Third Day at Roca Partida and "love is in the water"!

Third Day at Roca Partida and the yellow fin tunas were still active, they kept passing close to the surface and among the divers, this gave us a number of great chances to approach them to just 6 ft/2 m, courting behavior was still on...
On our first dive we could finally find the massive school of bonitos, which was herded by silkies into a more compact bait ball. Besides the school of bonitos, we found Galapagos and silver tip sharks passing over and aver by the south point of the rock. Another group found about 40
hammerhead sharks schooling. In the second dive of the day the whole action was quiet, so we decided to hang out by the white tip reef sharks balcony, apparently “love is in the water”, the white tips were also trying to mate. We decided not to go deeper on the third dive and we hung out close to surface trying to get cool pictures of the beautiful tunas that cruised by the rock and just underneath the surface. 
We were hoping to run into the schooling silkies and whale sharks here at Roca... we weren’t that lucky this time, but this trip is not over yet!  Let's see what we find at Socorro or in San Benedicto. Meanwhile we’ll dive tomorrow at Cabo Pearce, so stay tuned and check if we find these gentle giants this time!
Hasta la vista!
Erick Higuera

Day 2 at Roca Partida, the Solmar V's favorite dive site!

Hola from Roca!
It`s been a fun-filled day here at the Solmar V`s favorite dive site. The weather has been amazing giving us sunny and calm conditions. The diving has been great as well. The surface temperature increased to 77 degrees F and our visibility has been constant at 75 feet (25m). There was an interesting temperature gradient which may account for the better action today. On our  first dive we had lots of Galapagos, Silvertips, and Silkies. They were darting in and out of the thousands of creolefish that were lazily feeding in the slight current. On the south side we found a nice school of hammerheads which we had for nearly 10 minutes. The group of 30 or so hammerheads curiously circled around many times. BBC`s John MacIntyre followed the school for some time, but said his best efforts were on the meandering Silvertips, which were showing courting behavior. Later on we spotted a Giant Pacific Manta, which is an uncommon sighting here at Roca. The manta remained deep in the cooler water below. On our second dive, we spotted the hammerheads again. This is, of course, in addition to all the other sharks. We decided to wait on the south end to  see what else might show up. Our patience paid off and a manta glided by. This time it came up to greet us. For 20 minutes or so we had the manta playing between divers and circling us following one of the groups all the way to their safety stop. Our final dive today was very relaxing. There was no current and there was lots of action everywhere, so we didn`t have to move much. We watched countless sharks swimming left to right, right to left, up and down...It was a lot of fun. The baitfish (creolefish) kept jumping as we had some huge yellow fin Tuna darting after them. We even spotted another school of hammerheads. 
Lots to see here and even more to come tomorrow. 
Until Next Time,
Dave Valencia
<'(((><

Roca Partida, Day 1

Roca Partida is a magnificent place to dive, and when the weather's just right, there's no question as to why it's one of the best dive sites in the world. The surface water temp was 75°F(24°C), we had visibility of well over 80’ (24 m), and with no current at all, we had perfect conditions to introduce our divers to the rock. On our first day at Roca we had a lot of sharks... so much so that on our first dive, there wasn't a moment where you couldn't find a shark! We saw numerous friendly white tip sharks, little ones, juveniles and even pregnant females, we also had very close encounters with Galapagos and Silky sharks! As we explored more of the area a massive school of silver tip sharks showed up, and we were able to witness an interaction bewteen the yellowfin tunas and the Silky sharks.  The yellow fin tunas were rubbing against silky sharks, getting rid of parasites, schooling hammer heads, all together in a world of fish.

We finished our day with a sunset panga ride around the rock courtesy of Geronimo! There's nothing like finishing the day, watching the sun go down behind Roca Partida with a glass of red wine in your hand! 
Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata

Friendly Mantas on our first full day at San Benedicto!

Hi folks!
Today was our first full dive day from our last trip of the season. We got back to San Benedicto last night and spend a nice and smooth night on the south side of the island. Early in the morning once the sun swas up, we  moved to El Boiler hoping to find some mantas at the cleaning station and our friendly dolphins that always come and visit the pinnacle during the mornings. The water is warming up, 76F/25C at the surface with and 74F/23C at depth, and visibility of 60´/20m. Two dolphins were chasing the bigeye jacks until these poor fishes throw up and the dolphin gets the prize! The Dolphins took off and suddenly one of the most friendly Mantas that is a member of this Revillagigedo´s population and has been hanging out at Socorro island  for the last 3-4 months showed up, it was good to have a friendly face back at El Boiler! We all had the incredible chance to give to this manta a "bubble bath" which she  enjoyed immensely.
On the second dive our friendly manta was gone, but a different one stopped by, but this one didn´t seem to be interested in our bubbles, so as soons as she got clean swam away and dissapear in the blue.
We spend the rest of the day watching the white reef sharks trying to mate And I like to mention that John McIntyre our BBC guest is in our trip this time and I guess he is a lucky guy, this manta was getting cleaning by the clarion angelfishes right in front of his camera. Jonh is putting a show together for the Fast Track TV series, so hopefully he will get more amazing shots during the trip, tonight we´ll go to Roca Partida. 
Stay tuned and wait for our Roca News!
Hasta la vista!
Erick Higuera

