We were welcomed by jumping dolphins at San Benedicto!

We left port with small swell, cool breeze and cloudy sky yesterday evening, but as soon as we woke up this morning the sun was shinning, the warm breeze and the blue sky indicated that we were going to have an excellent day!. As soon as we saw San Benedicto island on the horizon a bottled nose dolphin jumped just a few feet from the bow of the boat as a welcome!
Everybody started smiling as the knew the first dive of the trip was coming! Once we anchored near "El Canon", we had very good weather, small waves and a little nice breeze at the surface, perfect conditions for our check out dive!
We entered the water, that was about 25C/77F at the surface, quick buoyancy check and down we went using the descent line, 24C/75F at the bottom, about 120' visibility with a very light current coming from the east. Just a couple of minutes into the dive and the first Chevron manta ray of the trip showed up right on top of the group! Another very nice welcome to the Revillagigedo archipelago, after those few seconds of excitement we swam to the eastern corner of "The Canyon" where we found 5 white tip reef sharks swimming around, panamic green moray eels, and even a couple of frog fish that DM Daniel spotted! Then we decided to turn around and head back to the ascent line and see if we could spot that manta ray, so we swam around a little pinnacle and as we where heading back to the edge of "The Canyon" and found a school of 11 hammerhead sharks came out of the blue at about 50ft./15mts., they swam just above of the group for a few seconds and then headed back in to the blue! Everybody was so excited and just before we took the light current to head back to the ascent line another hammerhead came closer to us!
Once at the ascent line we did our safety stop, while another white tip reef shark swam very close to the bottom, and just before we got out of the water a silky shark appeared slowly cruising at about 30ft./10mts, not bad for a check out dive!!!
Now our divers can not wait for the first full day of diving tomorrow!

Antonio
Dive master on-board Solmar V

3 different sites on our last day at San Benedicto!

Today we woke up at San Benedicto, the first dive site we visited was “El Boiler”. Descending on the mooring line we found the surge and current to be very strong. As the divers reached the bottom they were holding with both hands and rolling from side to side. One of the divers, Dave, held with both hands and let the surge take him 360 degrees like a gymnast on an uneven bar. Everybody came back from the dive excited because of the new experience, excited and happy!
We decided to move to the other side of the island; the second dive was in a place call “El Fondeadero”, the ocean conditions were much better on this site; the water temperature around 77ºF/25ºC and 60ft/18m visibility. We saw a couple of hammerhead sharks, some white tips and one big fat Galapagos shark.
For the third dive we jumped in the pangas to get to the dive site “El Cañon”, where a school of hammerheads were waiting for us; also a Pacific Giant Manta stayed with us for a long time. After lunch we went back to “El Cañon” for the last dive of the trip, we saw again schooling hammerheads, some Galapagos sharks and a Silky shark was chasing us at 40 feet of water! The divers had the opportunity to take some great shots of him. Now we are heading back to Cabo San Lucas, everyone had a nice dinner made by our chef Tony and now everybody is relaxing watching a movie or playing cards and talking about the excellent days of diving they had onboard the Solmar V as we make our way back to Cabo.Thank you to all our guests for the great moments we had on this trip and for letting us be part of your vacations!
Pablo, DM onboard
Solmar V

Non-stop action at Roca Partida!

