Today was the first full dive day of the trip and we started diving early in the morning at El Boiler, actually we spent the whole day doing 4 dives there.
The first dive was done at 7:00 am and while we had the briefing, the resident pod of bottlenose dolphins awaited our return, already swimming around the boat as if they were all anxious to hang out with us! Anyways, as soon as we descended along the stern anchor line, these playful dolphins escorted us all the way down to the anchor! We were just about to get into position when 4 Mantas showed up swimming immediately over everybody’s bubbles, while some of the divers hung out with any of these four Mantas, others drifted along the pinnacle with a single dolphin that stayed in the typical vertical position like if she was mimicking us! Wait until you see Adil’s video trip report to see this amazing behavior, he captured it all with his camera for about a 45 min of non stop action with dolphins and mantas that we could see them all at the same time and perfectly thanks to a great visibility of 100’/30m, the water temperature is still around 78F/25C, but his time the current was blowing hard from the South. I think that is why they do this unique behavior every single time they encounter us at any of the dive sites in the Archipelago.
By the second dive the water conditions had dropped drastically, the current had picked up even stronger and brought murky water of about 30’/10 m, even so, the mantas stayed around and we could still see them. This time, they kept hanging out away from the pinnacle. I guess because of the strong current and a very deep and also strong surge. Even the mantas not only us have a hard time trying to keep up within tough water conditions.
By the third dive the current had stopped but the visibility was still limited, however 3 Mantas kept us busy wasting our air due to the huge amount of bubbles that we all divers gave them. The bigeye jacks were piling up this time and close to the pinnacle, which gave us great opportunities to take dozens of pictures.
By the fourth dive, the visibility was still the same as the third dive, and at the beginning of the dive, we didn’t see any mantas at all, so we swam around of the pinnacle looking for some hammerhead sharks, finding only one at a distance. When we did all the way around, 5 mantas were already delivering incredible close up passes to every single diver! That is how El Boiler received us on this first day of the trip.
Tonight we’ll head to Roca Partida, we have to use the chance while the weather is still in good conditions.
Thanks for tuning in, stayed tuned for the next Roca Partida report.
Nos vemos!
Erick Higuera
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