Friday, January 8, 2016

Playful dolphins at El Canon and El Boiler of San Benedicto Island!

--Jan 07, 2016.
    Hi All!
Its 6:00 O'clock in the morning, at the distance just above the surface of the ocean a grey line of clouds, leaving the morning sky above us clear and dark still full of stars, Venus, Jupiter, Mars, Orion’s Belt visible to our naked eyes, as we bring our sight back to the surface of the water just 5m/15ft in front of us a group of 5 dolphins were catching our attention, slowly swimming, breaking the surface for more air!
Our first dive of the morning took place at El Cañon we were all excited, hoping to find some Hammer Heads, we jumped into the water, as we made our descent, we noticed the visibility is a bit lower than average due to swells in the area. 2 silky sharks seemed to like hanging below the Solmar V, still lots of fish here, but due to the vis our eyes were wide open hoping something was going to show up right in front like making us jump out of our seat! White tip sharks are faithful to the area no matter what the conditions are, we had no problem finding them, Big Eye Jacks as well, as we go more into the dive a pocket of blue water opened up allowing us better visibility. It seemed we were chasing 2 silver tip sharks just ahead of us that vanished, we were swimming close to the bottom into a mild current coming from West side. Those silver tip showed up once again, that current made a thick line of milky water letting us see the bottom at 90ft/27m, tall rock formations were hiding behind more white tip sharks. There were also leather bass in the area, we were spending time exploring the reef when we suddenly heard dolphins chipring!  The question was where are they due to low vis!? Our dive computers were telling us time to come up shallower so here we go ascending but looking towards the bottom, in a second the milky water opens an other small window of good visibility letting us see a mother dolphin with its new born! They were so close to each other, touching each other, the mother dolphin didn't let the little one swim in front of her! Minutes went by and we were taking all the dolphin action in, the water was a refreshing 77F/25C, one silky shark then a second one came around then 4 dolphins chirping decided to stay at depth, we ended our dive with a silky shark around our safety stop depth! 
We spent other 3 more dives at El Boiler doing Zodiac dives, enjoying a warm sunny day (81F/27C). Underwater the visibility at El Boiler was much better than previous dive site, it only took 10 minutes before we had 5 mantas for the whole dive! A tiny current from South made us work out to stay there, but that’s where mantas wanted to be! They were friendly as always, only one thing could distract us from paying attention to them... there were more dolphins here! The dolphins didn't want to come up shallow water, and the mantas wanted to stay shallow today! So these two amazing creatures made us divide the group in two, dolphin divers and manta divers, not bad right?! The surge was heavy today, but it was fun to ride it back and forward, white tips, lobsters, Jacks, yellow fin tuna, Pacific creole fish and more made our diving day a great one! Our surface intervals were also breath taking watching big rolling waves traveling, breaking into the island making fantastic photo opportunities, a silent way to show the power of Mother Nature.
Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata 
Solmar V.

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