Saturday, May 31, 2014

Back in La Paz bay, we found more whale sharks, and explored a dive site called Swany Rock!

Everybody enjoyed snorkeling with the whale sharks so much that we came back for more today!  We spent the night in La Paz bay and at 7am we started looking for them, no luck for almost an hour so we decided to put the pangas in the water to spread the search and...WE FOUND THEM AGAIN! 2 whale sharks were feeding in the area so once again we got the divers in the pangas and off we went in 2 groups. Jeronimo and Luis,our panga drivers, put us on the right spots several times, we had so much fun swimming with them and joking on the pangas while we rested to get back in the water with them. We had a blast! After that we had lunch and our captain Gerardo took us to the Salvatierra Wreck were we planned to do 2 more dives, unfourtunately the current was too strong and visibility was not great so we decided to move to the Swany Rock, where we did our 2 afternoon dives,the water was nice and calm at the surface, water temperature of 79F/27C and a visibility of about 40ft. All of our divers went off on buddy teams to explore the rock, where they found huge schools of mackerel cads, sea lions chasing them, schools of yellow tail snappers, grunts, nudibranchs, octopus, panamic green morays, zebra morays, jewel morays, stingrays and even a stargazer!...now after a delicious dinner prepared for our chef Tony we are navigating back to Cabo Pulmo, where we will do our 2 last dives of the trip!

Antonio
Dive master onboard

Friday, May 30, 2014

Sea lions and sea horses at Los Islotes!

Today we dove in "Los Islotes", where the sea lion colony is. We did four dives, two in the morning and two after lunch. The water temperature was 75F and the visibility 40ft/12m. The sea lions were very playful, swimming around us our guests had many opportunities to get good photos of them! On the reef we saw different types of nudibranchs, some sting rays, scorpion fish and we found seven sea horses, six of them were brown color and one red. Another good day of diving in the Sea of Cortez onboard the Solmar V!
Pablo DM onboard

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

On our 2nd day in La Paz, it took only about 5 minutes to find whale sharks!

Second day in La Paz area and this morning we decided to go snorkeling instead of diving... wait, snorkeling instead of diving?! YES! We went into La Paz bay to look for whale sharks, as we know they congregate in that area, we knew it was kind of late in the whale shark season but still we had the adventurous spirit to go look for them and it only took about 5 minutes to find them!  We put the pangas in the warm water, (actually was very warm 79F/27C) and divided our divers in 2 groups to go snorkeling with these gigantic animals. Our panga drivers Jeronimo and Luis put us several times in the perfect spots so we could get very nice pictures and video, most of the whale sharks were juveniles, about 7m/21ft, but we did find a couple of adults, that were a little bit bigger and much more relaxed to pose for the cameras. When we got back to the boat after 3 hours of snorkeling with these great animals, all you could see on the boat where smiles!
For the afternoon we decided to go wreck diving, so we moved at lunch time to the Espiritu Santo Island were we anchored at the Fang Ming wreck, a Chinese boat confiscated by the Mexican navy and sunk to create an artificial reef. It sits on a sandy bottom in 70ft/21m of water and it rises all the way to 45ft/13m, so shallow enough to do 2 nice 1 hour dives. The water was 77F/25C with no current at all, what made it easy to go and explore all around the wreck. While exploring it we found moray eels, a lot of sea fans, schools of snappers and grunts around it and also a green sea turtle that posed for the cameras!

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Sea of Cortes day 2!

Today we dove in "La Reinita", three miles north of the Cerralvo Island. We did two dives there, the water temperature was 78F/26C and the visibility 40ft/12m. The dive site is a lighthouse that goes to 100 feet, at 80 feet we had the shipwreck and in shallow water, around 40 feet, we saw the sea lions playing around and the schools of fishes. Also in one of the corals we found a seahorse, this place was great for macro photographers who like to look for small things like nudibranchs, spider crabs and little reef fishes.
In the afternoon we moved to "Roca Swany", in the Espiritu Santo Island area, where we had the same water temperature but lower visibility, 30 feet/10m. We saw here more sea lions, stingrays, moray eels, scorpion fishes and lots of hard coral!
Pablo DM onboard

Monday, May 26, 2014

Our destination is the Sea of Cortes!

