Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Spiny lobsters, sea turtle, diamond sting rays, silver tip sharks, and more on our checkout dive at Las Cuevas!

Hola amigos!

Yesterday we left Cabo San Lucas at about 4pm, the crossing to the islands was a little rough with some big swell, specially last night, but this morning it was a little calmer, started as a cloudy day but the closer we got to the islands the better the weather was!

So at about 2pm after filling all the tanks, setting weights and getting the cameras ready, we could see the island in the horizon... by 4pm we started the first dive of the trip!

The dive site we picked for our check out dive was “Las Cuevas”, we anchored the boat and set the stern anchor as a descent line and noticed a quite strong current coming from the north, so we did a quick buoyancy check, and descended holding on to the line, at 50ft/15m, visibility was not very good, around 40ft/12m, with a water temperature of 76F/24C. So once at the anchor we used the big boulders to cover us a little from the current and we went into the first swim trough and we found 2 white tip reef sharks laying on the sand, big spiny lobsters and as we were getting out, a big male sea turtle showed up! It kind of tried to get away at first then it stopped and checked us out before realizing it was only silly divers and it swam slowly away. Then 2 groups stayed around that area just picking on the rocks and one other group decided to drift a little south, on our way south we found a lot of life, more white tips on the other swim trough, huge lobsters and on the sandy bottom at about 80ft/24m we found diamond sting rays, giant electric rays, spotted tiger snake eels, 3 juvenile silver tip sharks that would get closer and closer very curiously to check us out, then we hit a little corner just full of creole and trigger fish, and we were going to start our ascent when a huge probably 300lbs. Yellow fin tuna showed up! Shimmering colors and getting close to the schools of fish probably on the look for prey, it was very exciting to watch! We finished by doing a safety stop drifting and back to the Solmar V on the zodiac.

Now we are heading to Socorro island as there was another 2 boats in San Benedicto and one more arriving tonight so we are going to a less crowded area and we are crossing our fingers so we can see as many dolphins as we saw in our last trip at “Cabo Pearce”, so stay tuned to know how the dolphins, mantas and sharks treat us in Socorro island!
Hasta la vista!
Antonio Romero
Dive Instructor

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