Back to San Benedicto!

Hola facebook!
We have a full group of Russians this week, eager to see all that the Revillagigedos has to offer! It`s our first day of the trip and we just finished our check out dive. As usual, we arrived to lots of dolphins jumping throught the water as we neared San Benedicto Island! They were  bow-riding and jumping as they welcomed us to the island. We even spotted a Humpback Whale as we arrived to our first dive site. In the water, visibility was good at 50'+ with a temp in the low 70's. We had a very calm dive and our divers enjoyed eels, scorpionfish, giant pacific electric ray, and a white tip or two. All our divers checked out and we are looking forward to some a great day tomorrow. We are finishing our day now with a great Mexican BBQ on the bow set out by chef Tony!
Until Next Time,
Dave Valencia

Sailfish, dolphins, mantas, and more on our last day at San Benedicto!

Hola everyone!

Our early morning dive at el Boiler at San Benedicto Island had excellent visibility and we were accompanied by 12 dolphins for over half an hour! The soundtrack of the humpbacks singing was non-stop, but that was almost drowned out from the excited dolphins chirping while they were hunting big eye trevally! Another thing to be amazed by is the number of spiny lobster here! When we got  to the cleaning station we found one black manta, but he didn't stay long.

We spent almost 3 hours looking for bait balls to great success! Although we did not find one big bait ball, we dropped in the water 10 times over this time, and counted 15-20 sailfish came so close you could see every detail on them! 

Now, back to scuba! We did two more dives at el Boiler, we were immersed in a world of fish over the cleaning station we found another manta! For our macro enthusiasts,  nidubranch were all over the rock, thanks to the water temperature dropping.  We also found more hammerheads, galapagos sharks over the reef to complete our diving day!

Dive Inst.

Daniel Zapata

Mantas all day at Socorro Island!

Hi from Socorro Island!
We were hoping to find mantas and mantas are what we found!!! We made 3 dives today at Cabo Pearce at Socorro Island.  The first one in the morning was with blue warm waters and no current. 5 different mantas came to visit our divers at the cleaning station, with many Clarion Angel Fish tagging along on their backs. The mantas interacted with our divers for over an hour! By the end of the dive we saw a family of Dolphins hunting juvenile tunas and a great Chevron Manta just hovering in the middle of the show. That was just unforgettable. For the second dive we had the same conditions and more mantas showed up to play and we stayed for another hour just taking in their performance at the cleaning stations. 
By the 3rd dive, the conditions dropped a bit, but we were still able to enjoy the visit of a Chevron Manta at the cleaning station along with dolphins at the deep part of the dive site!
We are now at the Navy Station waiting for the routine inspection, then we're headed to San Benedicto to for our last day of what has already been a fantastic trip!

Until the next time
Ricardo Tamaño
Dive Instructor

Two excellent days at Roca!

Hola amigos,
After our second day at Roca partida where everyone had such a good time, we are now heading to Socorro Island.  During our first two dives, Galapagos and hammerhead sharks were all over the place in big numbers!  Occasionally some silvertips and silkies showed up, along with some schooling bonitos and jacks! At the end of our last dive we were surrounded by a school of massive tunas that were at least 200 pounds, and they were escorted by lots of silky sharks! I know what you're thinking, but this wasn't a dream it was for real if only you could have been here! Sorry! We had two excellent days at Roca that will be difficult to top!

Claudio Bonato
Divemaster

Lots of sharks at Roca!

ROCA PARTIDA!
What a unique place to dive...

A great day of diving started with beautiful sun rise!  Water temp was in the mid 70's with an amazing visibility of over 120' gave us excellent perspective of the rock! 

The ledges were covered with white tip reef sharks, and were excellent models for our guests' camera! On top of the we found a massive school of hammerheads and galapagos sharks schooling together!  We hung out with them at 100' for about 10 minutes before returning to the norther point of the rock. We waited at the norther point looking at different schooling fish like black jacks, cotton mouth jacks, big eye trevally, and more, before we encountered over 20 very curious galapagos sharks at only 30'! 

