Northwest Dive Club

Just got back from a fantastic trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico for some fun in the sun. Did 9 dives at local diving spots, Cabo Pulmo, and Gordo Banks. Some of the best diving I've experienced if you like the big stuff. We saw a school of dwarf manta rays twice, eagle rays, grouper bigger than me, stingrays, morays, barracuda. It truly was fantastic.

My last dives were at Gordo banks -- we hadn't seen anything on the previous dive, and as we were ascending to our deep stop depth, we ran into a school of 30+ hammerheads!!! Then 2 mins later at 60ft we ran into a 6-7ft Marlin!! Sorry about the lack of pictures of these guys -- they're pretty fast, and I didn't get any good shots of them.

Here are some of my favorite shots from the trip

I hate you

Great shots, as always. I still hate you

Very cool! Thanks for sharing!

Did you dive on your own or with an operator? Resort? Out of the back of your pickup? Water temps?

Craving a few more details here!

Nice

It's a shame you weren't around for the great vis we've been having lately. I'm afraid you've missed it though. It's really getting murky out there.

Awesome, Scott!

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.

Fantastic photos, Scott! What were you shooting? Definitely nice to thaw out there. I found diving off of Cabo to be sort of like a cross between our waters and those of the Caribbean, in terms of the marine life.

Thanks Calvin -- I shoot a d70s in an Ike housing with a single DS-125 -- basically as budget dSLR rig as there is, but I find it works pretty well. Not if the guy manning the shutter could only get his act together...

There are some nice pictures there, Scott, but the last one is extraordinary. That's a "frame and put up on the wall" picture if I ever saw one.

BDub wrote:I hate you

Great shots, as always. I still hate you

+1

Dude, your photography is really getting to be top notch

very nice shots, scott!

i'll be spending a week in cabo pulmo in november, hopefully seeing a lot of what you describe.

BDub wrote:I hate you

Great shots, as always. I still hate you

Oh man I was laughing out loud while here at work and I about fell out of my chair.

I never thought, "I hate you", would be so funny!

Great Pictures!

I agree with Lynn, That last picture is Awsome! {now be honest, did you actually take those last two pictures youself?}
If you did, you should be submitting them somewhere to get published!