Post
by lundysd » Wed Jul 30, 2008 2:05 pm
I know Chris!!! While I can't deny that I had a blast, missing the epic viz here did sting a little bit. Oh well -- there's always that next perfect week in 3 years or so :)
I dove out of Cabo with Manta Divers -- it was a fantastic dive op with some great DMs. We left every morning for the dive spots -- Pulmo is 2 hrs away (4 with bad weather like we had coming back in), Gordo is an hour away, and the local diving is about 5 minutes. Local diving included the sand falls (very cool), sea lion colony (too much current this week to dive), and diving in the Corridor (about 20 minutes away).
The local diving had SPECTACULAR rock structure -- canyons, boulders, and some really impressive sandfalls that really do shoot sand directly into the neighboring 3000ft abyss.
In terms of QUANTITY of life, Pulmo is AMAZING. We must have seen schools of 1000 yellow grunts, barracuda, and jacks on every dive. The reef is pretty so-so, but the life is really impressive here.
Gordo Banks is a wild card. We saw 2 things I was really dying to see there, but that was only for a combined time of 30 seconds on 2 deep dives (and 3kt current). It could have easily turned into a blank on both dives. Minimum depth to hit the rocks at this site is 130ft, so we really just hung out above the bottom and looked around for the big fish at 110 and shallower. If I were to do it again, I'd descend to 100, hang for some time, ascend to 60, stay for a long time, and then slowly come up with a looong safety stop.
Honestly I was VERY lucky for this week of diving -- water 2 weeks prior was a chilly 62, while our week hovered in the low 80s (with a 7 degree thermocline at depth -- pacific upwellings are coooold). Viz likewise was crap the week before, but we experienced 50ft+ on every dive. Seeing the pelagics was also pretty fortunate -- schooling hammerheads are always uncommon, the marlin was a pretty rare event, and the manta school even got the DMs really excited. All in all, this dive spot has much more variability than the other Mexican dive sites like Cozumel -- in my case it was far better, but I can see how it could have been far worse as well. I think if you are craving pelagics and have the extra $$$, then the Solmar V (which leaves our of Cabo for the Socorro Islands) is a pretty sure bet for epic diving.