On the other side of the rock one groun found a big ball of striped bonito with 40 to 50 silky sharks  chasing them, on the surface our panga driver Geronimo spotted 2 humpback whales, but they were too far to get close.
On our second dive we had the opportunity to go all around the rock, which gave us the time to enjoy the schooling fish, sharks all over the place and we found a a big school of galapagos and hammerheads on the southern point! The conditions improved on our 3rd dive and when we dropped in the water were were literally on top of a school of galapagos sharks!
Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata

Dolphins, hammerheads, whales, and more at San Benedicto!

Hola from San Benedicto!
Today was our first full diving day of this trip, we started our day at El Cañon, with bottlenose dolphins playing with our divers! We also enjoyed watching them chase the jacks all over the place.  We could hear the whales as a background music during the entire dive. We got to see a couple of Hammerheads during this dive too!
On our second dive we had the chance to dive with 50+ hammerheads out in the blue on the eastern side of El Cañon, and we found 8 more while we coming back to our boat by the end of the dive. These particular school of sharks was very curious and made numerous close passes right by our divers so we could enjoy them all around us.
Between the 2nd and 3rd dive, we went with the pangas to see the whales close to the boat, and we had the mama, the papa and the baby playing close to our excited guests!
For the 3rd and 4th dive we found more hammerheads but not in a school, just hanging over the sand patch under the boat.
In addition to these amazing big critter encounters, we found a lot of lobsters, octopuses eels, and an uncountable number of fish made for another amazing day at El Cañon. Tonight we are heading to Roca Partida were we expect top have 3 more great dives in paradise!
Water temp was around 71F and visibility was a great 60'+ blue water, with slight current from the north east.
Ricardo Tamaño
Dive Instructor

Bait balls, dolphins, marlins, and more on our last day at San Benedicto!

Hola from San Benedicto!

Today was our last diving day on this fabulous trip.  We started early morning at El Boiler, with a great dolphins interaction with our divers. We also enjoyed watching them chase the jacks all over the place!  Water temp was in the low 70's with easily over 100' visibility and with no current an the dive site. After our first dive, we decided to go out with the boat and look for bait balls, and of course, our favorite place didn't let us down! More than 3 hours jumping with friendly dolphins in blue water, with Sail Fin and Marlins all over the place, hunting and coming close to take a better look of those weird things floating in the surface (those were us in Snorkeling gear). What an experience with such magnificent and elegant animals!!! 

To finish our trip we made one last dive at the Boiler, where everybody had the chance to enjoy the beauty of this dive site and the life that it hast to offer one last time before heading back to Cabo! We are now heading back to Cabo San Lucas, with happy and smiley divers.

Until the next trip!

Ricardo Tamaño
Dive Instructor

Saludos from Socorro!

Saludos from Socorro!
It was a day spent at one of our favorite Socorro Island dive sites! It was a cloudy day and the water was much cooler in the low 70's with 50'+ visibility! Our first dive was an exploratory dive trying to see what Socorro island had waiting for us! We found no mantas at their usual hangout so we  went searching for hammerheads in the blue. We were successful in finding many hammerheads here and there but not in a structured school. One group of divers was fortunate to see a large school of 50 or more but the sharks never got too close.  We found lots of octopus, scorpionfish, flounders, and tuna.
Dive two and three were much of the same but we did have a great manta encounters on the deep side of the divesite! The manta cruised the ridge of Cabo Pearce raising a wing to each group as it continued on its way. Between dives people enjoyed whales as they played nearby all day. A momma and baby proved elusive as far as letting us snorkel with them but we got to see a ton of great surface behaviors. All and all it was a successful day here in Socorro and we will now be making our way to Isla San Benedicto!
Until Next Time,
Dave Valencia

Our second day at Roca Partida was full of shark action!

