Around 7:00 am we spotted Isla Benito off the bow of the Solmar V, the sun was rising behind it turning the sky into intense colors overlooking 3 barren rocky islands!
We explored all over Benito del Centro, where we found an amazing colony of elephant seals just laying out on the beach! Not far from this first spot, we found a gang of 30-40 playful baby elephant seals, sticking their head out of the water to check on us! They were very curious and this seemed like a great place to do a dive! We ended up spending over 50 minutes with these playful pups, they were acting like a very friendly gang of youngsters, coming from every direction, swimming around us, making faces at our cameras, posing head down tail up, sometimes we had as many 20 or more of them right in front of us! These playful graceful pups would swim right at the camera, twisting and spinning around, swimming circles around our divers! They were all so graceful and agile, and boy are the fast! A bit of surge at this shallow dive made for a bit of fun, watching the kelp sway side to side, and an extensively purple hydrocoral bed added some color to our dive! Our first dive was so good we had to come back for another! We ended the day diving at Benito del Oeste, here we did a bit more swimming in comparison with the first dive site! Visibility was extraordinary, with water temp in the mid 70's, no current, and lots of yellowtail jacks, sheep head, kelp bass, cone shells, and some nudibranchs! Swimming through the kep forest is a unique experience although the kelp was not fully grown, and just to remind us that we were still in seal territory, our pinniped friends would pop by and stay Hi to our divers!
Dive Inst.
Daniel Zapata
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