We had a fantastic day at Socorro Island!

Hi all! 

Cabo Pearce was the Dive Site to explore today! We had a fantastic day at Socorro Island! During a 40 minute dive we had the opportunity of seeing the first hammerhead of the day in shallower water we went a bit deeper and found about 7 more!   Over the cleaning station we found 4 mantas that were getting cleaned by clarion angel fish!  The mantas were swimming right over our heads, they love our bubbles!  It was quality manta time!The reef was as beautiful as ever, covered in a colorful variety of reef fish! During the same dive 8 dolphins found us! The playful dolphins swam circles around us, and followed us for a good period of time!  Our divers loved it when the dolphins pause from swimming vertically in front of us, pause, then slowly free fall into the depth!  They are so much fun!

On our second dive the water was so blue that from 40' we were able to see the sandy bottom 140' below! We could see giant electric rays and diamond head rays and into the blue we spotted 15 hammerheads heading our way!  The mixture of large adult hammerheads mixed with a few juveniles swam right under our fins!  They made two passes before disappearing into the blue! We ascended to a shallower depth where we met 5 white tip reef sharks on our way to the cleaning station.  There were 7 mantas and 1 mobula waiting for us at the cleaning station!

The next two dives the mantas were still there, giving everyone a chance to get the perfect manta photo! We ended our day with 8 mantas that couldn't stay long, and listening to the most beautiful whale song for 20 minutes!  During our surface interval we spotted from the bow of the the whales less than 100' from our boat being escorted by dolphins!  Surface water temp was 79F with 100'+ visibility!  It was a great day at Socorro island, next stop, el canyon!

Dive instructor 

Daniel Zapata 

It was a full scale manta attack!

Greetings Solmar Fans!
We had a full day of diving here in Isla Socorro filled with some great sightings. We spent the entire day here at Cabo Pearce.
Our first dive showed some of the best visibility we have ever seen here. You could view the whole dive site which is quite large with easily more than 100 ft. visibility. There were a few mantas around but they weren't in a very playful mood. There were also a few hammerheads spotted, that stayed a little deep. It wasn`t until the second dive that the mantas really showed up. It was a full-scale manta attack. There seemed to be mantas from all directions. I counted five at one time and at least 10 individual mantas checked in at the cleaning station. We had mantas of all sizes and even had a little mobula following one of the Giant Pacific Mantas. It was an unforgettable dive. Our third dive, however, was the highlight. The mantas were there, although not in great numbers. Whatever was lacking in numbers of mantas was made with dolphins. Dolphins dove down to us and swarmed us taking out attention away from the mantas. It was amazing to have mantas and dolphins and divers all in one experience. The last dive had a couple of mantas and I'm sure they must have been exhausted from the exciting day! So we spent more time examining the reef octopus, scorpionfish, flounders, and eels. It was a relaxing dive, and a heck of a day.
Until Next Time,
Dave Valencia

The whales are here at San Benedicto!

Hi all! 

The whales are here at San Benedicto! We are very excited about trip #9! We did 4 dives starting with el FONDEADERO. There was a mild current that allowed us to drift along the reef enjoying the 77F degree water. 
White tip reef sharks were swimming all over the place which kept our cameras busy taking photos! We explored the reeef and found many lobsters, green morays, giant electric rays, and tons of fish over the reef.  We didn't find any mantas on our first dive, so we decided to move to a spot where we knew there was a good chance we would find them.
We moved to El Boiler and found a little bit of everything! The first thing we noticed right away was a much improved visibility from our previous dive site! We ended up spending the rest of the day here with more little critters!  On the south west point we found a hammer head shark, then we drifted alongside 4 dolphisn with the current coming from the south!

After a great day of diving we were pulling away from our dive site after our 4th dive of the day, and a mama humpback, her baby, and escort humpbacks swam right over the dive site! They joined the party a little bit late, but it was still fun to watch them jumping and tail flapping from the pangas! Now we are off to Socorro island!

Dive Instructor

Daniel Zapata

Our first day of the trip has started with a fantastic display of nature!

Wow! What a day!

We have a nice group of multiple nationalities on board this week from Russia, USA, UK, Belgium, and Spain. Today is our first day of the trip and it has started with a fantastic display of nature. We arrived to Isla San Benedicto around 4 pm after a day of preparation. As soon as we could see the island the magic began. Dolphins appeared and began jumping and bow-riding allowing everyone to enjoy the excitement. It was nearly a half hour of dolphin time and then we had four humpback whales blow no more than 100m off our port side. We watched but kept moving along to our destination. Four more humpbacks were floating on the surface as we arrived near to the dive site. They were blowing, but no jumping. It was starting to get exciting. We all started putting on wet suits and waiting for our briefing when a tremendous amount of birds began to circle. They started attacking the surface of the water and there was splashing from sharks and yellowfin tuna which meant....BAITBALL!!! 
So we had a group meeting and explained the situation: we could a) do our check out dive OR b) do a baitball session. There was no hesitation and everyone piled into the pangas. We made our way to the action and it looked very good. We followed the safety protocol we have developed for bailballs to make sure things were ok for our guests and asked everyone to drop in and stay near the panga. It was unbelievable! There was a flurry of large yellowfin tuna as well as silky sharks, galapagos, and blacktips. It was all we had hoped for and more! The action subsided and we hopped out and decided to circle around in the pangas allowing the sharks and tuna to continue to feed and we would jump back in. It worked. As soon as we motored away, the tunas were breaching the surface like rockets and the dorsal fins of sharks were everywhere. This is what we wanted so we jumped back in and the action was on again. We did this a few times until everyone had their fill of baitballing and headed back to the Solmar V happier than ever. As we arrived back and we started to laugh and discuss all the excitement, Humpback Whales started breaching as the sun was setting....Perfect!

Until Next Time,

Dave Valencia

Our final day was the best!

Hola,
Our final day was the best!  We woke up very early in the morning planning to dive the canyon but visibility wasn`t good due to a swell. So we had to move to the Boiler and it was the best thing that could happened to us!  There were mantas were all over, 3 giants at the same time interacting with every diver plus some dolphins that were showing up now and then. Now heading back to Cabo, time to share experiences, photos and videos onboard.

Claudio Divemaster.

Mantas on every dive at San Benedicto!

Hello from San Benedicto

Today we`ve been diving in San Benedicto Island. We stayed at El Boiler all day long, and the four dives we had here were just unique. When you come to El Boiler, you expect to interact with Mantas, that is what EL Boiler is known for. Well today the divesite gave another reason
for it`s reputation. Each single dive we had one or 2 mantas playing with our divers for more than an hour!! Chevron and Black mantas mixed with some occasional hammerheads, made for a great day. The water temp. was 77/75 degrees, and visibility was around 90+ ft for the morning dives, and around 50 ft for the afternoon ones. It was a mild current coming from the NW all day long. Now we are anchoring at El Cañon where we will spend the night and start tomorrow early morning our last diving day of this fantastic trip!

Until the next report!
Ricardo Tamaño
Dive Instructor

Hola,

We had a great day at Roca Partida, everyone got the chance to interact with dolphins and we saw lots of galapagos shark and silvertips.  Another cool thing was to see big tunas chasing its prey, and we found a lot of action at north point. We also found lots of jacks, big rainbow runners and wahoos. 
During our surfaced interval we got a cool visitor right next to the SolmarV, a humbackwhale and her calf! Some of our guest had the chance to jump in the water with our resident underwater photographer, Eric Higuera, to get some photos, see below!
Tomorrow we go for more mantas and hammerhead in San Benedicto!!!!!
Claudio Divemaster.