Everybody enjoyed snorkeling with the whale sharks so much that we came back for more today! We spent the night in La Paz bay and at 7am we started looking for them, no luck for almost an hour so we decided to put the pangas in the water to spread the search and...WE FOUND THEM AGAIN! 2 whale sharks were feeding in the area so once again we got the divers in the pangas and off we went in 2 groups. Jeronimo and Luis,our panga drivers, put us on the right spots several times, we had so much fun swimming with them and joking on the pangas while we rested to get back in the water with them. We had a blast! After that we had lunch and our captain Gerardo took us to the Salvatierra Wreck were we planned to do 2 more dives, unfourtunately the current was too strong and visibility was not great so we decided to move to the Swany Rock, where we did our 2 afternoon dives,the water was nice and calm at the surface, water temperature of 79F/27C and a visibility of about 40ft. All of our divers went off on buddy teams to explore the rock, where they found huge schools of mackerel cads, sea lions chasing them, schools of yellow tail snappers, grunts, nudibranchs, octopus, panamic green morays, zebra morays, jewel morays, stingrays and even a stargazer!...now after a delicious dinner prepared for our chef Tony we are navigating back to Cabo Pulmo, where we will do our 2 last dives of the trip!
Antonio
Dive master onboard
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Friday, May 30, 2014
Sea lions and sea horses at Los Islotes!
Today we dove in "Los Islotes", where the sea lion colony is. We did four dives, two in the morning and two after lunch. The water temperature was 75F and the visibility 40ft/12m. The sea lions were very playful, swimming around us our guests had many opportunities to get good photos of them! On the reef we saw different types of nudibranchs, some sting rays, scorpion fish and we found seven sea horses, six of them were brown color and one red. Another good day of diving in the Sea of Cortez onboard the Solmar V!
Pablo DM onboard
Pablo DM onboard
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
On our 2nd day in La Paz, it took only about 5 minutes to find whale sharks!
Second day in La Paz area and this morning we decided to go snorkeling instead of diving... wait, snorkeling instead of diving?! YES! We went into La Paz bay to look for whale sharks, as we know they congregate in that area, we knew it was kind of late in the whale shark season but still we had the adventurous spirit to go look for them and it only took about 5 minutes to find them! We put the pangas in the warm water, (actually was very warm 79F/27C) and divided our divers in 2 groups to go snorkeling with these gigantic animals. Our panga drivers Jeronimo and Luis put us several times in the perfect spots so we could get very nice pictures and video, most of the whale sharks were juveniles, about 7m/21ft, but we did find a couple of adults, that were a little bit bigger and much more relaxed to pose for the cameras. When we got back to the boat after 3 hours of snorkeling with these great animals, all you could see on the boat where smiles!
For the afternoon we decided to go wreck diving, so we moved at lunch time to the Espiritu Santo Island were we anchored at the Fang Ming wreck, a Chinese boat confiscated by the Mexican navy and sunk to create an artificial reef. It sits on a sandy bottom in 70ft/21m of water and it rises all the way to 45ft/13m, so shallow enough to do 2 nice 1 hour dives. The water was 77F/25C with no current at all, what made it easy to go and explore all around the wreck. While exploring it we found moray eels, a lot of sea fans, schools of snappers and grunts around it and also a green sea turtle that posed for the cameras!
For the afternoon we decided to go wreck diving, so we moved at lunch time to the Espiritu Santo Island were we anchored at the Fang Ming wreck, a Chinese boat confiscated by the Mexican navy and sunk to create an artificial reef. It sits on a sandy bottom in 70ft/21m of water and it rises all the way to 45ft/13m, so shallow enough to do 2 nice 1 hour dives. The water was 77F/25C with no current at all, what made it easy to go and explore all around the wreck. While exploring it we found moray eels, a lot of sea fans, schools of snappers and grunts around it and also a green sea turtle that posed for the cameras!
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Sea of Cortes day 2!
Today we dove in "La Reinita", three miles north of the Cerralvo Island. We did two dives there, the water temperature was 78F/26C and the visibility 40ft/12m. The dive site is a lighthouse that goes to 100 feet, at 80 feet we had the shipwreck and in shallow water, around 40 feet, we saw the sea lions playing around and the schools of fishes. Also in one of the corals we found a seahorse, this place was great for macro photographers who like to look for small things like nudibranchs, spider crabs and little reef fishes.
In the afternoon we moved to "Roca Swany", in the Espiritu Santo Island area, where we had the same water temperature but lower visibility, 30 feet/10m. We saw here more sea lions, stingrays, moray eels, scorpion fishes and lots of hard coral!
