Just back from a one week trip to the Sea of Cortez on the Solmar V. We had some decent days of diving but low to bad viz for most of the trip. A tropical depression south of Baja caused the whole area to get stirred up, killing viz and creating a bouncing ocean for the first day of travel. This was our first trip on the Solmar V and we would definitely go back to do some of their other trips given the chance. Great food and the dive staff were very knowledgable. The boat is pretty sturdy and seemed to handle the seas – though a number of passengers were extremely ill.
The only downer was that apparently, due to the seasickness of some, the captain decided to sit at one site for two whole days. So I ended up doing nine dives on the same site! Not exactly what my buddy and I were expecting, but sometimes that’s what happens. To be fair this site did have a fair amount to see – decent numbers of schooling fish, a mass mating of sea stars, some mobula rays, various types of critters and scorpionfish – but we were there for the sealions, sharks and mantas (the site was “boring as sin” according to my Buddy).
A quick note on the mantas. We had been down here before in 2002 and had great dives with mantas at La Reina, the home to many mantas. However, on this trip the boat made no effort to go there which my wife and I thought strange. On returning from the trip I found some internet articles which suggested that the mantas are now a thing of the past – “mysteriously” gone – though you never know how much to trust one or two articles on the internet. I suspect they were fished out soon after we saw them if they are gone. A sad day. See this search for more.
Once we were done with La Baillena (the whale) we moved on to the sea lion colony at Los Islotes. Home to several hundred sea lions this is the place to play with them. You can spend hours here playing with the youngsters, getting charged by the bulls and enjoying the acrobatics A huge school of sardines was present when we visited, spread across the entire dive site, there must have been millions of them. You could watch the entire food chain, fishing eating, fish eating fish, right up to the sealions eating the snappers and other larger species. Beyond the sealions, there are lots of scorpionfish here, schools of tang, angelfish and smaller tuna. The tuna were fun to watch, bombing along the reef in formation, darting into the seething mass of sardine to grab a slow mover. Just fantastic. On the boat we were all comparing it to a National Geographic film.
We also dove at some other sites in the area, Swaine Rock (lots of eels, some sealions, small hard coral reef); the Fang Ming, a boat sank to make an artifical reef; La Salvatierra, a ship that sank here in 1976, which had huge numbers of fish and other sea life; Cabo Pulmo, a protected park and home to some of the largest grouper around, viz was pretty bad here so we didn’t see the beatiful reefs that it is said to contain. We were very happy to see huge grouper and lots of them at Cabo Pulmo, the twenty five fishing boats sitting at the park boundary also gives one the idea that here at least some big fish survive.
We also took one morning to look for whale sharks. They had an ultralight from La Paz join the search and we spotted one a mile or so from the boat. Everyone jumped into the pangas and off we went to join the hunt. We found a juvenile, maybe 22ft long cruising around the shallow sands of the bay and had a fun time snorkeling with him for an hour or so. The pangas would jump ahead of the shark and dump us into the water then we would try to swim alongside him for a while. It was amazing to see this huge creature in 10 ft of water, cruising along with no worries. Since the viz here was pretty bad, the shallow water was great since we had decent sunlight to view his progress. A very cool morning and wonderful to see that such majestic creatures are still able to survive.
Photography Notes
Most of the images I show here were taken with a Tokina 10-17mm lens on a D200 in an Ikelite housing. This was my first trip using this lens so there was a bit of a learning curve. I did have backscatter issues, since the lens is so wide and the water was so murky. Around Los Islotes, the sardine school basically created a wall of murk from their feeding and fish poop. On much of the open water diving the viz was 15ft.
The Solmar V has a large camera area for folks to use, though on this trip only a few people had cameras. If everyone was a photoger on a full trip, things would be crowded. I recommend bringing some bungie cords to tie down your camera when the boat is moving through big seas. Camera rigs can easily get bounced off the table. Otherwise be prepared to sleep with your baby if the water gets rough. The boat runs 120V with North American 3-prong plugs, so US visitors can charge things just as they would at home.
All in all this was a fun trip even though we were stuck at one place for a while. At least there was diving to be had. We’d definitely go back on the boat and try some of their other trips such as the Socorro islands. It’s easy to get to Cabo San Lucas from our local international airport – SFO to Cabo is a direct 21/2 hr flight.
Jon Bertsch