El Boiler, the manta place!

El Boiler, the manta place!

We had a little bit of wind in the morning, along with a cooler air temperature of 74F. There was some swell at the surface, but once we got underwater that was another story! As we mse our descent down the line, we didn't have to wait long for a manta to show up! It seems that they like the eastern side of el Boiler since it was the place where we found them several times getting cleaned by clarion angelfish! A friendly black manta about 12' long was the first to make an appearance! A second black manta showed up but only for a couple minutes, but the first one stayed with us the entire dive! Lobsters could be found in just about every crevice and a bit of current brought over a school of striped bonitos making a big circle near the surface. We got so close to the school we could feel the water moving around us! Halfway into the dive there was something I heard that wasn't the whale song, it was dolphins! Two showed up followed by another 6 playful dolphins came together at about 60' of water, and since we could hear them coming, we had our cameras ready! In the background behind the dolphins were half a dozen hammerhead sharks in shallow water along with a chevron manta! It was 61 minutes of whale singing, with loud vocalizations of varying length. They sounded close, and once we got out of the water we found out that they were less than 400' away!

For our second and third dives, current from the north lowered the visibility, but we had more manta and dolphin action! Water temp was as low as 73F below thermocline.
Our final dive of the day was amazing from beginning to end, 3 giant mantas stayed for the entire hour long dive, two chevrons and one black one!

Dive Inst.

Daniel Zapata