Saturday, February 13, 2016

"Manta Madness" at San Benedicto!

Hi everybody!
Today we are leaving San Benedicto Island towards Socorro Island after spending a great day of diving at “El Boiler”. Early in the morning we prepared the zodiacs, the diving equipment and all the divers got ready to get in the water hoping to see dolphins and mantas as usually happens in “El Boiler”. Once we set the anchor line and started our descent we had no current but the visibility was a little murky with 30 feet/ 10 meters, some thermoclines at surface and temperature of 23 C/75 F underwater.  For the first dive we got to see lots of mantas on the south side close to the little pinnacle so the divers had a “manta madness” spinning between them, fighting to find their place under them, blowing bubbles and enjoying along the day. Other highlights were the dolphins quite deep close to the sand coming up and down to take some breaths, despite the low visibility it was an unexpected surprise for the divers after sharing their with the mantas, the chasing parrot fishes and the colorful butterfly fishes.
For the second and third dive the visibility got a little better enough to continue with the manta madness all over the dive site especially with two big chevron and a huge black manta that kept coming on and on to the bubbles. For this dive if you want your manta you had to fight for it because the divers wanted to be as close as possible to them!  For the fourth dive the conditions kept pretty much the same with a little change in the current coming from the south, this helped to have more fishes swimming against it and a big school of creole fish gathers under the boat making company to the divers at their safety stop. Two big tunas were hunting on the west side of the pinnacle so you could even hear the noise made when they are chasing the other fishes. We hope the divers had the experience that they were hoping for about “El Boiler” thanks to the lovely mantas that made the day!
Rodrigo Marroquin
Dive instructor
Solmar V

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