Humpbacks, hammerheads, mantas, and more on our first full day back at San Benedicto!

March 27, 2014 
                 EL BOILER
Our morning started a bit windy and cloudy, but that did not diminish the excitement when we heard the blow of a whale and dolphins while listening the dive briefing.
Everyone was very excited about our first full day of diving!  The first dive of the morning started off on a good note, just as we were making our descent on the rope, a 9' tiger shark shows up!  The north western point of el Boiler was very nice with lots of jacks, blue water and mild current from the north.  We waited there for the dolphins we heard during the dive briefing, but then a giant manta showed up and we forgot all about the dolphins, it was manta time! We were having fun playing with the manta, then shortly after two more chevron mantas showed up for a long time, along with two dolphins that stopped by just to say hi! We let the current carry us south, one manta followed us and we ran into 5 more dolphins along the way!

Our surface interval was spent watching a group of 6 humpbacks whales within a distance of 250 yards from the boat!  For the second dive vis conditions were changing a lot, water temp remained the same, the front side of the rock was very clear so we spent most of the dive there with 4 to 5 very friendly mantas that stayed with us the entire dive! 2 divers went around the rock just to stretch their legs from minimal swimming while surrounded by mantas, and it was lucky for them because they had a different encounter, they found a humpback! When they came up and told us about it, we could see the excitement in their eyes!
The second surface interval we did a panga ride to try to snorkel with whales, after a while they were successful and got a short period in the water with the gentle giants.
The third dive was spent with 5 different mantas on the west side where the visibility was great, hey were swimming circles in a small area, coming in from everywhere, their interaction with us was very pleasant, and having no current at all allowed us to just hover and take in the experience! They were so comfortable that even stopped swimming in front of us posing and twisting in a weird way, other times no swimming and sinking, it was great! Just to add something else a group of 12 dolphins came back to play, and we also spotted 8 hammerheads in the area! Getting out of the water we felt the sun in our shoulders very toasty, nice to warm up!
It was time to do our fourth dive but a group of 6 humpback were crossing back and forth in front of us inviting us to get a little closer, which we did! Some guests opted to go scuba diving instead of snorkeling with the humpbacks and they spent their dive with more mantas and 4 very curious silky sharks underneath the boat!
Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata.