Beautiful conditions at San Benedicto

We made it!!! We arrived here at Isla San Benedicto just a few hours ago to a setting sun and beautiful conditions that made our day. Everyone had been anxiously awaiting to get in the water and we made a good dive here at El Fondeadero. Visibility was not bad at 30 ft. (10m), but there was lots to see. Starting the dive with sightings of white tip sharks along with eels and octopus in cracks. We even got to see two giant pacific electric rays, which aren`t very "giant" by the way. We finished the dive with a black manta swimming circles right next to the ascent line. We played for awhile and made our safety stop while the manta came back again and again. That`s the way we like to start our trips and we are anxiously awaiting more to come. Now for a barbeque on the bow....

Until Next Time,

Dave Valencia

Hammerheads and dolphins at San Benedicto!

Hola todos

We spent our very last day of our new years trip at San Benedicto island.  In the morning we did two dives at el Boiler where we found a BIG school of hammerheads, silky, and silver tip sharks.  
In the morning we did 2 dives at El Boiler, and we could enjoy a big school of Hammerheads, Silky and silver tips sharks. Of course, the dolphins came to join us in the dive, giving our divers the chance to get some great close interaction with them!

Water was 77F with 90'+ visibility and very mild current. 

We moved sites to el Canon for our afternoon dives, and we had a great time with several groups of hammerhead sharks that made very close passes by our divers!.  Visibility was slightly lower than at el Canon, which made it even more exciting when a hammerhead would appear!  It might have even been a bit surprising for them too! This was the last day of our new year's trips, now heading back to Cabo San Lucas, and we can not wait for the next great Socorro adventures!
Ricardo Tamaño
Dive Instructor

Dolphins and Mantas at Socorro Island!

Hola todos!
Today we spent our day of diving at Socorro Island. While we were waiting for the Mexican Navy inspection a clearance, we had a family of really acrobatic dolphins jumping and flipping in the air, just a few feet away from our diving platform, so close that we could get wet from the splash they were making on their jumps!

After the formalities of the inspection, we went for our very first dive of the day at 11 am to Punta Tosca, where 78 degrees waters were waiting for us with 2 groups of around 7 dolphins, and 4 playful mantas that came close during our dive.

On our second dive, the mantas waited until we were ready to go for our safety stop to appear and start to play with our divers as they usually do. It seems that they wanted to give us another good reason to jump again in the water for the next dive and they definitely did!

On our final dive, the conditions were slightly different than the previous two dives, with more current and, instead of mantas, millions of fish covering the all area until where your eyes couldn`t reach anymore. Now after a day at Punta Tosca, we are heading for another journey in our trip, this time to Roca Partida.

Until the next report, in the last days of this incredible year of diving! 
Ricardo Tamaño
Dive Instructor

We Made it!

We made made it! We arrived today in San Benedicto just in time for a dive. The conditions were great with 50 ft. + visibility and a little bit of current. We took it slow on our check out dive today taking time to explore the reef. For most divers the white tip sharks, green morays, octopus, and scorpionfish that make up our reefs are new. So we looked around and spotted all of those cool critters. During the last 15 minutes of the dive, a manta made a surprise showing and circled all the divers again and again. All finished the dive smiling and excited for more here on the Solmar V.
Here`s looking forward to more to come.
Until Next Time,
Dave Valencia