Roca Partida
The day we were waiting for! The surface was a bit windy at times, but nothing we weren't prepared to handle.  Everyone was excited during the dive briefing, and once we hit the water our first stop was the East side right at the ledges with white tip sharks! There were white tips all over the place, we spent a good amount of time taking lots of pictures. The surge in this area was heavy today so we stayed a little away from the rock, enough to see the parade of Galapagos shark traveling from south to north at 50 ft (15m) of water! 4 hammer heads crossed our path, visibility was 100ft (30m) plus! A lonely silky shark was also in the area and was very curious for normally shy sharks, it came back to us several times to check us out very close, while all of this was happening we had the joy of listening different vocalizations of humpbacks! We stayed at the north point for the rest of the dive, with lots of fish there from surface till 80ft of water, and 15 Galapagos sharks circling below. As we were ascending and drifting a 4ft long mobula ray found us during our safety stop We spent our surface interval watching 3 different groups of whales around the area!
A second dive kept us excited! We entered the water on the east side again, and as we descended we noticed the number of Galapagos sharks circling below had grown from 15 to 21!  We know the north point has a lot of activity so we spent most of our time there again, with black jacks, redtail trigger fish, creole fish, and a pair of huge yellow fin tunas chasing everything! We did our safety stop among fish but our bonus was to be eye witness of a male Galapagos shark chasing a female around and swimming through our group of divers several times. Once we were sitting in the the zodiac waiting for the other divers to come up we watched a male humpback demonstrates the power of his flukes by slapping them on the surface of the water 51 times non stop!
The third dive was also great, we had the company of a black manta for a little while and  once again Galapagos sharks in the north point, the bonus here was to find the school of 40 to 50 hammer heads visible from a depth of 50ft (15m), during the whole day the water temperature was 75 ̊F (23.8 ̊C) to 77 ̊F (25 ̊C), mild current from East.
Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata 

Spring is in the water!

We begun our dive day early in the morning hoping to find the big pod of dolphins that we normally find in the mornings, with a water temperature of 77 F/25 C and a visibility of 50’/15m and a mild current, the conditions seemed to be perfect for a great dive! 

As soon as we went down to  the cleaning station, two chevron mantas were already there like they were waiting for us! There was a strong north current that brought a chilly thermocline of 75F and slightly more murky water. While we hung on the reef, 5 dolphins swam by and played for a brief instant with the divers before disappearing into the blue.
On our third dive the current picked up a bit and we decided to go with it and drift along the reef! The current took us could just over the cleaning station where we spotted 3 mantas being cleaned by Clarion Angelfishes. Our fourth and last dive was in the dusk, even though the light was low, we saw hundreds of Convict Tangs that swam in formation over the reef and against the current to start mating. Besides these beautiful yellow fishes, the Flounders were preparing to mate too. We had also the chance to see the typical resident school of Steel Pompanos, along with a whale that showed a lot of pectoral fin slapping at the surface and of course several breaches, it was a big male trying to attract a mate! Tonightwe are heading for Roca Partida!

Stay tuned and stand by for more adventures on the Solmar V.
Hasta la vista,
Erick HIguera

El Boiler, what a cleaning station! We ID'd 15 different mantas throughout the day!

El Boiler, what a cleaning station! 
My first dive of the morning was to set the back anchor, not bad at all to start the day with 8 dolphins, 1 Galapagos shark and a chevron manta! In only 10 minutes! 
The conditions were very helpful today, we enjoyed of a flat ocean, sunny day, air temp of 80 ̊F (26.6 ̊C)
First dive of the morning really was like a dream, a cero current, well moderate visibility water temperature in the mid to high 70's. While we were making our descent along the anchor line to 50ft (15m) we were accompanied by lots of creolefish, black jacks, parrot fish, etc, and then what we were hoping to see showed up! Giant Mantas! We kept slowly swimming along the rock with them to the east point, where the mantas seem to like to congregate! Since we had no current, there was no need to swim once we got to this point, our divers had the opportunity to just relax, get their cameras just right and take photos! In 40 minutes of diving we had 9 mantas, 4 black ones and 5 chevrons, I am telling you mantas were coming from everywhere! They friendly mantas were really making the most of our bubbles, were swimming over our heads for long time, swimming along side us, they come close, but are careful to not hit you with the tip of their wing! These gentle giants were very demanding of attention, and we didn't object!  Once we were back on the line for our safety stop we had mantas again, along with a lonely hammer head that was cruising. We had just enough nitrox to complete safety stop 11 dolphins showed up, along with a mama and calf! It time to surface when a beautiful Galapagos shark shows up! What a dive!
For our second dive we knew where to go find the mantas and so we did. We kept counting different ones all of which were playful, the thermocline at times wase barely noticeable because of all the excitement in the water! And so this was our second dive mantas coming from all directions!
The third dive didn't disappoint with more mantas! Black jacks were chasing a lot the creolefish just under the boat! Mantas, mantas, mantas! Once out the water we were able to count with foto ID of the belly of 15 different mantas! 
On the final dive today, we had a bit of break from mantas and instead we had a bit of current from south, with minimal distraction from mantas we could explore the rock, everybody was friendly to the reef, lobsters, octopus, some flounders, moray eels, white tip sharks, clarion fish which is endemic to these islands and responsible for cleaning mantas from bugs, long nose butterfly fish, barber fish, etc. 
Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata. 
               