Our destination is the Sea of Cortes!
Today we had an exciting day of sharks here in the Sea of Cortes, and it all started with an amazing sunrise!
Our first dive of the trip was in a place called El Rincon, in the bay of Los Frailes!  As with all trips, we did a checkout dive to fine tune our gear before the big show! This area was abundant in lots of juvenile fish like snappers, parrot fish, puffers, etc, shelter area for all type of juvenile fish, there were some sea lions in the area also barking very loudly, the conditions were great with over 50' visibility, no current and a surface temp of 82˚F/26˚C!
The second dive took place at El Bajo one of the main dive sites here at Cabo Pulmo, starting from north in a very nice and mild current, a good way to find south end of the reef, there was an amazing the congregation of fish in this area, from yellow snappers, groupers, parrot fish, Moorish idols, yellow tail surgeon fish, some Panamic pork fish, golden groupers, garden eels and a big sea turtle showed up too!  The hard coral were very colorful with different tones of green and browns, indicating that they are very healthy. This place invites you to just lay in the bottom and enjoy life, with your camera in hand, and wait for everything to  all come to you for the picture to be taken, we did not want the dive to end! Visibility was 80ft/24m and water temp 82˚F/26˚C, at the end of the dive current changed a bit flowing north so we took the ride back drifting in it for a safety top at the same time we had the opportunity to see the reef from shallow water.
The third dive took place at El Vencedor, it was once a wreck dive although there are pieces all over, so really cannot tell it was a tuna boat any more, but fish uses it as shelter, at only 50ft/15m you can sit on the bottom and wait all fish will surround you! You cannot see out of this circle of fish, the best thing can ever happen to you in this place is to have a close encounter with bull sharks as we did, they like to circle this place, come across the dive area so you really have to keep your eyes open, they just show up next to you before you know it and it is too late to snag a photo!  We had the joy to dive with 9 of these majestic animals in the same frame, then 4, but there are also a lot of groupers in this area that want to get your attention really bad. The wreck lays on sandy bottom which mean lots and lots of garden ells, these things come out of the bottom as much as 2ft, so you are watching them and before you know it bull shark shows up swimming barely touching the bottom and leaving a path of no garden eels, they hide below, then slowly come out again.
Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata

Friday, May 23, 2014

What a day we had back at San Benedicto!

It was our last day of diving on this trip and what a day we had back at San Benedicto! We awoke to a pod of dolphins and a 3 silky sharks around the boat, and getting everyone excited and wanting to get in to the water to get nice pictures and video of them.
We started at "El Canion" for the first 2 dives of the day. We headed down the descent line with a mild east current and a water temperature of 26C/79F, as we hit 24m/80ft we found a little thermocline of about 24C/75F. We were expecting to see the dolphins straight away as we heard them singing as we descended but to our surprise was a Chevron manta the one waiting for us! We spent some time playing around with it as we swam towards the northeast corner of our dive site, on the way we saw a few solo hammerheads getting close to the rocks. Once at the cleaning station juvenile silver tip sharks came by and a few green morays were sticking out of the rocks, not much hammerhead activity until we came back to the area on our second dive! Then we all headed in to the blue in different directions, a group found a school of 11 hammerheads, after waiting patiently the hammerheads came really close to pose for the cameras! The other group was even luckier, as they saw a school of about 40 to 50 hammerheads swimming right bellow them at about 110ft/33m. To finish the first dive as we got closer to the boat dolphins came by chasing jacks all over the site and on both dives we had the silky sharks right under the boat coming by during our safety stop!
Our third and fourth dive we were full of manta activity, we had 2 excellent dives with 6 different mantas, 4 chevron and 2 black mantas, the black ones are usually not as playful as the chevrons but today they kept the show running! Our divers were all very excited and posed with the mantas for pictures and video on both dives, at the end everybody was hanging at the safety stop looking to the mantas like saying "I dont want to go home!". Another great day of diving aboard the Solmar V!
Antonio
DM on board Solmar V

Thursday, May 22, 2014

4-5 mantas playing with our divers on every dive!

