Friday, March 7, 2014

A Very interesting day in the current!

It was 6:30 so early, there was no wind at all, ocean in this area was flat, no swells but cloudy with air temp of 74 ˚F. You can see the clouds reflecting on the surface, almost as if it was going to rain! It felt like time standing still! Humpback whales near the boat were just resting with calf, their bodies rising out of the water more than normal to take a breath it was difficult to see the blow of a calf behind a much larger mom, but it was inspiring!
Setting the back anchor I noticed the water was so blue, with well over 80ft (24m) visibility, water temp 77 ˚F, mild current from East and I had the joy of 3 dolphins!
Now it's time for the real dive! So we start descending in a stronger current from East using the safety of a line down to 60ft (18m) 3 dolphins were already there doing circles, up and downs, swimming right though the divers, posing! Then we went over the rocks, at just the right time as 4 really big hammer heads were there at 100ft (30m) slowly swimming by. We headed south east along the ridge and dolphins were also swimming over our heads, finally we got to the corner of the cleaning station and decided to hang out there hoping to see more hammer heads. There were a few but the dolphins kept coming back distracting us and demanding attention!  They then left us as usual to go chase jacks! It was time to let go so we started to drift west while searching for more things looking toward the bottom, a chevron manta shows up drifting along with us all the way to the safety stop, even after we were out of the water was still making circles just beneath the zodiac.
The second dive was a whole different story, the current changed so fast while diving, now coming from West, our best way to handle this was drift dive! Our surface interval was breathtaking watching whales and calf literally like pop corns, popping up for air right next to the boat!
The current today was back and forth, for the third dive current was again flowing from East, nice! We like it! Our goal was to get to the corner for hammer heads, lots of fish here but not many sharks... there was a silky shark so curious about divers, any way we made the decision to go for the blue water, BINGO!!! They were there! Not 5 or 10 or 20 hammer heads! A whole school of about 60 to 70 of them! Some beneath us making circles, others in front of us just like a wall of sharks, no words to describe that feeling of seeing so many sharks coming back and forth, swimming a bit on the side and turning around in front of you. It was worth the effort of swimming into the blue! 
Some other divers came back to the descend line for a safety stop, happy for them, they got to hang in there with 3 mantas for minutes!
A fourth dive here again and the current decided to make another change in direction once again! Flowing from west this time, at this point we say thanks to mother nature for doing it, knowing that our navigation was heading into the current to get to the other side of EL CAÑON, not too long after we got there 18 hammers heads were there, the same current helped us to get to the anchor line for a safety stop, I mean a way long safety stop! And not a bad way to finish the final dive of the trip was with 2 chevron mantas in the safety stop plus 4 silky sharks swimming repeatedly right through the divers. A Very interesting day in the current!
Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata   

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