Pablo DM onboard
In the afternoon we moved to "Roca Swany", in the Espiritu Santo Island area, where we had the same water temperature but lower visibility, 30 feet/10m. We saw here more sea lions, stingrays, moray eels, scorpion fishes and lots of hard coral!
Pablo DM onboard
Monday, May 26, 2014
Our destination is the Sea of Cortes!
Our destination is the Sea of Cortes!
Today we had an exciting day of sharks here in the Sea of Cortes, and it all started with an amazing sunrise!
Our first dive of the trip was in a place called El Rincon, in the bay of Los Frailes! As with all trips, we did a checkout dive to fine tune our gear before the big show! This area was abundant in lots of juvenile fish like snappers, parrot fish, puffers, etc, shelter area for all type of juvenile fish, there were some sea lions in the area also barking very loudly, the conditions were great with over 50' visibility, no current and a surface temp of 82˚F/26˚C!
The second dive took place at El Bajo one of the main dive sites here at Cabo Pulmo, starting from north in a very nice and mild current, a good way to find south end of the reef, there was an amazing the congregation of fish in this area, from yellow snappers, groupers, parrot fish, Moorish idols, yellow tail surgeon fish, some Panamic pork fish, golden groupers, garden eels and a big sea turtle showed up too! The hard coral were very colorful with different tones of green and browns, indicating that they are very healthy. This place invites you to just lay in the bottom and enjoy life, with your camera in hand, and wait for everything to all come to you for the picture to be taken, we did not want the dive to end! Visibility was 80ft/24m and water temp 82˚F/26˚C, at the end of the dive current changed a bit flowing north so we took the ride back drifting in it for a safety top at the same time we had the opportunity to see the reef from shallow water.
The third dive took place at El Vencedor, it was once a wreck dive although there are pieces all over, so really cannot tell it was a tuna boat any more, but fish uses it as shelter, at only 50ft/15m you can sit on the bottom and wait all fish will surround you! You cannot see out of this circle of fish, the best thing can ever happen to you in this place is to have a close encounter with bull sharks as we did, they like to circle this place, come across the dive area so you really have to keep your eyes open, they just show up next to you before you know it and it is too late to snag a photo! We had the joy to dive with 9 of these majestic animals in the same frame, then 4, but there are also a lot of groupers in this area that want to get your attention really bad. The wreck lays on sandy bottom which mean lots and lots of garden ells, these things come out of the bottom as much as 2ft, so you are watching them and before you know it bull shark shows up swimming barely touching the bottom and leaving a path of no garden eels, they hide below, then slowly come out again.
Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata
Today we had an exciting day of sharks here in the Sea of Cortes, and it all started with an amazing sunrise!
Our first dive of the trip was in a place called El Rincon, in the bay of Los Frailes! As with all trips, we did a checkout dive to fine tune our gear before the big show! This area was abundant in lots of juvenile fish like snappers, parrot fish, puffers, etc, shelter area for all type of juvenile fish, there were some sea lions in the area also barking very loudly, the conditions were great with over 50' visibility, no current and a surface temp of 82˚F/26˚C!
The second dive took place at El Bajo one of the main dive sites here at Cabo Pulmo, starting from north in a very nice and mild current, a good way to find south end of the reef, there was an amazing the congregation of fish in this area, from yellow snappers, groupers, parrot fish, Moorish idols, yellow tail surgeon fish, some Panamic pork fish, golden groupers, garden eels and a big sea turtle showed up too! The hard coral were very colorful with different tones of green and browns, indicating that they are very healthy. This place invites you to just lay in the bottom and enjoy life, with your camera in hand, and wait for everything to all come to you for the picture to be taken, we did not want the dive to end! Visibility was 80ft/24m and water temp 82˚F/26˚C, at the end of the dive current changed a bit flowing north so we took the ride back drifting in it for a safety top at the same time we had the opportunity to see the reef from shallow water.
The third dive took place at El Vencedor, it was once a wreck dive although there are pieces all over, so really cannot tell it was a tuna boat any more, but fish uses it as shelter, at only 50ft/15m you can sit on the bottom and wait all fish will surround you! You cannot see out of this circle of fish, the best thing can ever happen to you in this place is to have a close encounter with bull sharks as we did, they like to circle this place, come across the dive area so you really have to keep your eyes open, they just show up next to you before you know it and it is too late to snag a photo! We had the joy to dive with 9 of these majestic animals in the same frame, then 4, but there are also a lot of groupers in this area that want to get your attention really bad. The wreck lays on sandy bottom which mean lots and lots of garden ells, these things come out of the bottom as much as 2ft, so you are watching them and before you know it bull shark shows up swimming barely touching the bottom and leaving a path of no garden eels, they hide below, then slowly come out again.
