Trip Report Socorro Jan 2021 Diving Trip Report

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Dan

Contributor
Messages
10,015
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Location
Lake Jackson, Texas
# of dives
1000 - 2499
Summary
This is a nine-day (7-15 January, 2021) liveaboard trip to Revillagigedo Archipelago, or it’s a better known as Socorro, with Nautilus Belle Amie. The itinerary, as shown in Table 1, includes 5 days of diving, 4 dives / day, except 2 days during Navy check-in while in Socorro island and a long voyage from Socorro island to Roca Partida, to a total of 18 dives and a snorkeling with silky shark off the back of the boat.

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Figure 1 shows the Nautilus Nautilus Belle Amie cruising routes (marked by red arrows) around the Revillagigedo Archipelago. We did 1st day of diving in The Canyon, northwest of San Benedicto island, 2nd day in Cabo Pearce, southeast of Socorro Island, 3rd and 4th day around Roca Partida, the 5th (last) day in The Boiler, southeast of San Benedicto Island. Some of the special moments were getting very close encounters with giant mantas and friendly bottlenose dolphins, big mama whaleshark and juvenile whaleshark.

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Figure 1: Nautilus Undersea routes in Revillagigedo Archipelago (courtesy of Google Earth)

Here is a short video of the highlight of what I saw during the 5 days of diving in Socorro:


Background
Socorro island is about about 283 miles (468 km) southwest off Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, as shown in red dot, in Figure 2, below. It would take about 24-28 hour voyage from Cabo San Lucas to Socorro Island. There are similar kind of diving destinations around eastern pacific besides Socorro, i.e., Cocos, Malpelo and Galapagos, which are also indicated by red dots on their geographic locations and names in Figure 2.

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Figure 2: Socorro geographic location (courtesy of Google Earth)

Since I live near Houston, Texas, it was an easy 3-hour nonstop flight, which is great way in minimizing exposure to strangers in the airport during this pandemic period.

This is my second time to be in Socorro. The first time was in December, 2018, Socorro 22-30 December, 2018 Trip Report | ScubaBoard So, I know what to expect as far as the water temperature and what wetsuit thickness I should bring. The water temperatures in Socorro then were about 75-77 °F (24-25 °C). I was comfortable with my 5mm full wetsuit with hood. It turned out to be the same case in January 2021, as you see in Table 1, above.

The Liveaboard
Nautilus Belle Amie, as shown in Figure 3, is 134-foot (41m) long ship with 17 cabins, catering for up to 35 guests, along with three rigid inflatable boats (RIB), see Nautilus Belle Amie - Nautilus Liveaboards for more detail info. It is the newest and largest of Nautilus liveaboards. The wide body makes it more steady sailing in the open pacific ocean and the quietness of the engine made me sleep like baby at night. I didn’t even need a motion sickness during the 24-hour crossing.

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Figure 3: Nautilus Belle Amie (courtesy of Nautilus Liveaboards)

It runs by 13 crews (a captain, a mate, an officer, an engineer, a chef, 3 hosts, a deckhand and 4 divemasters) for 20 guests on this trip. So, they work very hard to maintain day-to-day operation of the boat and to serve the guests.

The boat layout is very functional for divers. Galley, dinning, and entertainment areas are on the main deck. Camera station and dive deck are outside on the back of the main deck. Eight staterooms and a triple stateroom are in lower deck. Two premium suites are on the main deck. Six premium suites are on the upper deck. Above the upper deck is a sundeck with open air sitting area for people to relax in between divings and dive briefing, where people can spread out and keep social distancing. Everyone did wear mask in such gathering.

The lower-deck stateroom, where I stayed, has a single bed on the left side with longer leg room for tall person, next to the shower, as shown in Figure 4, below.

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Figure 4: Left side of Nautilus Belle Amie stateroom E

On the right side of the cabin is a double bed, next to toilet, as shown in Figure 5, below.

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Figure 5: Right side of Nautilus Belle Amie stateroom E

I was fortunate to be able to have a cabin alone without paying an additional single supplement, especially during this pandemic situation. There are plenty of closet space and to store our luggage below the bed for 2 divers, as you see in the two pictures, above. The hosts did a great job of keeping our cabin cleaned and orderly.

Setting up our dive gears and handling them were pretty typical liveaboard with RIB. Once we kit up our dive gears at our assigned stations in the dive deck and ready to board on the RIB, the deckhand would take our fins and cameras. We then walked 3 steps down to the loading platform, got on the RIB by grabbing on a rope, put our legs over the side of the RIB (one at a time), sit on the RIB side and slided to the back of the RIB. Once everyone was onboard, the deckhand would then handed over the fins and the cameras and off we went to the dive site.

The RIB can take 10 people (including DMs and the RIB pilot). There were 20 divers on that trip. We were divided, depending on the diver skill levels and preferences, into 3 groups of 7 divers in Shark 1, 7 divers in Shark 2 and 6 divers in Mantas. Shark 1 and 2 are for the experienced self-reliant divers looking for complete freedom on their dives. Mantas is for less experienced (especially in diving in blue water) looking for the reassurance of being with a DM to guide and lead the group.

When we were ready to go diving in a new dive site, we would meet at the sun deck area, listen to the dive briefing and headed back down to dive deck afterwards to suit up. Figure 6, below, shows the dive deck area with dive-gear station on the right side, gas-filling station on the left side, and camera station on the background.