We did our dives at Cabo Pearce at Socorro Island, the water conditions were good for the first and second dive, temperature around 77ºF/26ºC and visibility 60 feet/18m with extra current on our last dive of the day. Underwater we found 4 or 5 mantas playing with our bubbles on each dive, white tip sharks, octopuses, flounders and lobsters to take pictures of. On the last dive, because of the increased current, we got to do a drift dive from the panga and simply drift with the current! As usual, the mantas were the main interest of the people, some time we had four at the same time one after the other like a train. All of them were very friendly and came very close to the divers, almost at a hand's reach. Some of the divers stayed in the water for more than an hour because the mantas never left us, until we had to go because no more air in our tanks! The best dive was the last one with one manta circling us for more than 40 minutes going up and down, from one diver to the other and so on until we run out of air again after 70 minutes of diving. Today we had another excellent day of diving in Revillagigedo, now we are heading to San Benedicto for our last day of scuba diving!
Pablo DM onboard

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

We had a blast here at Roca, from the beginning to end of the day we had sharks all over the rock!

We did 3 dives at Roca Partida where we had top notch conditions on each dive!  On our way to the rock from the Solmar V, dolphins were jumping at the northern point, we took this as an omen that we had a good day of diving ahead of us!  Once we hit the water, we made our descent.  At 70' we had 4 adult dolphins accompanying us, as usual they were showing off, swimming circles around our divers, showing their bellys before slowly free falling down deep!  From the beginning to end of the day we had sharks all over the rock!  At one time we had silky sharks chasing hundreds upon hundreds of stripe bonitos at only 50' of water in the north west side of the rock.  We spent time watching how they all move as a whole until they disappeared from our sight!  Right after they did a chevron manta made a brief appearance!  There were lots of adult Galapagos sharks in the area, they are not afraid of our bubbles so they came very close to us at times!
White tips seemed to be interested in one female shark, we saw about 10 of them chasing her all over the southern point.  The southern point is also the same place we spotted a school of hammerheads several times, and during our safety stops the silky sharks kept coming closer and closer! We had a blast here at ROCA everyone was was very happy! 
Dive Inst.
Daniel Zapata

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

A lot of shark action and great conditions at Roca Partida!

After 10hrs of smooth navigation last night we arrived at Roca Partida! We awoke to very nice weather with a very smooth swell, cool breeze and dolphins jumping around the boat! After breakfast we had our briefing before going getting in the pangas at 8am for our first dive of the day! Water today was about 26C/79F at the surface and pretty much all the way down to 70ft /21m where we found a thermocline and slightly colder water. As soon as we descended on the east wall of the rock we spotted a bunch of white tip reef sharks, schooling jacks and a few silky sharks that where hanging around 50ft/15m.  We went a little bit deeper and foudn there was no current, just the usual surge that we always have at the rock.We decided to go around the rock and find out what life was waiting for us. When we got to the south west corner of the rock we found 8 Galapagos sharks, then silver tips came out of the blue and as we swam next to the west wall we kept finding more and more sharks! We decided to stay around the north point for a while as there was a big school of jacks and steel pompanos where you could see the sharks swimming between them which made very good pictures for our divers. Towards the end of the dive after looking at the little caves full of white tip reef sharks we swam in to the blue and we found a school of about 30 hammerheads to finish our dive doing a safety stop looking at a huge school of stripped bonitos being chased by the silky sharks! On our second and third dive of the day we had more sharks showing up pretty much all the way around the rock and solo hammerheads getting pretty close to our divers, at least close enough to catch them on video and enjoy the dance they do as the swim. To close the day we found a pod of 4 dolphins at the end of the third dive, they got pretty close and swam around the divers for a few minutes before they disappeared in to the blue waters. What a first day at Roca Partida!...lets see what the rock has for us tomorrow... 

