Hi again!
Last night we left Roca Partida after dinner and made it all the way back to San Benedicto island, the crossing was a little bumpy, but we managed to sleep trough it. This morning we woke up next to the majestic volcano, 6:30am red sky, a beautiful sunrise and calm seas, and to make it better we dived “El Cañón”!
For our first dive of the day we set the stern line and the descent was so easy as there was not really a current at the surface, we got to the end of the line and for our surprise the water there was actually warmer than the last few days, 82F/28C, then as we were headed towards the cleaning station on the east side we could feel a little bit of current coming from the south, so we decided to go on the look for hammerheads! On our way out first we found a few bottle nosed dolphins that were looking for their breakfast, big eye trevally jacks were on their menu this morning! After enjoying that show for a few minutes with the dolphins going up and down and chasing the jacks until they made them puke (literally) before they caught a bite, we kept going and a chevron manta came to say good morning! It swam right above the group and kept going on it on way so we finally made it to the cleaning station and after waiting for a few minutes surrounded by jacks and a lot of reef fish, our patience paid off, hammerheads showed up! Not a big school but at least 8 of them swam right in front of us, actually 3 of them came up the rocks and straight to us before turning around and disappearing into the blue water. After that we left the rocks and started slowly ascending and heading back to the anchor line, on the way back...more dolphins! A few more cruised by leaving a smile on our faces, by the time we got back to the ascent line there were 4 mantas waiting for us, 2 chasing each other really fast, flipping, turning and playing around, then they calmed down and came for their bubble bath! As we started ascending we found 3 silky sharks swimming under the boat, they came very close to us checking us out several times. Well after that we didn't want to get out of the water but breakfast was waiting for us!
For the second dive at “El Cañón” the current changed, it was still mild but now coming from the south west, visibility was still good, 70ft/21m, so we went down and first thing we see was a huge Galapagos shark of about 3m/11ft cruising at about 50ft/15m, but as soon as it noticed our presence it left, so we kept going down and this time we crossed over the sand to the other corner of the dive site, on our way there we found a single hammerhead coming from the blue right to us, so we just hovered and enjoyed the view, it swam right in front of us, slowly, circled couple of times and then kept going, it was great! Then we found a chevron manta just kind of hovering against the current right above us at about 15m/50ft, so we got to the corner and just laid on the rocks waiting patiently but this time only 2 hammerheads came close to the rocks, so we left and on the way back we saw another dolphins chasing jacks and another hammerhead cruising on the sand and posing for the divers!
For our third and fourth dive of the day we decided to go to “El Boiler” to get some manta action, and yes mantas were there!! The visibility was not great, 30ft/10m, but we had 10 different mantas checking us out, and getting their bubble baths! The dives were great, we jumped in the water off the back of the boat descend and just hover looking a the mantas going up and down, swim in formation, swim into the blue, come back for more bubbles, we couldn't ask for a better show...both dives were very relaxed and the best is that everybody came back to the boat with a big smile!
Now we are resting next to the island, and tomorrow we are going back to “El Boiler” for more manta action and hopefully some dolphins in the morning!
So stay tuned!
Hasta pronto!
Antonio Romero
Dive Instructor
Hammerheads and a super friendly Manta were the highlights of our second day at Roca Partida!
The wind picked up a bit already in the morning, I would say that winds of about 10 knots were blowing all day, however, that didn’t stop us from diving and having great 3 dives at the legendary Roca Partida!
Leaving the Solmar V on the way to the pinnacle, a pod of about 10 bottlenose dolphins already waiting for us at the surface, so as soon as we jumped in to the water we intercepted them on the north point of the rock and we hung out with them for a brief time. They gave us pretty close passes and later vanished into the blue, and unfortunately didn’t come back again. After this fired up action right at the beginning of the first dive, we headed towards the east side of the rock to spend the rest of the first dive hovering between the thousands of fishes that reside in the rock, hundreds of Pacific Creolefishes, black, blue and white mouth Jacks, rainbow runners and the dozens of couple hundred pounds Yellow Fin Tunas that cruised all the time back and forth scaring all the small and baby fishes out.
