Lots of action at Socorro Island!

Hi All! Jan. 09, 2015
A new day to go diving, everybody was excited listening to dive briefing about what Cabo Pearce, it's just like really listening to your favorite class! The sunrise happened very quickly, and by the time we were in the water we had plenty of light. During the whole day we enjoyed of 25˚C/77˚F, visibility was constantly changing from 10m to 25m/33ft to 80ft due to very strong current coming from South. As usual we set our stern anchor to make more comfortable the descent, right in the same area 12m/40ft deep there was an octopus changing color to blend in, which they do very well, after a minute it decided not to be shy any more, and continued to crawl on the rocks, slowly covering the area, using it's tentacles to feel what is there to move on. Nearby, spiny lobster detected anything approaching with it's antennas, flounders were also part of the show here, amazing who they can change colors as they go by areas in different colors like brown, purple, white, black etc.  Anyway the manta cleaning station was not very active this morning so we took advantage of the current to find hammerheads on the northern edge of the dive site.  There was only one first, but it was just a matter of waiting before another five showed up! Vis. wasn’t that great by this edge but good enough to see them for a short time, and watch how they swim on the side then turning making a big circle to come back in front of us! Then 2 mantas showed up as well, not so friendly for the moment, it seemed they needed time as well, not too long after however they were just like our best friends! Current still kicking hard so our safety stop was fun hanging onto the rope.
Our surface interval is always exciting doing panga rides by Jeronimo with his friendly grumpy face making every customer laugh, explaining about birds, lava formations etc.
On our second dive the rule was let see what we see not fighting the current! So everybody agreed with a, "Yeaaaaaa! Good idea! And here we go!" We were hiding sort of behind a rock at 14m/50ft deep, nice no current, enjoying the company of 3 friendly mantas, we wish we could be like them in the current, they don’t move a wing, they are stationary above our heads and the current doesn’t blow them away! So while some enjoyed the manta action, others decided to go around the rock a bit into the current on the south edge to hold onto it, how lucky we were by getting there on time to see 2 different schools of hammer heads counting more than 80 sharks! The good thing is the current took all the bubbles on the other direction so we had a clear view of all sharks, a plus was to have them swimming over our heads, I counted myself 1 minute 30 seconds until they all were gone into the blue, of course on the way back to the anchor we had the playful mantas again!
On our third and fourth dives we finally had a break on the current, zero of it! Knowing about the hammer heads on previous dive we all decided to go find them, it was easy to navigate along the reef, the mantas were not in the cleaning stations they were here half way to the end of it making wide circles over the rocks, we also found lots of Pacific creole fish, lobsters, green moray eels, white tip sharks, that by the way also know where there is no current to lay on the bottom to not get blown away! A huge Diamond head sting ray had a perfect circular bite on the back side of the wing, I guess we know what it means shark bite! Vis. in this area was just great, we are at 24m/80ft deep and we see the bottom like if it was so close but it is not. To get down there is 50m/160ft of water! Hammer heads here and there, not as many during our afternoon dives, but we had more mantas that were as playful as always, and I can say a good way to finish a day of diving was with the encounter we had with a tiger shark! Not so close but the stripes were there!
    Dive Inst
    Daniel Zapata, Solmar V.