Our last day at San Benedicto

Isla San Benedicto
Our first dive today took place at El Canon.  We hit the 75F water at 7:30 and we had a mild current from the east and over 40' visibility. Our first stop upon descent was at the rocks around El Canon at 40' below the surface.  There we found  lots of fish, moray eels, lobsters, scorpion fish, etc.  We could hear the dolphins chirps heading in our direction! While we waited for the dolphin, we saw some silver tip sharks, and then out of the blue comes 5 dolphins chasing big eye jacks!  Our encounter with them was very excited, everyone was happy to play with these happy animals, and it seemed as if they enjoyed playing with us just as much!  We found about 10 big hammerheads out in the blue, but a bit shallower at about 25'.  The hammerheads disappeared into the blue, just in time for 6 more dolphins to show up!  We played with a group of dolphins for a second time before ending the dive.  

We moved to El Boiler for dives two and three, and we had even better visibility, and tons of fish.  We had a total 3 giant mantas on both dives at El Boiler, one black and two chevron!  And for the macro enthusiast, there were lots of fun little critters to take photos of like nudibranchs all over the place, they're not hard to find at all! 

Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata

Thanks for a great season from Claudio!

Hola amigos,
Today we were at Isla Socorro, and what a great trip it has been so far!  3 excellent days at Roca, and the trips not even over yet! We have had some great diving so far this trip, and an excellent season full of guests from all over the world! We've had fantastic adventures with giant mantas, playful dolphins, tons of sharks, and massive schools of fish that you have got to see first hand! I want to take the chance to thanks to all the wonderful guests I have had an opportunity to meet from many countries like: Germany, Canada, Rusia, Belgium, USA, Turkey, Italy, France, UK, China, Japan, Argentina, Spain, Brazil, of course Mexico and many others for coming on board SolmarV to take part in this fantastic adventure and I hope to see you back aboard the Solmar V soon! Also I'd like to thank our awesome crew: Gerardo, Jero, Aurelio, Pancho, Tony, Sabin, Crazy Luis, Dany, Eric, Ricardo, Dave and Adil for being so much fun to work with.  I'll see you all Isla Guadalupe for more!!! The Solmar V has got one more day at San Benedicto, and one more adventure to the revillagigedos still left before we end this season, we found whale sharks on this trip, who knows what we will find next time?!

Claudio Bonato
Divemastera

Our third and final day at the famous Roca Partida didn`t disappoint

Today was our third and final day at the famous Roca Partida. Our divers had a fantastic run here and our last day didn`t disappoint. Our first dive had very little current and a lot of sharks. Galapagos, Silvertips, and Silkies were everywhere. Out in the blue we spotted a nice school of
20 hammerheads mixing with 10 Silvertips. They were going in and out of a swirling mass of bonito. Back at the rock we found an even bigger mass of bonito pulsing with life at nearly 90 ft. Silkies and Silvertips were showing some interest as they swam around and through the bait. Towards the end of the dive we heard some chirping......DOLPHINS! At first there were two playful dolphins swimming with all three dive groups. They were allowing us to get pretty close. Then more showed up. In all we had 10 dolphins buzzing by and more of their friends joined in the fun. They followed us all the way through our safety stop.
Our second dive started a little slow. We found a nice spot where silvertips and galapagos sharks made a nice school of 20 and circled near the south point. After that school it was quiet...with lots of single sharks but nothing organized. Then a juvenile whale shark swam from the depths. With it came two Galapagos sharks underneath it rubbing. It curiously swam to the group and went back and forth along the wall a few times and swam to the other side of the rock. This is where another one of groups encounter the little guy (10ft long) and they were able to swim with it for quite some time. Our divers were ecstatic at yet another juvenile whale shark in the last three days.
Our final dive had a bit more current so we took it easy after battling the current for a few minutes. One of our groups found a Giant Pacific Manta and played with it for almost the entire time. Others didn`t get a glimpse of it until the end of the dive. Either way, it was a great sighting here at Roca. Our divers have been treated to some great dives here and we`re looking forward to some more at Socorro Island tomorrow.
Until Next Time,
Dave Valencia