Baby tiger, white tip sharks, and more on our checkout dive at San Benedicto!

We open this trip doing a check out dive at Las Cuevas in San Benedicto, the water temperature was around 77F/25C and a visibility of 40'/12m. 
People jumped to the water and checked their buoyancy, right after they got ready we swam toward one of the little caves where normally the whitetip reef sharks are resting during daylight. Right when we were looking at this bottom dweller sharks, a not that small shark with a blunt head cruised gentle by on top of the cave, it was a "baby" 10 ft tiger shark that made a brief approach to a couple of our divers for then vanished in the blue. Almost all the little caves where full of whitetip reef sharks, we also spotted several electric rays that some patrolled the bottom while others slept buried under it.
After the dive we moved to the anchorage side of the island to had our classic mexican taquisa for dinner and spent the night in a nice and calm shelter.
The dive plan for tomorrow is to start at 8 am at El Boiler hoping to find some friendly mantas and the dolphins that always come only in the mornings to the dive sites of San Benedicto, just to get clean and later chase the bigeye jacks.
Stay tuned for more adventures with the folks of the Solmar V.
Hasta la vista,
Eric Higuera

"Wall" of hammerheads on our last day at San Benedicto!

Our last day of scuba diving this trip ended at San Benedicto Island, and the dive site selected for the day was “El Cañon”. At seven o’clock the people were ready to jump in the water and excited to see what this amazing place had to offer to us. The water temperature was 77ºF/25ºC, the visibility around 40ft/12m with strong current coming from east. We used the stern anchor line to get to the rock, and as usually happens when we have current, big animals showed up! When we started to go down, a chevron giant pacific manta came to visit us; she was following us for several minutes, playing with our bubbles. Because of the strong current, we had to stay close to the rocks on the protected side, and looking up to see the manta on our way to the southeast corner; once we got there, the hammerhead sharks were waiting for us and some white tip sharks too. At the beginning we had three swimming out into the blue. We were hanging close to the rocks so we didn’t drift away with the current; my group decided to stay on the same spot and wait if more hammerhead were nearby and we made the right decision because we started to see more and more! Adil  was there too and he pointed at us into the blue where more sharks were swimming around; we counted more than twenty! Everybody came back to the boat very excited after seen the school of hammerhead and the giant manta, now is time for breakfast!
For the second dive we decided to go to the same spot again, with the hope of another encounter with the sharks and for our surprise we had a “wall” of hammerheads! They were everywhere! In one moment we had a group of twelve coming in to our right side, five meters from us. Unfortunately, we had to head back to the surface, our bottom time at eighty feet of water was close to end and because of the strong current, we couldn’t move to shallow water and stay there. When we came back onboard, during the debriefing and talking to each other, we thought they were more than a hundred sharks! Apparently two schools came from different directions, where the food was.
The third dive of the day was full of surprises too, the current quieted down and the sharks were gone, but the mantas showed up. Five giant mantas came on the scene! One of them very friendly stayed with us for a long time playing with the bubbles of the scuba divers; also we had the opportunity to see some white tip sharks. When we were doing the safety stop, a group of dolphins came towards us!
After lunch, we were ready for the last dive of the journey. The current picked up and we had to made and extra effort to get to the rock. It was a short dive because of the water conditions, but full of excitement. Some white tip sharks, one manta and one gray tip shark were on our way.
As you can see, another day full of excitement on the Revillagigedo Archipelago, now the people is enjoying the sunset with some refreshments, talking about how wonderful was the last day of diving and watching some of the videos of the hammerheads, waiting for the delicious dinner that our chef Tony will cook for us “camarones rancheros” with rice and cake for dessert.
Until next time…
Pablo
DM onboard Solmar V