Dive Inst
Daniel Zapata
Friday, May 23, 2014
What a day we had back at San Benedicto!
It was our last day of diving on this trip and what a day we had back at San Benedicto! We awoke to a pod of dolphins and a 3 silky sharks around the boat, and getting everyone excited and wanting to get in to the water to get nice pictures and video of them.
We started at "El Canion" for the first 2 dives of the day. We headed down the descent line with a mild east current and a water temperature of 26C/79F, as we hit 24m/80ft we found a little thermocline of about 24C/75F. We were expecting to see the dolphins straight away as we heard them singing as we descended but to our surprise was a Chevron manta the one waiting for us! We spent some time playing around with it as we swam towards the northeast corner of our dive site, on the way we saw a few solo hammerheads getting close to the rocks. Once at the cleaning station juvenile silver tip sharks came by and a few green morays were sticking out of the rocks, not much hammerhead activity until we came back to the area on our second dive! Then we all headed in to the blue in different directions, a group found a school of 11 hammerheads, after waiting patiently the hammerheads came really close to pose for the cameras! The other group was even luckier, as they saw a school of about 40 to 50 hammerheads swimming right bellow them at about 110ft/33m. To finish the first dive as we got closer to the boat dolphins came by chasing jacks all over the site and on both dives we had the silky sharks right under the boat coming by during our safety stop!
Our third and fourth dive we were full of manta activity, we had 2 excellent dives with 6 different mantas, 4 chevron and 2 black mantas, the black ones are usually not as playful as the chevrons but today they kept the show running! Our divers were all very excited and posed with the mantas for pictures and video on both dives, at the end everybody was hanging at the safety stop looking to the mantas like saying "I dont want to go home!". Another great day of diving aboard the Solmar V!
Antonio
DM on board Solmar V
We started at "El Canion" for the first 2 dives of the day. We headed down the descent line with a mild east current and a water temperature of 26C/79F, as we hit 24m/80ft we found a little thermocline of about 24C/75F. We were expecting to see the dolphins straight away as we heard them singing as we descended but to our surprise was a Chevron manta the one waiting for us! We spent some time playing around with it as we swam towards the northeast corner of our dive site, on the way we saw a few solo hammerheads getting close to the rocks. Once at the cleaning station juvenile silver tip sharks came by and a few green morays were sticking out of the rocks, not much hammerhead activity until we came back to the area on our second dive! Then we all headed in to the blue in different directions, a group found a school of 11 hammerheads, after waiting patiently the hammerheads came really close to pose for the cameras! The other group was even luckier, as they saw a school of about 40 to 50 hammerheads swimming right bellow them at about 110ft/33m. To finish the first dive as we got closer to the boat dolphins came by chasing jacks all over the site and on both dives we had the silky sharks right under the boat coming by during our safety stop!
Our third and fourth dive we were full of manta activity, we had 2 excellent dives with 6 different mantas, 4 chevron and 2 black mantas, the black ones are usually not as playful as the chevrons but today they kept the show running! Our divers were all very excited and posed with the mantas for pictures and video on both dives, at the end everybody was hanging at the safety stop looking to the mantas like saying "I dont want to go home!". Another great day of diving aboard the Solmar V!
Antonio
DM on board Solmar V
Thursday, May 22, 2014
4-5 mantas playing with our divers on every dive!
We did our dives at Cabo Pearce at Socorro Island, the water conditions were good for the first and second dive, temperature around 77ºF/26ºC and visibility 60 feet/18m with extra current on our last dive of the day. Underwater we found 4 or 5 mantas playing with our bubbles on each dive, white tip sharks, octopuses, flounders and lobsters to take pictures of. On the last dive, because of the increased current, we got to do a drift dive from the panga and simply drift with the current! As usual, the mantas were the main interest of the people, some time we had four at the same time one after the other like a train. All of them were very friendly and came very close to the divers, almost at a hand's reach. Some of the divers stayed in the water for more than an hour because the mantas never left us, until we had to go because no more air in our tanks! The best dive was the last one with one manta circling us for more than 40 minutes going up and down, from one diver to the other and so on until we run out of air again after 70 minutes of diving. Today we had another excellent day of diving in Revillagigedo, now we are heading to San Benedicto for our last day of scuba diving!
Pablo DM onboard
Pablo DM onboard
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