Greetings from Sunny San Benedicto

Greetings from Sunny San Benedicto,

This morning's sunrise was like something out of a dream. The rays of sun whispered from the clouds of a good day to come. It was those rays of light that left us breathless before the start of the day.

We spent our day here at El Canon. It's a site well-known for hammerheads.. However, today proved that this site has other great animals to enjoy. Our first dive had great visibility (80ft+), slight current, all at a brisk 72 degrees (F). No sooner did we get in the water and two mantas showed up. One chevron and one black. They hovered around us and as we kicked to the corner, not only did they follow us, they called their friends. Five mantas danced around us for the entire dive. All in this huge cloud of baitfish. As the mantas moved in, the baitfish moved away, everything in constant movement and equal action and reaction. It was nice. Everyone had an opportunity to enjoy the playful side of San Benedicto mantas. We spotted several hammerheads in the blue but they were keeping their distance. We were all preoccupied with the mantas anyway. The mantas even followed us to our safety stop as we drifted from the site. We even had a visit from two silky sharks as they circled us and we ended our dive.

Dive two had a few surprises. As we waited on the corner for the hammerheads a manta stopped by but was not interacting so much. So we abandoned it for a look into the blue and a chance to see some more hammerheads. As we moved about the creolefish looking, we spotted a hammerhead here and there and we did see a school of 10 or so below us a depth. We started making our way back to the reef and as we were checking out a tightly packed school of jacks a 10ft. A Tiger shark appeared out of nowhere. As soon as we saw him he stuck his tail between his fins and high-tailed it out of there. Unfortunately for us he was a bit skittish.

On dive three and four we enjoyed multiple mantas and the many other animals El Canon provides us: green morays, octopus, scorpion fish. This visbility provided nice light for those photographers in the group and it was a relaxing way to the end the day.

Tomorrow is our last day of diving and well be heading to El Boiler for some more manta action.

Until next time....

Dave Valencia