San Benedicto Dive Report

Bon Dia,

We have a very diverse group aboard this week, but the majority of our
guests this week are Italian. So we are learning quickly. Hopefully, our
guests are quickly learning that the diving here in San Benedicto is
amazing.

We woke up this morning on San Benedicto Island at El Canon with a dozen
dolphins swimming around the boat. Unfortunately, by the time we jumped in
they decided they had better things to do. The water was nice at 80
degrees, a slight current coming from the southeast, and beautiful
visibility at 60-70 ft. We headed towards the corner and immediately saw
hammerheads. At first, we could make out only a small group of 10-20. It
wasn't lo9ng before a constant stream of 100+ hammerheads mesmerized our
divers. We watched for over 20 minutes. We slowly headed in the direction
of the boat catching glimpses of green morays, octopus, and lobster. We
even saw a large yellowfin tuna darting nearby.

Dive two at El Canon had a lot of expectations after our first. This time
we knew where to go and the condtions continued tobe favorable. The water
continued to be at 79 degrees on the surface and this time little or no
current. At the corner, the hammerheads didn't disappoint. We had a
massive group of 100+ hammerheads pass by all our divers. It was amazing!
We enjoyed a little more time with the sharks before wearing out our no
deco time welcome at made our way back to the boat with more sightings of
Green Morays, octopus, and lobster.

We had such luck with the hammerheads at El Canon, we decided to stay for
more. Our third dive, still had great visibility at 60-70 ft. and little
or no current. We swam to the corner with a welcome from two very large
hammerheads swimmng in cirles getting cleaned by the jacks. We waited fo a
few minutes and saw another small group of five hammerheads go by. We
decided to move a little ways from the corner expecting to see more
hammerheads when two mantas glided by over head. One manta parted company
with the other and began circling our group. Soon the other two groups of
divers joined and we wacthed the manta pass everyone by again and again
for the entire dive. It was great!

Our last dive at El Canon showed an increase in current and a stark
decrease in visibility to about 10ft. We were amazed at the number of sea
urchins that we never paid atrtention to. Nearly a hundred sea cucumbers
on many different varieties dotted the ground and the number of plankton
was almost too much to bare.

Ciao,

Dave Valencia