Antonio 
DM aboard Solmar V

Monday, May 19, 2014

4 to 6 mantas on every dive on our first full day back at San Benedicto!

It was our second day in San Benedicto, yesterday we did the check out dive so today we had a full day of diving!  We started at 7:30 am diving at “El Boiler” where the water temperature was 77ºF/26ºC and the visibility 60ft/18m. As soon as we went down, twelve dolphins were on the pinnacle right where the school of big eye jacks was swimming; also the first Pacific Giant Manta of the day was swimming under the dolphins. We had the dolphins coming and going during the dive, and five mantas chasing our bubbles the 60 minutes the dive lasted, going from one diver to the other. We did four dives today, with more dolphins on the second dive and four to six mantas on every dive. White tip reef sharks hanging out on the reef, octopuses, lobsters, green moray eels and schools of different types of fishes everywhere. Today was a good day of diving; the divers had the opportunity to take pictures or just relax have fun and enjoy their special moment with the mantas following the bubbles we made and the dolphins going around the divers and being playful. Tonight we are heading to our next dive destination “Roca Partida”, so we can take advantage of this nice weather before the wind starts rising. 

Pablo 
DM onboard Solmar V

Sunday, May 18, 2014

We had an easy checkout dive at Las Cuevas!

LAS CUEVAS We had an easy check out dive in a very mild current from north, vis was only 30ft,10m and water temp of 77F, we went all over the place with lots of fish in the area.  We saw lobsters, eels, 6 white tips, a couple of diamond sting rays gliding over the hard coral, we took the time to stay still and observe the hard coral.  The hard coral is actually home for fish cleaners waiting for a guest needing their services, its a mini station where mostly parrot fish hover over this place opening all fins and mouth, a sign of a tasty job that needs to be done! Every body was happy and looking forward to a great day with mantas and dolphins tomorrow morning! 
Dive Inst. 
Daniel Zapata

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

We closed this 11 days trip with non-stop dolphin action!

Today we closed this 11 days trip with the folks from Backscatter with non-stop dolphin action early on all the morning dives at El Cañón! Some dolphins if weren't chasing Bigeye Jacks and were instead playing with every single diver that was in the water. By lunch time, all the dolphins had gone offshore to look for some bait fish to feed on. All the dives were full of pretty good Hammerhead Sharks passes by the cleaning station, by the sand and swimming up the ridge! The Mantas made their appearance to receive their weekly bubble massage, in fact some of the divers had the chance to be pushed towards the sand by a Manta while receiving the sparkling massage. After lunch we all decided to adventure offshore and look for any pelagic action, either baitballs, dolphins, false killer whales or whatever we could find in the open water; this time we weren't that lucky, however the diving in the morning was really great. Tonight we're heading back to Cabo San Lucas to prepare the boat for another amazing adventure onboard the SolmarV. Don't miss Adil's video trip report, stand by! 
Nos vemos en la próxima! 
Erick Higuera



Monday, May 12, 2014

Dolphins, mantas, a whale shark, and more at San Benedicto!

Today we came back from Roca Partida to San Benedicto. We decided to start the diving day at El Boiler, where the dolphins were hanging around. Five or six of them were very playful with the people, and our divers had the opportunity to take a bunch of pictures of them. Also four mantas were there during the dives. Outside El Boiler, a big school of skip jacks were there. In the afternoon we moved to El Canon, where for our surprise a male whale shark were there for more than 25 minutes with the divers! Tomorrow will be our last day of the trip, we will start the day diving in El Canon! For the moment the people are very happy with the dives we had today and now we are having dinner, BBQ outside with a beautiful sunset!
Pablo 
DM onboard Solmar V 



Sunday, May 11, 2014

Sharks, mantas, dolphins, with fish everywhere at Roca Partida!