Second Day at Roca Partida and the weather conditions were still good, no wind and flat seas with a visibility of over 100´/30 m and a surface water temperature of 75F/23.8C. Roca is still full of shark action, this time we found schooling hammerhead sharks mixed with some galapagos sharks, but this time they were too deep to get close, they were around I would say 160´/46 m at least, because we pushed the breaks at 130´/40 m and the great visibility let us see the sharks were swimming underneath us.  Also for those that didn´t want to go that deep, we had good dives hanging with the massive school of white mouth jacks and the hundreds of whitetip reef sharks that swam around the rock.  After the third dive some divers went out on a panga adventure with their snorkels, and they had the chance to snorkel with some humpback whales!
Now we´re off to Socorro Island hoping to find good Manta encounters at Cabo Pearce. 
Hasta la vista
Erick Higuera

What a way to end a day at Roca!

After a great checkout at San Benedicto, our next destination was Roca Partida! We awoke to whales breaching right by the boat and we had our seasonal sound track of the whale song playing in the background on all our dives! 

We spotted several hammerheads, and friendly manta, the white tip reef sharks were guarding Roca as usual, and on the southern point we found some galapagos sharks around a big group of jacks. Dive two we just like our morning dive, except we had even more Galapagos and hammerhead sharks! 

On our last dive of the day, we had a great black manta hanging out with our divers at around 100' with a group of 15+ hammerheads passing between the manta and the all of Roca!  We made our way to the southern point and we saw innumerable hammerheads and Galapagos sharks, with yellowfin tunas and jacks all over the place, all while we were hanging in the middle of thousands of Pacific Creoles. What a way to end a day! We're going to spend another day here so stay tuned for more Roca Action!

Until the next report
Ricardo Tamaño
Dive Instructor

March 24 Trip Part 4: Back to San Benedicto!

April 3, 2013

Ahh…back to our familiar Isla San Benedicto, this is such a great place! We had some wind today so we tucked in here at El Canyon and had a great day of diving and snorkeling. Our first dive started with lots of excitement. The vis. was good at 50'+ and there were already dolphins waiting for us! We dropped in from the pangas and instead of following the dolphins, my group was captivated by a friendly manta. This manta wanted all the attention and swam from diver to diver and even followed us to the cleaning station. At the cleaning station we had a school of 20 or so BIG hammerheads. We saw some silvertips as well. As we explored a little more we found even more hammerheads. They were everywhere, just not in a structured school. What a great start to the day. Our second dive also had many hammerheads and another manta! The third and fourth dive brought some poor visibility so we offered people the opportunity to snorkel with whales instead. It was a very good idea because we found a friendly momma and baby! They took some warming up, but by the afternoon they were allowing people to hang out for a little while before moving on. They did interact a little bit and everyone was able to see the whales underwater! It’s one thing to see their behavior from the surface but a completely different experience to feel them next to you underwater. Even the size of the baby dwarfs any diver. It’s a definite wow experience and one we all got to share today.

Until Next Time,

Dave Valencia

Dive Report April 04th, 2013.

El Boiler

We felt like we were dropped in a fish tank with lovely music from humpback whale the entire dive, fish everywhere of all types, and 12 dolphins made this dive very special. They broke up into two schools letting us follow them in different directions, the diver + dolphins interaction were incredible as the playful dolphins would come super close to our divers! It was a very easy dive and very fun dive with a great vis up to 120ft with a warm water temp in the mid 70's. We ended the dive by drifting away from the rock hoping to see a whale and we had an endless song of vocalizations so loud that could feel the vibrations in our body! Taking advantage of the flat ocean we went cruising for bait balls! We got in the water several times looking for bait balls, but this time instead of lots of sharks and tunas predating on the bait ball, it was 20 to 30 marlins and sail fish hunting! There were some sharks but not a lot of them! A unique way to finish a 14 days trip!

Dive Inst Daniel Zapata

March 24 Trip Part 3: Socorro Island

Dive Report APRIL 1ST, 2013

Cabo Pearce, Socorro Island

A day that made us remember that the ocean can drastically change dive conditions in a day, from a strong current to zero, from good vis to poor vis, water temp from 73 to 75 ̊f. We were spoiled from our other days of diving and even though the action wasn't as good as Roca, we still had some to have fun! We had the company for a short period of time of a dolphin and manta, and took time to explore the reef where we found octos, flounders, lobsters, green moray eels, giant diamond head sting ray, lots of barber fish, clarion fish, and more!