On the second dive, one of the three dive teams decided to check the blue out and test their luck to find some Hammerhead Sharks, their luck was pretty good this time, they found a school of about 40 Hammers at 90’/27m, the beautiful sharks didn’t stay around long enough this time, anyways, the other two teams spent 60 minutes entertained by one of the super friendly Chevron Manta that seemed to enjoyed everybody’s bubbles and giving pretty close passes over our heads.
We decided to spent the third dive just diving shallow in no more than 50’/15m. However as soon as we broke the surface after back rolling from our pangas, 50 Hammerhead Sharks schooled together with couple dozens of Black Jacks at only 70’/20 m. so we had to readjust our dive plan and go for the sharks. Two of the of our divers stayed by the wall where the Whitetips relax, while taking a bunch of images, the same friendly Chevron Manta that we had seen already in the second dive, surprised them from behind and basically invited them to swim off the rock and hang out the rest of the dive.
Also, a group of 8-9 huge Galapagos Sharks got cleaned by the Barber fishes at the North point. This is how the second day at Roca Partida embraced us, right now we’re heading back to San Benedicto planning to start tomorrow diving El Cañón expecting to find more Hammerheads by this time at the common corner cleaning station, and also Dolphins again and more friendly Mantas, so stayed tuned for the next episode with the fellows of the SolmarV!
C’ ya later!
Erick Higuera
Hi all! Dec 16, 2014
Roca Patida this morning seemed like a place where no one has been before, partially clouded, in a remote area, completely isolated.
Water temp is getting colder a bit 25˚C/77˚F, with it good things will come soon, more specifically hump back whales!
In the mean time, we had mild current from the east all day long and water temp changes at depth made us enjoy of diversity of life! Hammerheads appeared on each dive, schools of from 60 to 100 sharks each time from depths of 21m/70 to 36m/120ft. The second dive became a drift with them for as long as 20 minutes, a wonderful view we had when just hovering in mid water watching the world of fish moving so slow adopting different formations. At times we followed the black jacks with no direction apparently but in the end they lead us to more hammer heads! The return to the rock from drifting was amazing, it transitioned from a blurry image vision in front of you until its real solid rock you can almost touch with lots of creole fish surrounding it. Galapagos sharks are a very important part of the rock, coming from all directions swimming slowly, wagging their tail in a slow motion we saw them go away and return, coming close many times only 2m/6ft from our divers! Breaking through the school of fish in shallow water activity was on as well silky sharks active chasing a school of yellow fin tunas, a chevron manta appeared slowly swimming as well to make a few circles around and goes away.
The surface intervals were something really to enjoy too, enough sun temp for a good tan!
The last dive today since the sun is setting on the west the east side was a bit darker, day time yellow fin tunas as big as 60kg/130lb approx like to chase and hunt, sharks like that as well and got excited for or if any leftovers, those10 tunas were the bad guys of the area, attacking in horizontal, descending and ascending positions, other times just cruising along checking thins out for the next attack! Obviously, we were there to enjoy and eye witness how fascinating underwater life behave when it comes to feeding.
Tunas were not the only thing here, the Galapagos shark still there, even some pregnant ones. So the highlight of the day lots of Hammer Heads, Tunas and other sharks.
Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata
Hola!
After the great manta day we had yesterday at Cabo Pearce we decided to stay one more day!
We spent the night next to the dive site and this morning as soon as the sun was up we went in the water we had planned 4 dives and on the first three we had a quite strong south current, so on the first dive we decided to head east to the deep area of the dive site and go into the current looking for hammerheads, on the way out we found 2 chevron mantas that hovered over the divers to feel their bubbles on their belly before it kept going on its way to the blue waters away from the dive site. When we got to about 80ft/24m there was 8 white tipped reef sharks circling around a rock in between a lot of reef fish, after taking a few pictures there we kept going east and when we got to 100ft swam into the blue, not much luck this time as we only found a couple of hammerheads and the strong current made it hard to keep swimming into it, so we decided to head back to the shallow area of the dive site and spend the rest of the dive there, on the way back we found a lot of lobsters, a diamond stingray, green morays, giant electric rays and more mantas! This time 3 mantas came to play with our bubbles and followed us all the way from 80ft/24m to 40ft/12m, and once there, there was a school of clarion angel fish waiting for the mantas to come and get cleaned. For the rest of the dive we only hovered at 40ft/12m watching at the mantas getting cleaned and every time they headed into the blue there was enough lobsters, octopus and a bunch of reef fish to take pictures of until the mantas came back, and that went on until we had to come up!
