one chevron and one black. They were curious and made a few close passes.

Dive two was similar to the first but this time the mantas hung out for longer. Two chevron mantas took turns getting cleaned by the bright orange clarion angelfish. We had a good interaction. We visited the frogish again and even checked in the Galapagos shark once more. This time we notice more details like the impressive size of this 10 ft. shark and that it was a seemingly pregnant female. It's very rare for us to find Galapagos sharks here in San Benedicto, so we were all very excited. On our way up the ascent line, dolphins swam into the area. A dozen or so Bottlenose dolphins swam in to say hello, or goodbye as it were, as we ended this second dive of the day.

Dive three began with a nearly 20 minute interaction with two mantas, both chevron. The passed back and forth, sometimes taking the time to get cleaned, other times just out of curiosity. Our group got many great photos and video. We joined Dani's group on the West side of the rock as they watched now two 10ft Galapagos sharks. Both were females, but we noticed them circling a specific rock and even stuck their nose under it as if hunting. We stayed their for nearly all of our bottom time enjoying very close passes as they swam "figure eights" in front of us. Eric's group spent this third dive drifting, but in transit they found many birds splashing into the water. A baitball! So they took a look under the water and found many silky sharks and dolphins attacking the sardines. They reported that the fish even tried to take shelter under the panga as the sharks and dolphins continued to plunder the school. It doesn't get any more real than that!

We spent dive 4 at Las Cuevas. Taking it slow for this last dive we checked out the caves and found four whitetip reef sharks there. We checked under boulders and found two green sea turtles, resting no doubt. One critter we don't see on many other dives is the Giant Electric Ray. Not so giant, as it is only a foot or foot and a half in length, we found many of them over the sandy bottom. Dani's group, while playing with an octopus, got a surprise when a tiger shark made a close pass while they all had their eyes on the rocks.
 
It was a great day filled with plenty of excitement. We're off to Roca Partida for some more amazing diving. Until next time...

Dave Valencia