We finally made it to Roca, after days of wind, Mother Nature gave us a break! We had a short day of diving, but it was very good! The first dive a pod of dolphins welcomed us at the northern point, the current was flowing from North so we spent big part of the dive here, where we saw some sharks, Galapagos, silver tips, white tips with fish everywhere! What really helped us enjoy the dive was the water temperature, still 81F, Visibility was well over 80ft.  We drifted to the southern point where we had a brief encounter with a black manta before ending our dive! The second dive started at the northern point due to the current, so from beginning to end of the dive we had the same manta with sharks in the same area, even white tip sharks were rubbing against manta to get rid of some parasites! The second part of the dive was at the southern point of the rock, hoping to find hammer heads which we did! It is always fun to see them schooling, 60 individuals at 100ft of water so very accessible, of course the started to move also to this point due the current that started to change, For the rest of the day, we started to look for bait balls and took advantage of a nice flat ocean!  We found dolphins in the area, and the visibility out here is amazing, we ended our day with a beautiful sunset over Roca Partida!
Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata.

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Cabo Pearce at Socorro Island was quite amazing once again!

The diving in Cabo Pearce at Socorro Island was quite amazing once again! Jumping in to the water at the first dive and 8-9 Dolphins awaited the first group that jumped in, and guess what, the friendly Dolphin that loves to be pet on her belly was with the resident pod of Socorro! She just presented herself in front of Adil (our onboard videographer) and immediately he knew that different behavior was not the usual, so he extended his hand to reach her belly and there was the connection! She didn't mind at all, everybody in the group took turns and had their chance to pet her, later on the second dive group arrived to the scene and also had their moment with this amazing wild animal encounter too! Later on in the dive the Mantas started showing up to get cleaned by the indigenous Clarion Angelfishes that lined up in formation to swim over every single Manta that approached for their cleaning! On the second dive the visibility had dropped a bit down to 40'/12m about, but the water temperature remained in the 80F/26C, three Mantas were still there getting cleaned and we spent the entire 60 minute dive providing these giant mantas with bubble massages!  By the third dive in the afternoon, the south current had picked pretty strong and brought up murky water by the ridge; we couldn't do much about it, so the plan was to hang out for a while by one of the peaks cleaning stations hoping to see some schools of Hammerhead Sharks. While we drifted in the blue towards the safety stop, 3 Mantas and 1 Dolphin gave a brief but close and good pass. This is how we spent the day at Socorro Island, another unforgettable adventure aboard the Solmar V at the Revillagigedo's! Tonight we're heading towards Roca Partida, the wind has calmed down a bit but good enough to cruise up to the rock. Stayed tuned! Hasta la próxima, Erick Higuera






Friday, May 9, 2014

We spent another day at San Benedicto diving in El Canon!

We spent another day at San Benedicto diving in El Canon, because the windy conditions didn't allow us to move to Socorro Island. We decided to stay here one more day because this dive site is more protected from the wind, and it allowed everyone to dive off the back of the Solmar V. We had good diving conditions, water temperature 77F, visibility more than 60ft/18m and soft current coming from northwest. We opened the pool at 7:30 am with the first divers ready to jump in the water, as soon as they started to go down the dolphins showed up and stayed around the people for a few. Mantas were around also and some hammerhead sharks. The second immersion we still had some dolphins around, a little school of 8 to 10 hammerhead sharks and a big school of jack fishes. On the reef close to the boat, four mantas were hanging out for a long time, they were very friendly swimming towards us chasing our bubbles. The third dive after lunch we had some more manta action, silver tip, silky and hammerhead sharks. For the last dive of the day for those who jumped in, the prize was a school of around 30 hammerhead sharks and one black manta! As you can read today was another fantastic day of scuba diving in Revillagigedo onboard the Solmar V. Now we are heading to Socorro Island expecting to have less wind and waves so we can have some more good dives! 
Pablo 
DM onboard Solmar V








Thursday, May 8, 2014

We had a little bit of everything today, mantas, dolphins, sharks, and lots of reef fish!

