DKF

Dive Report - Cabo San Lucas, Mexico - Day 02

What an amazing way to end our trip. Oscar Hernandez of Deep Blue arranged a trip to the La Paz Sea Lion Colony with Grupo Cabo. We were up at 4:45 AM to be picked up by Oscar for the 2 hour drive to La Paz Harbor where we joined Grupo Cabo for the 1.5 hour boat ride to the La Paz Sea Lion Colony.

We arrived right around 10AM to a scene straight out of National Geographic or the Discovery Channel. A small series of rocky islands covered in birds and sea lions. It is mating season for the sea lions, so there were already some pups and yearlings from last season. Because of the rut, there was a great deal of honking and barking and even one duel between males that were able to see. And the smell, let’s just say that many birds and sea lions create a lot of waste matter and the white on the rocks ain’t snow! Still, it was an amazing sight to behold.

Our first dive was a short distance away from the colony. We dropped in the water near a small arch and visibility was excellent … 60+ feet … with far better light than the dives on Saturday. And, as amazed as we were with the abundance of marine life that day, today blew it away. Huge schools of baitfish and medium-sized game fish were everywhere. Healthy coral, sea fans and eels were also present in large numbers. For a complete list of beasties sighted, see below. We circled this small islet and ended the dive going through a deep, but narrow notch which formed an arch to the next islet. The effect was like our first cave dive … a gloomy, murky enclosed space teeming with life. Que cool!

We came up for rest, decompress and water/snacks. After about an 45 minutes, we headed over to the colony to dive with the seal lions. Once in the water, we saw our first seal lion within 5 minutes. She hung back away from us, just watching. A few more did the same, never really engaging us. So, we made a long, sweeping pass around most of the colony. Again, gorgeous marine life abounded. It was like swimming in a giant aquarium. I got to try out a few macro tricks with the camera, one of which is the eel you see below.

Since I started diving, I’ve always had problems equalizing and sucking air down far too fast. Not so on the two dives today. I finally got the hang of equalizing and it became second nature. And, I set a personal best for 3000 PSI of air … stretching it out to 50 minutes of downtime with 700 PSI when we finally went up. I felt so good, I tried out some bouyancy control tricks I’d seen but never done … including hanging upside down so I could drift in for close up shots with the camera.

While I was working on bouyancy control, Kelly got the special treat of the dive … a bull sea lion came in to investigate she and Oscar. He came right up to them both three times and she got some good pics with her camera. Despite their attempts to get my attention from less than 10 feet away, I missed the whole thing!

Once topside, I took some video of the sea lion chorus which I’ll try to post here when we get home. Then, we headed to a large island with a sheltered, private beach for lunch, conversation with fellow tourists and some light snorkeling in the very calm bay. We both got a lot of sun these last couple of days and were feeling it as the boat headed back to harbor.

But, the day held one more special surprise. About halfway home, a sperm whale surfaced near the boat. Oscar cried out “ballena” (whale) and the captain turned and followed him for about 15 minutes. We never got much closer than the photo below, but it was still an amazing sight to see and a wonderful end to our first trip to Cabo.

The complete list:

Tiger Snake Eel
Panamic Green Moray Eel (photo below)
A wide variety of starfish (photo below)
Coral Hawkfish (photo below)
Giant Hawkfish
Golden Jacks, Bigeye Jacks, Green Jacks, Silverstrip Chromis, Mexican Goatfish and Chanco Surgeonfish in large schools
Panamic Seargant Majors
Blue-and-Gold Snapper
Blunthead Triggerfish
Panamic Porkfish
Spottail Grunt
Chameleon Wrasse
Blue Wrasse
Cortez Rainbow Wrasse
Cortez Chub
Scissortail Damselfish
Giant Damselfish
Mexican Hogfish
Redlight Goby
Bicolor Parrotfish
Bumphead Parrotfish
Tinsel Squirrelfish
Sea Cucumber
Reef Cornetfish
Barberfish
King Angelfish
Balloonfish (see photo below)
Spotted Porcupinefish
Lots of sea urchins, seafans and very healthy coral.
Lots of California Sea Lions (photo below)
Young adult, male Sperm Whale (photo below)