For our second and third dive current was still very strong so we spent both dives hovering on the north west side of the dive site were the mantas were getting cleaned, there was so many clarion angel fish, it was a great show! We counted up to 22 clarion angel fish cleaning a single manta!!! That show made our dives very easy and looong, we spent up to 80 minutes watching the mantas, taking pictures and video! Oh! And I forgot to mention that on our third dive 2 bottled nose dolphins came to quickly say hello, that was awesome!!!
For our last dive of the day the current changed, there was almost no current when we went down, but it picked up a little bit coming from the north west, this made the visibility go down a little, from 70ft/21m that we had on our first three dives to about 50ft/15m, but water was still warm!(26C/78F)
So on this dive we decided to give another try to the hammer heads and 2 groups went down deep looking for them while another group stayed shallow playing with the mantas. The 2 groups that went looking for hammerheads found 2 chevron mantas on their way out at about 80ft/24m, they only went by and into the blue the first time, after a few minutes they came back and passed a few centimeters/feet from the divers and kept circling them and going in between them before they headed back into the blue waters. Once at 110ft/34m one group spotted about 8 hammerheads that quickly disappeared, the other group didn't see them so they drifted away from the rocks into the blue and for their surprise when they went up to their safety stop, looked down and there they were!...2 schools of about 30 to 40 hammerheads!!! Obviously they swam back down for a few seconds before they had to come up! The others 2 groups kept enjoying the manta cleaning stations until they had to come up.
All to all another great day diving of the Solmar V!
Now we are heading back to Roca Partida for more shark action, so check us out tomorrow to know how that went!
Hasta pronto!
Antonio Romero
Dive Instructor
What a mantastic day we had today at Cabo Pearce at Socorro Island!We did 4 dives total with good water conditions, water temperature of 78F/25C and 50’-80’/12m-24m of visibility. The current blew the reef the entire day, a strong north current probably of about 2 knots, but we could still find shelter on the other side of the cliff where typically the Mantas love to swim up the current to stop and literally hover over the cleaning stations to get clean by dozens of the endemic bright orange Clarion Angelfishes! That is one of the reasons why the Mantas are here in the Archipelago of Revillagigedo, besides they have a food and shelter. Anyways, we had four great dives with these majestic animals that kept coming back and forth to get the parasites and old skin cleaned off and to enjoy our bubbles massage. On every dive we got the chance to see at least 5 different mantas, and every single diver form this group got countless great opportunities to get really good footage of these “sea blankets” and the divers without any cameras of course entertained the mantas with their non stop bubbles massage.Of course when the mantas weren't there at some moments, we were not wasting time! If we were not looking and finding Octopi mating, we were watching for green morays, peacock flounders and also the whitetip reef sharks that reside in the crevices of Cabo Pearce!On one of the dives we used the chance of having a strong current and tried our luck to swim along to reef up to the end of it in the pursuit of Hammerhead Sharks, at the end of the reef we foudn two hammerheads but not the school we were hoping for!.The Dolphins didn’t show up during the dives, I guess they were teasing us because during our surface intervals this porpoises were showing up in the surface left and right.We were planning at the beginning of the day to go this afternoon to Roca Partida, but considering that we had great dives at Cabo Pearce, we changed our mind and made the decision to stay another day just to have another mantastic day and who knows, maybe schooling hammerheads? Or dolphins? We will see! So stayed tuned for tomorrow’s adventures with the Solmar V folks!Hasta la próxima!Erick Higuera
Hi All!
Dec 13, 2014
Roca Partida Today.