Hi there!
We all woke up at 6 30 am, got some coffee, suited up, and prepared for our early morning dive at El Cañón. We wanted to see some Hammerhead Sharks and we know that early in the morning is the best time to see them getting clean by Butterfly fish. We saw hammerheads, but they stayed deep throughout the day. Dave’s group got to see a 12 feet Tiger Shark that cruised around the drop off of the dive site, Danny and myself decided to check the left side of El Cañón but the hammerheads weren’t there either, so we all headed for the usual cleaning station with the intentions of finding the sharks there.  Suddenly a Chevron Manta passed over our heads and stayed hanging out and playing with our bubbles, we ran out of bottom time and begun our ascend to the safety stop being escorted by this friendly Manta.
After two dives, we moved to El Boiler expecting to finish our trip with some more friendly Mantas, this time the conditions were rough at El Boiler, the current was blowing strongly from the north and we could only stayed in one side of the pinnacle but it was good because we had a lots of White Tip Reef Sharks, Octopus and hundreds of Lobsters that are in the crevices of El Boiler.
After the third dive while we were drying up and getting ready for lunch, we spotted a lot of birds in the horizon that gathered together indicating the possibility of a bait ball, so we went to check conditions out and make sure that something was really going on, and yes it was! There was a bait ball in process, so we came back to the SolmarV, everybody got ready and jumped on the pangas right away but by the time we got back to the bait ball, just about everything had already been consumed, all it was left were a dozens of birds that still flew over, hoping for some fish left. All I can say is that Baitball Season just opened! Wait for Adil’s video trip report to see what a baitball looks like!
Right now we are off to Cabo San Lucas and looking forward to spend Christmas time with our families! See you guys on our New Year’s Eve Trip! 

Happy Christmas Everybody!

Erick Higuera

It's been super at Socorro!

It´s been super here at Socorro! This is our third day here on Socorro Island and we´ve been diving Punta Tosca all day. It´s been so good, it´s hard to leave. Our first dive this morning was capped off with dolphins welcoming us to the dive site. Just as we jumped in the chirped and
clicked for a few minutes and were gone. Dani´s group, however, had a dozen dolphins for the entirety of the dive. Eric and my group were together with two huge Giant Pacific Mantas circling us again and again. We even spotted a few hammerheads swimming along the bottom and one individual approached very close. The mantas spent the whole dive soaking up all the bubbles and visiting every diver. It was some of the best manta action we had. That was until the second dive. 
On the second dive Dani´s group and mine stayed shallow and it paid off. Three mantas at one time were circling all the divers for a full 60 minutes! Everyone was blowing bubbles underneath the mantas and swimming along with them. The mantas would stall for a few seconds and then slowly move on to the next diver. They followed us up all the way until we jumped into the pangas.
Our last two dives were more mellow taking time to check out the reef. We saw two mantas each dive respectively, but they didn´t interact like they did before. Instead we saw a ton of octopus, eels, and whitetips. The fish were all out hunting or gathering and we watched on as a huge swarm of convict tangs attacked the algae on the reef. It was a seemingly endless group of fish. A fantastic visit to Socorro has come to end and tomorrow we´re headed to Roca Partida.

Until Next Time,

Dave Valencia 

What dolphin action!

We started the first dive of the day at 8:00 am, as soon as we left Solmar V, 5 dolphins were already swimming around the boat, we didn’t want to wait until the dive to see the dolphins so, we all jumped to the water and snorkeled with these friendly mammals for about 30 min, it was a great start to the day!

“Let’s go back to the pangas and go for the dive” somebody in the group said, so we all swam back to the pangas and moved to the dive site, which was Punta Tosca. When we got up to the point on the wall where we normally start diving, there were more dolphins already waiting for us! We all got in the water, but this time on scuba, and a soon as we started descending, there were at least 20 bottlenose dolphins that played with every single diver for almost the entire dive, and if that wasn’t enough 4 Mantas joined to the dolphin party, all this 50 min non-stop action was EPIC! We had never had so much action at Punto Tosca! We didn’t know where to look! These dolphins kept coming back and forth, up and down, coming form everywhere! Honestly we all were excited when we got back to the surface and on board of the pangas.

In the second dive we had the same manta action that we had previously, but the dolphins weren’t around. 
By the third dive the visibility had changed a bit and we just stayed over the reef chilling out and looking lobsters, octopi, white tip reef sharks and all the reef life that one can encounter in Punta Tosca.
The water temperature still in the low 80’s and we had strong winds coming from the cold front that it’s on the way down here from Cabo. We’ll spend another day in Socorro and hoping to have another great dive day with a bunch of dolphins and mantas like we had today.
Stand by and wait for more Solmar V histories from The Revillagigedo’s!

Erick Higuera