We spent our entire day at Socorro Island doing 4 dives at el Canon!  During the first dive of the day wehad the opportunity to play with dolphins, it didn't take long to find them.  We knew they were heading our way because their clicks got louder and louder until they finally found us!  We witnessed some interesting dolphin behaviors throughout the day, giving us a lot of talk about during our surface interval!  We also spotted some hammerheads here and there!  On our second dive the groups split up into two and each went in a different direction!  One group spent the entire hour long dive with up to four mantas, 3 chevron and one black, they were all over the places from 20-80' deep.  The other group spent their time on the south eastern corner of the dive site, where a school of about 30 hammerheads showed up!  Our divers stayed planted and watched as the school of sharks cruised just above our heads!  Those minutes or seconds spent up close with these magnificent creatures is enough to inspire you to attempt everything in your power to protect them, and you can count on us!  In shallow water above the corner we saw a school of well over 200 jacks that occasionally provided us with a bit of shade, during our safety stop we were accompanied by a silky shark and one friendly giant manta!  During the third and fourth dives we found more mantas, we counted 6 different giant mantas throughout the whole day, and on our fourth dive the school of hammerheads showed up one last time, we had everything to please our guests today, mantas, dolphins, sharks, and lots of reef fish! 
Dive Instructor
Daniel Zapata


Wednesday, May 7, 2014

We had playful mantas and dolphins on our first full day at San benedicto!

Hi there! We started the first full dive day of this trip with the folks of Backscatter.com with another 3 great dives at the office of SolmarV in Socorro Islands! The water temperature was around 75F/24C and with over 50' visibility, a bit of current pushed the thermocline towards the surface along with a bit of murky water, however we still had plenty of action! We had the great opportunity to play with 6 friendly and very playful Mantas that never got tired of getting the bubble massage that our 16 amateur and professional photographers provided for them in all the dives. Every single diver had a handful of amazing opportunities to take photos and film these majestic giants. On top of that, during the first two dives the usual pod of 16 Bottlenose Dolphins paraded between our divers. At the end of the second dive two of the friendly mantas together with a pair of Dolphins accompanied the divers up to the surface like not wanting the divers to get out of the water. By the third dive there were only two Mantas, but they spent the entire dive hanging out with everybody. The plan for tomorrow is to begin diving at El Cañón, with the hopes of finding the resident school of Hammerhead Sharks that inhabits the ridge. Stayed tuned for the next SolmarV adventures with the Backscatter group! 
 Hasta la próxima, 
Erick Higuera
 

 

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Sea turtle, white tip sharks, lobsters and reef fishes at our checkout dive at Las Cuevas!

Today monday we arrived at San Benedicto after a nice travel from Cabo San Lucas. We dove at Las Cuevas, for the check out dive. This trip we has sixteen photographers so they were testing their cameras and fine tuning their dive equipment on this first dive. We did a short dive, around 30 minutes and we saw a sea turtle, white tip reef sharks, some lobsters and reef fishes. The water temperature was around 73F and the visibility 40ft. Tomorrow we will dive at El Boiler hopping to see some dolphin and manta action.
Pablo DM onboard

Sunday, May 4, 2014

A phenomenal manta and dolphin filled day at San Benedicto!