Dive Inst Daniel Zapata

Dive Report April 2, 2013

We started our 2nd day at Socorro Island diving the site Punta Tosca, the conditions weren’t great this time, the visibility was low and the current was strong so we couldn’t see and do much this on this dive time. By the second time all our guests wanted to test their luck and adventure in a whale watching tour! We saw several humpback whales but they were on the shy side and never let us approached them. We did get to see them from the pangas though and of course we enjoyed the beautiful panga ride along the shore of Socorro. After lunch we went back to Cabo Pearce looking to dive with Mantas one more time before going back to San Benedicto. We saw on the first dive couple mantas the were getting clean by clarion angel fishes! We did the last dive of the day like at 5 pm, which gives a chance to see different underwater stuff that gathered together at dusk, they show up either to mate or to feed, stuff like convict surgeon tangs that graze on the algae that covers the reef and steel pompanos that gather in huge schools of couple hundred and wait for sunset to start the mating dance. We plan to head back to San Benedicto tonight, so don’t miss the tomorrow San Benedicto news, maybe humpbacks, maybe dolphins, maybe baitballs, we will see!

Erick Higuera

March 24 Trip Part 2: 4 Incredible Days at Roca Partida!

Dive Report March 28, 2013

We awoke to our favorite place, Roca Partida. There was a gorgeous sunrise and boobies perched themselves on the bow of the Solmar V. It was quiet this morning as there were no other boats in the vicinity. We saw a few whale spouts, but we knew our favorite momma and baby had already started their trek back north to Alaska. We watched these “new” whales with great interest hoping that they might show some characteristics of allowing us to approach them. So we kept our eyes open. Our first dive here started with some wicked current. With such strong currents, we expect lots of sharks and so it was. Immediately upon descending we saw our first school of hammerheads, Galapagos, and silvertips. It’s amazing to see such a mixed school of some 40 individuals. At least we know they are here now. We battled the current trying to stay in the right spot, but it wasn’t happening this morning so we drifted to the other side with no current and not many sharks. We gently kicked around and to our surprise found a very friendly giant pacific manta. It had already found another group that had drifted the opposite side of the rock. We shared the manta as it made very close passes overhead and enjoyed our bubbles. Dive two and three were filled with sharks. We found more schools of Galapagos, hammerheads, and silvertips. The white tips were ever-present, as usual. On the third dive we had an interesting sighting as we rounded the north end. We spotted four mantas, at least we thought. There was one rare mobila shadowing a black manta and three other chevron mantas chasing one another. It has been rare for us to see mantas and mobilas here at Roca Partida, but this season has yielded the most sightings in recent memory. They were thought to be gone from here, with the exception of a random wanderer, but they are indeed back at Roca Partida! This was the best manta action we had so far this trip!

Until Next Time,

Dave Valencia

Dive Report March 29th, 2013.

The Amazing Roca Partida, 3 great dives took our breath away today!!! Since we took our first breath underwater had just blue water!! Right then we knew good things were to come!! School of different jacks everywhere doing all type of formations! It ̍s a pleasure to have a mild current here! This time from North East that brought to us a school of about 20 Galapagos shark! We saw them at a variety of depths they were even with us when we were hanging at 20' of water doing our safety stop! Hammer heads were there also although a little bit deeper, we were suspended at 100 ̍ and no words can explain what it felt like when we saw them swimming in circles just beneath our fins! Beautiful silver tips broke up the school of jacks to let us see them coming at us one right after the other ones to a total of 15 of them!! On the next dive we happened to two 2 black mantas and one stayed for 40 minutes from 20 to 50ft of water, it is always beautiful to see They love bubbles running along their under body! The symphony of males humpbacks whales singing did put a special touch to every dive here!  Vis 130'+ water temp from 73 ̊ to 77 ̊f.

