Today was en excellent day of diving at El Boiler!

Hello all from Isla San Benedicto! 
Today was an excellent day of diving at El Boiler! We had excellent conditions, they were not too rough, with a  mild current most of the day.  This gave us the chance to move around El Boiler, a beautiful underwater rock formation in gradual steps to the bottom. Near the pinnacle on the northern side, was where we spotted the first manta of the day! We found a chevron giant manta as we approached the pinnacle, and between the pinnacle and the boiler the first Black Manta showed up and was very playful with the chevron manta we found!  The temperature of the water was 77 F/25 C to 79 F / 26 C, visibility was changing during the day, averaging around 80 ft/24m, very nice and clear to play with all the mantas gliding around the cleaning station! At the northern side of the cleaning station we had 3 chevron mantas swimming together doing a spectacular dance in front of us! During our surface interval we had some bottlenose dolphins playing and jumping very close to the Solmar V. The weather at the surface was a little bit cloudy in the morning but the rest  of the day was a sunny warm! When we entered the water for our second dive, we were hoping to get to dive with dolphins.  The current was a little bit stronger this time and the mantas showed up early on this dive! We had a chevron swimming around El Boiler out into the blue and a black one staying a bit shallow, turning around the cleaning station. We turned around the at the end of the Boiler, hoping to find hammerheads, but instead we heard the clicks of the bottle nose Dolphins, and we saw them very close by and heading our way! It was a group of 11 dolphins all together, playing with the divers, making a delightful spectacle, swimming vertically, going up, down, a couple of them were very friendly with our divers and they kept static position opening their mouth like they were smiling all the time!  We followed them back to The Boiler until they disappeared into the blue .When we turn back to the cleaning stations, we saw more mantas both chevron and black ones! We can say that we’ve had 10 Giant Pacific Mantas gliding all over the dive site all day, at depths ranging from  70 Ft /21 m to 30 Ft. /9 m, they even played with our divers during the safety stop! For the last dive, the challenge of an enthusiastic group of Canadian divers was to do a no wetsuit dive! Everybody thought that it could be a chilly dive, but It wasn’t at all. It was a nice feeling of freedom and we reached the bottom depth of 90 Ft. /27 m. in a very short time. We then,swam around around the little pinnacle at the northern point north and once at the Pinnacle we saw lots of tropical fish, like Clarion Angel Fish, moorish idols, gold rimmed surgeon fish, Pacific Creole fish and around the pinnacle we had 4 White tip sharks! The visibility at northern point was very clear and from the pinnacle we had a spectacular view of the Boiler and a nice view of the bottom, with very nice rock formations and sandy patches . We explored the exterior perimeter of El Boiler and swam out into the blue a bit, when a chevron manta came from depth, and disappeared into the blue.  We started returning to El Boiler when a very nice amber Jack school joined us! We headed back northeast one more time and paying attention to the wall of the Boiler and the small marine life it has, moray eels, tropical reef fish, white tips sharks on patrol, beautiful hard coral, and finally it was time to say goodbye to the last manta Chevron we had, and make our way back to the Solmar V along side a a big school of Pacific Creole fish!

Ignacio Hernán Leyro 
Solmar V
Scuba Instructor