Due to some unseasonably bad weather we did six dives on this one dive site, however it was a large site and with the playful nature of the Sea Lions we all could have happily done a few more here. On one dive my buddy and I jumped off the back of the boat, descended directly to a natural amphitheatre, and due to the swarms of playful Sea Lions stayed there for an hour before ascending back to the boat having swum less than ten meters in that hour. At times there were up to thirty Sea Lions charging around the place.
On another dive Gary, one of my dive buddies, had turned over a star fish to show how they righted themselves, except this one curled up into a ball and being a bit cruel I flicked it off the rock to watch it roll away. It never had a chance to hit the seabed before a passing Sea Lion had picked it up and started using it as a football, we just watched in awe as three Sea Lions played with this living football before they got bored and zoomed away.
We were also lucky enough to have a night dive on this site, for the first half of the dive there was not a Sea Lion to be seen, but plenty of life that was normally hidden at night including a very strange work like thing that you could almost direct over the reef with the beam of your torch. It was my buddy’s first night dive, so I motioned him to switch off the torches so I could show him the phosphorescent made by waving our hands around. As we did this I glanced up and saw a solitary Sea Lion on the surface above us, I looked back at my buddy and pointed upwards and was surprised when his eyes opened wide in fear. I looked up and could not see the surface anymore, it was covered by about fifty Sea Lions all looking down on us. After a few minutes the braver ones came down for a closer look and a nibble, soon we had about six inquisitive Sea Lions each to play with! Hardly any of the other buddy teams saw any Sea Lions as they kept their lights on, however when our eyes got adjusted to the light we could see every buddy pair were followed everywhere by Sea Lions keeping just out of the torch beams.
The waters off Baja California are famous for Hammerhead sharks, we did two dives on a seamount called El Bajo that is famous for schooling Hammerheads, some of the footage for the recent BBC program Blue Planet was shot here. As we were anchoring on the sea mount I happened to see some dolphins off in the distance and heading for the boat, I yelled ‘Dolphins’ and pointed to them, then thought ‘Hold on they are a bit big and far away.’ Even the dive guide was not sure what they were until they got a bit closer and large white patches could be seen on their flanks and backs, they were Orcas, or Killer whales. They came quite close to the boat but sadly not close enough for a good picture, although one did swim between the boat and the tenders but we were all too slow to capture it on film. They hung around the boat for about half an hour, but never really came close so we kitted up to dive, some people were a bit nervous of getting in the water with a whale named killer, but mad people like me could not get in the water fast enough. It has always been my ambition to dive with Killer whales, sadly this was not the dive it was going to come true, they stayed and circled us all though the dive but nobody ever saw them.
There are two summits to this seamount, the large one we were anchored to and a smaller one a short swim away where the sharks often are. The plan was to descend and as a group take a compass bearing of 180 degrees and swim in the blue water to the second mount. Well the group took a very long time to get together and being the first on the bottom my buddy and I were starting to run out of no stop time, so looking at his compass I took a careful bearing and then swam in totally the wrong direction so we never got the see the Hammerheads (sorry Simon). Back on the boat the lucky few that had seen the Hammerheads were totally under whelmed by the experience, according to the fish books Hammerheads are sleek dangerous predators that can grow to over thirteen feet long. The ones they saw seemed to be about six inches long and very furry, or in other words a very, very long way away. We returned to the seamount later in the week and had another dive trying to see the Hammerheads, I think the whole group except two, saw Hammerheads on one dive or another. (The two that did not were fishing and drinking beer at the time of the second dive.) At that seamount we were also treated to a quick, no, very quick, glimpse of a Fin whale, the second biggest whale in the world.
Another dive site we visited was Swanee Reef, this was billed as the best coral reef in the La Paz area, however it had just been devastated by a recent hurricane and now 90% of the coral is smashed and dying. So what was the point of diving here I thought? The dive guide then explained that when coral dies the last thing it does is spawn, so the reef is covered with fish life eating the spawn, and fish eating the fish, eating the spawn, and fish eating the fish, eating the fish, eating the spawn, and so on.
My buddy Simon and I were first in the water (spotted a trend yet?) and descended to a flat sand bottom covered in garden eels, after a few minutes swim we found the main reef. It did have more fish life on than we had been experiencing recently but not huge numbers, a bit disappointed we poked around it for a little bit, then looked at this wall of fish about two meters high heading for us. They flowed around us as if we were a strange type of bubbly rock, they were so numerous that if you stretched your arm out you could not see the end of your hand, it was engulfed in the school of fish. It was a truly amazing dive, fish in the millions, there were shoaling Topsmelts, Spottail grunts, and another type I cannot name. Darting in and out of the schools of fish were the predators, two types of barracuda, scrawled filefish and yellow snappers. The floor of the reef was covered with Spotted Scorpionfish, we also spotted Cormorants fishing, and Sea Lions as well. The two dives we did on this site rate as the some of the best diving I have ever done, the sheer numbers of fish blew us all away.
We did a couple of dives on a wreck just to keep the wreck divers amongst us happy. The Fang Ming was sunk, as an artificial reef about five years ago so was not really covered in life yet. However diving an intact wreck in clear water is always a treat. The Fang Ming was prepared for wreck penetration prior to sinking, so most of the dive was spent inside the intact wreck, with lots of light steaming in from portholes and large holes cut in the hull. Inside the wreck all the bubbles had accumulated on the ceiling giving a strange mirror effect, which the photographers amongst us tried, mostly in vain to capture on film. The last dive of the trip was also on a wreck of a car ferry, which was a lot less intact than the Fang Ming but had the added bonus of having a friendly resident turtle.
Every dive we did in Mexico was good, the best dives were really world-class dives, everybody did at least one dive on this trip that made it into their all time top three. We also celebrated some notable achievements on this leg of the trip: -
Gary Howard celebrated his 1000th dive.
Gavin Bashford celebrated is 400th(ish) dive.
We nearly drank the boat dry of tea.
We DID drink the boat dry of beer!
Took over 4,000 underwater pictures between four photographers.
A big thanks has to go out to the crew of the Don Jose who pandered to our every needs and kept us supplied with lots of great food. As I mentioned earlier the Don Jose is not primarily a dive boat but the deck hands helped so much that in fact I think she was the easiest boat I have ever dived off. Also everybody on the trip has to be thanked for making it a great trip, especially Eddie, Ian and Rachael who joined us from another BSAC club but fitted in with ease.
Finally the biggest thanks has to go to Clive Bennet, without Clive’s stunning organising skills, this wonderful trip would never have happened.