As early as 7:00 am and we are in the water for the first dive of the day at El Boiler! There was a bit of surge, lots of bi-color parrot fish, yellow trumpet fish, jacks, and we could hear the chirping of dolphins, so we know they're in the area. Layers of a thin horizontal rock are shaping El Boiler and becoming home for octopus, lobsters, and green moray eels! As we make our way to the western side of the dive site we were led by a black manta, before being joined by one dolphin, then five dolphins, a current from the north brought with it lots of fish. We were just admiring the fish when a second giant manta swims over our heads so slowly, and out of the blue more dolphins come into the area! 14 dolphins and 4 mantas were our numbers, we had an amazing time watching mantas, dolphins, divers, fish, white tip sharks all together, the interaction was absolutely great!
We are enjoyed of a so nice and relaxing surface interval in a sunny day, a bit windy under air temp 27.7˚C/82˚F. Underwater we were still enjoying of 27.2˚C/81˚F we go on a second dive so as soon as we dropped down a dolphin was already there to lead our way, giving us time to keep up with it until we arrived at the West side of the rock! Soon after we are surrounded by lots of cotton mouth jacks changing to a darker color, bicolor parrot fish, at a depth of 33m/110ft a black manta swims slowly making contrast against light brown color of the bottom, it didn’t take too long for the manta to come up to our depth, then another 4 coming from different directions! In the mean time dolphins kept chirping and showing up here and there, 36 minutes of dolphins and mantas time together plus 24 more of manta interaction, vis was 24m/80ft approx. Current still from North just a bit, a yellow fin tuna chasing creolfish made them swim as fast as bullets seeking protection among the rock!
The third dive was one of those dives that leaves you asking how can you fit so many thing into a small area! So as we are making our way down to the rock a no more than 4.5m/15ft long whale shark comes straight to us, it was so friendly, slowly swimming, no rush, I guess life is good to it! The massive shark swim off before later returning to stay for a bit longer this time among us in shallow water! From another point in the rock but happening at the same time we had 10 mantas in sight all together, each one from 3.6 to 4.8m/12 to 16ft wing span from 18m/60ft to surface! Below those 18m/60ft of water near the bottom 15 to 20 very robust hammer heads just passing by! And another area which had a really good vis also 8 dolphins came in to join the manta game, at 9m/30ft approx. second ledge of El Boiler is covered with lots of hard coral as well as about 22 white tip reef sharks swimming back and forward on the edge of it, lobsters, Moorish idols, green morays, jacks etc, adorning the rock, after seeing all, the mild current from North made drift some of us, on safety stop we were accompanied by 5 juvenile silver tip sharks.
Our final dive of the day we are on search for more hammer heads, just 4 out the school is what we found at 27m/90ft which was the limit of blue and green water on this dive, which also means water temp just changed from 27.2˚C/81˚F to 23.8˚C/75˚F, in our way back to shallow water of course more mantas to hang out with.
Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata
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