Hola everyone! April 23, 2015
More extremely playful mantas and dolphins today!
This morning started a bit chilly, with high clouds and an external air temp of 24˚C/75˚F and we are all very excited about our final day of diving at El Boiler on this trip!
From the surface we can see the bottom at 36m/120ft, and once in the water, right away mantas were visible. They were out in the distance a bit, we know they sometimes need time to get used to divers, and as the minutes went by we found ourselves 20m/66ft deep on the west side of the rock amazed by the amount of fish in mid water and the great visibility. Big eye jacks for the most part, but everything was so quiet! It is such a unique experience to be part of the underwater world for just minutes surrounded by only fish, and as we noticed jacks started to leave the rock, the mantas were coming closer and closer. We could hear the chirping sound of dolphins and noticed that it was different this morning, because were chasing other fish! So we go more into the blue keeping our eyes open, and we found the school of jacks along with the dolphins rapidly chasing the jacks. The dolphins were not alone, a black tip shark also noticed the activity, so we had a shark chasing the other two! We could tell the shark was really excited, swimming fast with pectoral fins pointing down! Among the dolphins there was one with dorsal fin bent, we were happy to see it, as we haven't seen it in quite a while!
Back from the dolphins and close to the rock mantas were there already awaiting! 4 giant mantas coming from all directions, they were so playful, watching everything from afar everybody was having fun, there was a vertical stream of bubbles, with mantas getting their bubble massages! Minutes and minute of that! FUN FUN!
For the rest of the day we did 3 more dives, and the highlight of each of those dives was the mantas! For most of the dives our lucky number was 4, which means we had 4 mantas... the exception was the last dive where we had 7 mantas together at one point, black ones and chevrons! Water temp did stay the same, vis decreasing a bit towards the end of the day while the mantas interaction was increasing! Today was our second day at El Boiler, an indicator of how good the diving has been. Just below the Solmar V in an area from 24m/80ft to the surface mantas were congregated, they were really coming from all directions, mantas just below divers, mantas just above head of divers enjoying bubbles, a manta sandwich, diver manta diver, at some point it's so much fun that it becomes a scoring points game, make sure your bubbles hit gentle the belly to deliver the joy mantas like! Still in the area an enormous yellow fin tuna that has been terrorizing all fish of El Boiler, every time it passes by all fish retracts to seek protection on the rock, it is easily be 90kg/200Lb, and at the same time such a perfect predator.
Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata, Solmar V.
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