Dive Inst Daniel Zapata

Dive Report March 30, 2013

Our third day at Roca Partida was still remarkable! The water temperature still around 75, but the visibility was lower than it was yesterday at about 50 ft, the eastern current was still strong, which is great because it brings a lots of sharks. If you want to have a non-stop sharky action, Roca is the place to be. On all 3 of the dives we did today, we had a constant parade of Galapagos, Silvertips, Silkies and Hammerhead Sharks that kept swimming around the rock all day long and the wall right was covered by White Tip Reef Sharks everywhere! Pacific creolefishes, black, bigeye and whitemouth jacks sparkle the rock, fishes everywhere you look, we were entertained the entire time! We’re staying one more day in Roca Partida, we shouldn’t stop enjoying what Roca Partida is offering us in these moments.

Stayed tuned for more Roca news!

March 31, 2013

It was our last day here at Roca Partida and I have to say I was sad to leave. We had a great extended visit with some amazing sightings of schooling hammerheads, Galapagos, and silvertip sharks. The water column never ceases to amaze with the abundance of vibrant colors of life. This day was great as we had many schools of sharks today. Due to the risk of redundancy, I will restrain myself with describing the many schools of sharks. But there were a lot….a lot. Anyway, our major discovery today was a large school of bonito. And by large, I mean a football field size of fish. They seemed to come from nowhere and hung out for two dives. It was epic. We also had sightings of large yellowfin tuna and mantas. So as we left Roca today we had a Humpback Whale breaching in opposition to our leaving. We waved our goodbyes and can't wait to see that remarkable place again.

Until Next Time,

Dave Valencia

March 24 Trip Part 1: San Benedicto

March 25, 2013

This is the beginning of a long trip with a group of Germans,Swiss, and English aboard. We arrived to San Benedicto today in beautiful conditions. Humpback Whales welcomed us with tail slaps and lots of “spouts” everywhere. Our check out dive was at Las Cuevas. We descended and found decent visibility, some 15m, and water temp. at 23 C (74 F). My group was first to have a go into the caves and as we entered a few white tip reef sharks circled. We continued through the cave and double-backed. Near the entrance of the cave we found a large green sea turtle sleeping. I can’t believe we didn’t notice him on our first pass through the cave! He didn’t move so we tried not to bother him too much and continued to the next cave. Another white tip reef shark circled. We passed through and made our way to the shallows. I wanted to see if we could find some more turtles. Sure enough we found two turtles riding the surge but they wanted nothing to do with us and continued on about their business. We found other interesting things like many giant pacific electric rays and scorpionfish. It was a nice start to the trip. We ended the day with Chef Tony’s famous barbeque on the bow.

Until Next Time,

Dave Valencia

Dive Report, March 26th, 2013.

EL Cañon, San Benedicto Island.

The dives at EL CAÑON could not be better! A vis. of 80'+ and water temp in the mid 70's, a mild current from east brought to us what we were hoping to see this morning: schooling hammer heads!!! They came up right to our faces and over our heads, so close that we could almost touch them! I am talking about about big big fat hammerheads with 7 to 9' long!! At the corner in the dive site a black giant pacific manta was there gliding in slow motion swimming to the delight all of us while getting cleaned by clarion angelfish!! As the day progressed on 2 other different dives we had the luck of finding a tiger sharks on each dive! You want to know where? At the corner!!! So pleasant to see then swimming with no hurry!! Coming straight at you! Were able to see every stripe on them!! So we had a day of manta, hammer heads, silver tips, tiger sharks, white tips and to top it off the company of playful dolphins!!

Dive Inst Daniel Zapata

Dive Report March 27, 2013

We started our dive day at El Cañón with a water temperature in the mid 70's F (22C) and a visibility of 80 ft/25 m.  On the first dive we saw a school of about 50 hammerhead sharks that cruised by the cleaning station, they did a couple passes by and before disappearing into the blue. In the second dive the hammerheads were still around and we had the great opportunity to find a 10 feet tiger shark made its parade in front of all the divers, everyone could see this “mystique” striped shark.

In the third and the fourth dive we didn’t see that many hammerheads, 1 or 2 here and there, but several juvenile silver tip sharks were getting cleaning over the famous corner/cleaning station.