A unique diversity of life above and below the surface! We had partially cloudy morning with sun light breaking through, underwater, the lack of light due the clouds and current from East all day made the dive interesting and active for all creatures. Life underwater was abundant, the vis 15 to 24m/50 to 80ft, water temp from 26.6˚C/80˚F to 25˚C/77˚F, heavy surge. The was current rich in nutrients made it all happen on the East side, packs of Pacific creolefish, Blackjacks, Big eye trevally, cottonmouth Jacks, yellow and red tail trigger fish, barber fish everywhere, they were all moving in different directions slowly with Fish feeding on other fish, always alert for signs of weakness, and obviously the ones that rule the place are always present. Sharks, on the South and North point of the rock the action was on! We found lots of Galapagos, silver tip and silky sharks at any depth and using the congregation of fish to come from behind. Today the change in water temp made every single fish active, white tip sharks were also congregating on the ledges by numbers of 20 to 30 of them. Lots of Leather Bass using the wall to lessen the effort of facing the current in what seem to be another thermocline at depth. Along with it camesome green water. In a slow non threatening approach these fish give you the opportunity to get great shots since they come really close to you! Another great fish we saw were the yellow fin tunas! We watched as they launched attacks at a bait ball, coming from shallow to deep water in a matter of seconds, displaying different coloration on their body markings! Also the Pacific Creolefish retracted from the imaginary line of protection. It felt like being in an aquarium of fish, with the sound travelling so fast underwater dolphins were sending out the message ----we are here---- so loud! In the search for Hammer Heads we swam into cold water pockets we found them 2, 3, 4 here and there.
By the end of our day of diving at 16:00, the light penetrating into the water was less, and those gigantic 4 to 5 ft long Yellow Fin Tunas were returning to the rock. They were swimming in 3m/10ft of water from North to South made all fish in the area feel terrified, they were just like the bad guys of the movie! Two Wahoo were very comfortable swimming around divers during our safety stop and not only that, Steel Pompanos also made those 3 to 5 minutes go by fast by staying close enough for video filming!
Just by surfacing near the rock something trigger all the frigate birds making them take off from the rock, magnificent birds reaching wing span of 217cm/85in, Boobies as well, smaller birds reaching wing span of 74cm/29in, so we ended up being on the surface with lots of birds flying over our heads!
Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata.
Hello Hello!
Last night we left San Benedicto island and made it all the way out to Roca Partida. The crossing was 9 hours of very smooth seas and this morning we woke up next to the rock ready to go diving and see what the rock had for us!
At 7:45 we did our dive briefing and by 8 o'clock we left on the pangas! As soon as we reached the north east side of the rock a pod of dolphins came to play at the front of the panga, every body geared up very quickly and back rolled into the water. As we descended we could hear the dolphins singing but no sign of them in the warm water, 78F/26C. We kept swimming north east and after almost breaking our necks of turning around over and over looking for them, they finally showed up! A pod of 12 bottle nosed dolphins came up from the blue waters, the good visibility of about 80ft/24m made it easy to spot them from the distance. They came very close to the divers and played for a few minutes, they would go up to the surface catch a breath and come back down to keep us entertained. With that start, we were already spoiled but that was not all for this dive! We drifted with the dolphins and reached the north point of the rock were we found a lot of white tip reef sharks circling close to the rock, we then went around the point to the west side and there we found galapagos and silver tip sharks that were at about 90ft/27m swimming in between schools of jacks, creole, and trigger fish. So we made it all the way to the south end of the rock and after hovering there looking at more galapagos sharks we started heading out into the blue towards our safety stop, but first when we were at 50ft/15m we spotted a silver tip shark and as we turned around there was a hammer head too, but that was not all! There was a whole school of about 80 to 100 hammer heads at about 80ft/24m!!! We kept swimming on top of them for a few minutes before we reached the surface, obviously with a smile on our faces!!!
For the second dive some groups went north and another group south, all looking for the hammerheads, and we all found some, the big school was on the north now and came very close to the divers so they all got quite nice pictures and video! On the south there was little groups of 2,3 and 4 hammer heads at the time. On the north point we also found a lot of galapagos and silver tip sharks swimming in between jacks and creole fish while a single dolphin played belly up, down deep at about 130ft/40m, and around the north west corner again 2 hammer heads came very close kind of checking us out while some galapagos swam around them.
Our third dive of the day was full of fish and a few sharks, with a strong current coming from the east, but no hammer heads this time, till today was another very good day of diving Roca Partida, so guess what? We are staying here for another day of diving so stay tuned to know how the diving goes tomorrow.
Antonio Romero
Dive Instructor
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