Hola everyone!  Have you ever thought about diving with dolphins? We made that dream come true for all our guests today, we had an encounter with 16 to 20 dolphins in the north/north west side of the dive area!  This group of dolphins was exceptionally playful, slow swimmers, posing in front of us, swimming in loops, slowly free falling down deep, just inches away from your fingers, just out of reach! These dolphins were doing all sorts of things, showing us just how playful they can be! We had them in the area for pretty much the entire dive along with with 3 mantas together, 2 chevrons and a black one. This gave our guests the opportunity to get both dolphins and mantas in the same frame, check out Ericks awesome photos!  The dolphins would swim across the mantas path while we were taking pictures and then the mantas would swim in front of the dolphins wanting to feel more bubbles on their belly, at the same time we had another group of divers doing panga snorkeling with  2 families of humpback whales mom and calf, possibly the last ones of the season!  We came back to do a scuba dive after the first scuba dive group, our surprise was to find the same group of dolphins and mantas at only 60ft of water/18m, so playful still, but only for 6 divers, pictures taken non-stop, many of which could be entered in the annual Solmar V photo contest. We had mantas for the entire dive, with dolphins that kept coming back from every direction in small groups of 4 and 5! Water temp also in the mid 70's with 80' visibility! On 2 consecutive dives dolphins and mantas made a great positive impressions to our customers of what the Socorro Islands have to offer.  We did 2 more dives since everything is here at el boiler, the mantas never went away, eventually we had to get out the water since it was time to head back home, many people had mixed emotions, some very happy for the amazing diving on our final day, and some wishing they could stay out here indefinitely, but everyone got enough photos and memories that this will be a trip they will never forget!
Dive Inst Daniel Zapata










 

Friday, May 2, 2014

After the wind calmed down, the sea was like a swimming pool!

After that the wind was blowing for 9 days, it finally it calmed down completely and the sea was like a swimming pool; perfect conditions to be at Roca Partida all day! The water temperature is on the rise all over the archipelago, we had 78F water and no thermocline with over 70' visibility.  All three dives were fun and relaxing around the rock, we could swim couple of laps around of it without any problem, anyway, the Whitetip Reef Sharks were very active patrolling the south point in the haunting mood. Out in the blue a school of Black Jacks indicated the presence of 40-50 Hammerhead Sharks that were still deep, 130'/40m on top of the school we could see them perfectly though! Hundreds of thousands of Pacific Creolefishes cover Roca and once in a while would fricked out and swam all together back to the shelters of the rock escaping of 100 lb Yellowfin Tunas that cruised by. The Galapagos and Silvertips were also active but still down deep, only on the first dive di we get lucky and see them at 100/30m in the North point. That is how we spend our day at Roca, tonight after dinner we'll go back to San Benedicto looking forwad to diving at EL Boiler, meanwhile while the sunset, Jeronimo arranged a panga ride by the rock to take incredible pictures of this amazing pinnacle in the middle of nowhere. Stayed tuned for the next SolmarV adventures! Erick Higuera








Thursday, May 1, 2014

A fantastic second day at Socorro Island!

Dive Report April 29, 2014
Today Thursday was our second day at Socorro Island. We dove in “Cabo Pearce” again because of the weather conditions in the area and the good diving we had the day before. The water was nice today too, the visibility over 40ft/12m and the temperature 78ºF/26ºC. Only on the fourth dive did we experienced strong current, on the first three we had the chance to move around the reef.
It was an amazing day of diving because we saw two and some times three mantas at the cleaning stations getting pampered by the Clarion angel fish. In one moment more than 30 fishes approached to the manta to clean her, it was something really nice to see.
In one of the immersions, some divers swam out in to the blue and they had an encounter with friendly dolphins, more than ten dolphins were there. The best part was when one female dolphin stayed with the divers and they had the chance to rub her belly! She was there for long time so the dive master took pictures of the people petting her.  
On our last dive, we had more mantas, dolphins, Galapagos and white tip sharks were around for us, but not only big animals; we saw also octopuses, lobsters, flounders and lots of colorful fishes that made us all happy and glad to be in Revillagigedo Archipelago! Today we had another fantastic day of diving onboard the Solmar V, and now we are heading to “Roca Partida” after a delicious dinner made by our world famous chef Tony…
Pablo DM onboard
Solmar V