Monday, May 1, 2017

April 23 - May 1st, 2017 #TripReport

April 30th, 2017

Las Cuevitas in San Benedicto Island was a very pleasant check out dive. We passed trough the two little caves and we saw lots of tropical fish and lots of stingrays. The next day we dove at El Cañon. Here we saw a big galapagos shark, few hammerheads, many white tip sharks, 3 wonderful chevron mantas, and 8 bottlenose dolphins were swimming around!

The next two days we dove at Cabo Pearce in Socorro Island and was incredibly amazing to watch the chevron mantas arriving to the cleaning stations to be covered by clarion angel fish. A black manta was swimming around the groups of divers the entire dive. A group saw bottle-nose dolphins, and we found lots of white tips sharks swimming around. Within the reef we had lots of barber fish , flounders, moray eels, octopuses, and more! What a beautiful reef!! The conditions were perfect. The water temperature was 75 ºF / 23 ºC to 80 fº / 24 ª C. The visibility was 100 ft / 30 m. We saw 4 different mantas and a big tiger shark of 12 Ft / 4m.

We left Socorro behind and we head to Roca Partida. This isolated volcanic island offered us an unforgettable experience. We saw a gorgeous galapagos shark circling the western wall and a chevron manta. Also many white tips sharks at the ledges in the shallow zone 45 ft / 14 m and during the day was fascinating to watch 4 to 5 mantas on every dive, interacting with the divers. Black mantas and chevron mantas circling around, up and down! The hammerhead sharks showed up right in front of us: 3 here, 2 coming from the depth and finally a big school of them of no less than 50 sharks. When we thought that nothing else was possible to find after that, a big, huge bait ball of bonitas was at the deepest area 100 ft /30 m, creating a fake bottom of fish moving everywhere, and the silky sharks were circling around, and in between the bait ball. One of the groups on the way back to the Solmar V after the dive found a beautiful, huge whaleshark swimming at the surface. They entered the water to snorkeling with it, to find out that it was a pregnant female carrying a fat belly!!

To finish our trip we went back to San Benedicto Island with the expectation to dive at The Boiler, wonderful reef, highly recognized as the better places in the world to interact with the Pacific Giant Manta. The dives were mind blowing!! Absolutely amazing!! Mantas everywhere! Bottle-nose dolphins playing with us, 6 of them very curious and playful. We saw big yellowfin tunas in schools, bigeye jacks, pacific creole fish, amberjacks in big schools, wahoos and in between all this explosion of life, 1 black manta and 5 chevron mantas circling around the area in all directions, coming straight to the divers and swimming to the surface to come back to them to enjoy their bubbles at the belly!! Another great trip to the Revillagigedo Archipelago! This is paradise!

See you soon!
Ignacio Hernan Leyro
Scuba instructor

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