During the surface intervals we enjoyed lots of humpback whale activity, splashes, breaches and tail slapping.

Erick Higuera

March 9th Trip Dive Log

Report 12-Mar-2013

We are at Socorro, and as always Cabo Pearce didn`t let us down! We had a lot of hammerhead action, some big tunas and Galapagos sharks. The best part was there were also three playful mantas at the cleaning station that loved their bubble making friends! If we didn`t run low on air probably we would still be there. Another thing in common on all dives was the soundtrack of singing whales teasing us like never before, unfortunately we didn`t see them underwater but during the surface interval we got a magnificent nature`s show of breaching humbacks everywhere, some really close to Solmar V.

Claudio Bonato Divemaster.

Dive Report, March 13th

Today we started with one dive at Punta Tosca, with water temp was around 73º, and visibility was a bit below average. We didn't see too much action during the dive, but we found some white tips and baby galapagos sharks, but no mantas, or dolphins in this dive. We decided to move back to Cabo Pearce where we had 2 good dives with strong current, Dani's group found a big school of hammerheads and a tiger shark around them! Water temp was the same and visibility was low, We are heading to Roca Partida tonight!

Ricardo Tamaño

Report 14 mar 2013

The first day at Roca Partida couldn't have been better! First dive we got schooling silky sharks mixed with silvertips, Galapagos and hammerheads sharks!! The second dive was very similar, except that we got a very unusual visitor, a Mola Mola! Yes, a Mola Mola that may be the first one ever seen at this dive site. And if all that wasn't good enough last dive of the day three giant mantas showed up to play with all of us! What else can I say? The weather is just perfect we are probably we are going to stay 3 more days here having more dives from the best site on the planet! 

Claudio Bonato Divemaster

Dive Report March 15th, 2013

ROCA PARTIDA A MUST!

An incredible vis. of over 100’ no wind at all, the lack of current made us stay in just one area, which made for very relaxing dives. water temp was ranging from 77̊f to 73̊f, it is like being in a 3D world were all fish are suspended in mid water barely moving, swimming trough it to find on the other side a school of 30 to 40 Galapagos, 15 silver tips, a huge school of hammer heads at 90̍ ft of water! Also it was very interesting to witness of yellow fin tunas and black jacks hunting, during our surface intervals we had the opporunity to see whale breachings repeatedly, other dives we were so lucky to see again in very shallow water a tremendous school of silky sharks, while listening to the whales not stop singing.

Dive Inst

Daniel Zapata

Dive Report, March 16th

In our 3rd day at Roca Partida we had 3 incredible dives, with warm and clear waters (75º/100+ ft vis), and uncountable sharks and tuna action. Big school of hammerheads, compact groups of Galapagos and silvertips, hunting along side of yellow fin tunas, made the day for all of us. Mild currents made the dive more enjoyable, and here we are for a 4th day at this incredible little place in the world. Until the next trip!

Ricardo Tamaño

Dive Report 17 mar 2013

It`s difficult to write how happy we were for an amazing fourth day at Roca Partida. It was great as always!  A lot of sharks of all kind and massive  schools of fish! The highlight of the day was a massive school of bonito being chase by big yellow fin tuna and a second after to be part of the school because they changed their direction to escape from their predators and that left me and some divers completely surrounded for a few minutes, to the point we couldn't see one another. That was an incredible experience that we will never forget.

Claudio Bonato Divemaster.

Dive report march 18th, 2013

On our last diving day of this trip we made 2 dives at El Boiler and 2 dives at El Cañon, in San Benedicto Island. The morning dives at El Boiler were with nice clear and warm waters, we were visited by a group of Dolphins with hammerheads moving around. At el Cañon we could see big school of hammerheads, and again the whale and her baby playing around, giving us a beatiful dive with her singing! Water remained clear and warm for the all day, and now we are heading back to Cabo San Lucas, after this special trip, looking forward to come back to this small paradise Until the next trip!

Ricardo Tamaño

Dive Instructor