First of all happy new year to everybody!
Now we are back at San Benedicto Island, after diving Cabo Pearce yesterday we went trough the navy inspection and after dinner we started the crossing which was very very smooth. This morning we woke up anchored at “El Cañón”, we were planning to dive “El Boiler”, but since there was another boat there then we decided to dive “El Cañón” first.
Conditions looked very good for diving, the ocean was completely flat, water temperature of 79F/26C, outside temperature was 73F/23C, and we were all ready to start the 2015 with some great dives!
On our first dive of 2015 we had a visibility of about 50ft/15m and a mild current coming from the south, so we swam out to the south corner of the site looking for hammerheads, as soon as we got there we had 2 hammer heads swimming right above the cleaning station so we layed on the rocks and watched the show. After a short show we started swimming east, as the current was changing, and after looking at a school of jacks, we decided to go into the blue, where we found more hammer heads! Not a big school this time, but 2 or 3 at a time that would come and dance around before disappearing into the blue once again, also a bottled nose dolphin stopped by to say hi! It was down very deep and then suddenly swam up, passed in between divers, went straight to the surface to catch a breath and then it was gone!
For our second dive at “El Cañon” we had better luck, this time current was coming from the east, so we swam to the east cleaning station and as soon as we got there we had 8 hammer heads! As they saw us they slowly went into the blue, so we held on to the rocks, waited patiently until they came back! 3 or 4 at a time until we had a group of 7 right in front of us! They were swimming in circles and posing for the cameras, it was awesome and this went on for about 15 minutes! Then we swam back towards the ascent line, and right there by the anchor we found a chevron manta! It swam slowly under us before swimming away.
For our third and fourth dive we moved to “El Boiler” looking for some manta action and...we got it! First dive there we had 6 mantas, 4 chevron and 2 black ones that kept us very entertained, 3 of them were on the west side and 3 on the east side of the dive site, where they kept coming back to the divers for their bubble bath, mantas were everywhere! They were deep, shallow, anywhere you looked there was one, and this show went on for the entire dive!!! Then on our last dive of the day we had only 3 chevron mantas, but again along with some huge yellow fin tunas they put on a great show for us, mantas would come and play with the divers, while the tunas were slowly swimming around checking the fish and suddenly they will swim really really fast trying to get one, it is amazing to listen at all of that fish moving so quick underwater!
Now we are going to spend the night here at “El Boiler” and tomorrow we have more dives before we head back home. Stay tuned and Dive master Nacho will let you know how our last day of diving on this trip went!
Antonio Romero
Dive Instructor
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