Diving in La Paz, Mexico

KeithBoll · Post by **KeithBoll** » Sun Oct 16, 2016 8:57 am

This was my second visit to La Paz - I went there four years ago. I've been eager to go back. La Paz is not a great place for colorful corals. La Paz does not have the clearest viz - but what it does have is an amazing abundance of underwater life and diversity! Part of my "bucket list" for this trip was to be able to get some good pictures of jeweled morays and zebra morays - thankfully, I found a lot of them, as well as other surprises. Here are a couple of the dive sites that I enjoyed the most:

La Reina - La Reina is a reef structure about two hours from La Paz in the middle of the Sea of Cortez. There is an actual island (should we say rock?) that sticks out of the water. Underneath the water, are a wonderful series of canyons and valleys. The rock structure is magnificent. Fish life is incredibly abundant and you can see bait balls on almost every dive. I found several zebra moray eels out foraging for their next meal. Great place to explore!

El Bajo - this is the most well known dive site and it's two and a half hours straight out to the Sea of Cortez. It's actually a series of 3 underwater pinnacles. On the pinnacles (which start at 60 feet deep), there are more moray eels than I have ever seen on any other dive site. They are everywhere - yes - hundreds of them. It's like an underwater condo resort for Moray Eels. We dove off the Northern pinnacle - into the blue - in search of hammerhead sharks. By using compass headings, we made wide circles just North of the main pinnacle in hopes of seeing hammerheads circling. After 40 minutes of searching - bingo! We spotted a school of at least ten hammerhead sharks circling. The viz was maybe 50 feet - and I swam towards them. I got one okay picture - the main treat was to be able to see these with the naked eye. Absolutely gorgeous creatures!

The Sea Lion Colony - another 90 minute boat ride to an island that is home to about 300 sea lions. This area is actually protected. Beautiful underwater arches and loves of opportunity to interact (and photo) the sea lions.

Salvatorrie and Fang Ming wrecks. There are several wrecks to dives - and these two stand out. There are resident sea turtles, tons of different kinds of fish to see - jeweled morays, octos and more. By the way - I was surprised at the abundance of pacific common octos - we saw them every day and on almost every dive site! You can swim through these wrecks - and there is life and corals both inside and outside the wrecks.

A surprise and delight was the discovery of a pair of seahorses just outside the Salvorrie wreck on some Gorgonian coral that was growing on a pile of rubble. I had a great time taking photos of this lovely pair!!

We also snorkeled with a whale shark - the area where they feed for plankton is cloudy because of the plankton - so the shot shows that. It was quite an experience to swim with this 15 plus feet creature! He/she was absolutely gorgeous! In the same area - we came across a bunch of floating dead fish and wondered what was going on. We slowed the boat down - and what we found was a HUGE bait ball of jacks - and a pod of dolphins that kept circling back and eating them. We jumped off the boat and snorkeled in the area with the dolphins. They kept returning to the bait ball and the experience of hearing dolphin song and having about 20 dolphins swim around you was incredible. They also blew blue bubble rings beneath me several times. This as was an experience I will never forget!

I went with the Cortez Dive Club organization. Their boats and equipment are well maintained - I would recommend them. Water temp was a pleasant 84 degrees (which is why I went the first week of October). I brought all my own diving gear (except tank) and used a 2 mil hoodie top. That was enough to keep me warm. I highly recommend a September/October/early November trip to La Paz for diving.