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Figure 6: Nautilus Belle Amie dive deck

For water entry, the RIB pilot would count to 3 and we all backrolled into the water together at the same time. Each group would descend together following the DM.

The meal (breakfast, lunch & dinner) were served by the hosts during this pandemic situation, no buffet. The dining room would be kept into maximum of 14 divers at a time. For example, Shark 1 and Mantas would dine first and after 30 minutes, they were asked to vacate the dining room to let Shark 2 to have their turn to dine. On the next day, Shark 2 would dine first. Shark 1 and Mantas would dine after Shark 2 left the dining room. This alternating order of meal time was conducted for the 8 days we were on the boat. The food were excellent. Special dietary meal were served to those who asked for it.

Everyone wore mask when they were outside of their cabins, except during mealtime, where we were spread over the huge dining area, as shown in Figure 7, below.

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Figure 7: Nautilus Belle Amie dining room

They have a spacious entertainment room, where I hang out mostly when I edited my pictures after diving and meal time, as shown in Figure 8, below.

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Figure 8: Nautilus Belle Amie entertainment room

To be continued to the next post.
 
The diving
We did 4 dives in 3 diving days and 3 dives in 2 diving days, (1) when we were in Socorro Island during Navy check-in and (2) after a long voyage from Socorro to Roca Partida, to a total of 18 dives, with a night snorkeling with silky sharks when we were in Socorro Island. The diving schedule would be posted in the lounge whiteboard and one of the divemasters would announce it to everyone, 15 minutes before the scheduled dive briefing. Typical 4-dives / day schedule was as follows:

06:30 – 7:30 Continental breakfast
07:30 – 07:45 Dive briefing on sun deck
07:45 – 08:00 Suit up dive 1
08:00 – 09:15 Dive 1
09:30 – 10:00 Hot breakfast for Shark 1 & Mantas
10:00 – 10:30 Hot breakfast for Shark 2
11:00 – 12:15 Dive 2
12:15 – 12:45 Lunch for Shark 1 & Mantas
12:45 – 13:15 Lunch for Shark 2
14:00 – 15:15 Dive 3
16:00 – 17:15 Dive 4
18:00 – 19:00 Cocktail hour
19:00 – 19:45 Dinner for Shark 1 and Mantas
19:45 – 20:30 Dinner for Shark 2

We saw 1 to 4 giant mantas in most of our dives in Cabo Pearce and The Boiler (that’s the main reason I came to Socorro), lots of pelagic fish, including 5 species of sharks (galapagos, silvertip, whitetip, silky and hammerhead) and friendly dolphins in all dive sites.

1st Day of Diving
We had a great 1st day of diving in El Canyon, northwest side of San Benedicto island, as shown in Figure 9 and 10, below.

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Figure 9: San Benedicto island

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Figure 10: San Benedicto island (courtesy of Brian Forman, Mate of Nautilus Belle Amie)

Pato, DM of Shark 2 group, turned out to be a great artist and had drawn The Canyon dive site (to be used during the dive briefing), as shown in Figure 11, below.

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Figure 11: The Canyon dive site (courtesy of Pato, DM of Nautilus Belle Amie)

Water temperature was about 75°F. Dive 1 was in The Canyon, 98 feet depth with 40 feet visibility. It was a calm dive site, a good place for a check dive. Some fish worth noting were silvertip shark, whitetip shark, panama graysby, and torpedo ray, as shown in Figure 12 to 15, below, respectively. We also saw lots of spiny lobsters and a few dolphins swam by, checking us out.

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Figure 12: Silvertip shark in The Canyon (courtesy of Bela Asztalos)

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Figure 13: Whitetip shark in The Canyon

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Figure 14: Panama graysby in The Canyon

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Figure 15: Torpedo Ray in The Canyon

Dive 2, 3 and 4 were repeats of Dive 1. We got more day light for better video and picture taking. We saw schooling of cottonmouth jacks, more whitetip and silvertip sharks, a galapagos shark and a green moray. After dinner we sailed to Socorro Island.

2nd Day of Diving
Dive 5 was in Cabo Pearce, southeast of Socorro Island, as shown in Figure 16.

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Figure 16: Cabo Pearce

Cabo Pearce dive site illustrated by Pato, is shown in Figure 17, below.

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Figure 17: Cabo Pearce dive site (courtesy of Pato, DM of Nautilus Belle Amie)

To be continued to the next post (hit the limit of number of pictures in a post).
 
We went deep on that first morning dive of the day, down to 131 feet depth, to check out a big mama whaleshark, as shown in Figure 18, below. It was around 8am in the morning. It’s still a bit dark sky and medium visibility (60 feet). We also saw stingray, peacock flounder, mantas and hammerheads.

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Figure 18: Big mama whaleshark in Cabo Pearse (courtesy of Matt Niesen)

Dive 6 was done on the shallower part of Cabo Pearce (118 feet depth) after the excitement of the previous dive. This site is well known for the cleaning station of oceanic mantas (as shown in Figure 19 & 20).


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Figure 19: Oceanic manta in Cabo Pearse (courtesy of Bela Asztalos)

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Figure 20: Oceanic manta in Cabo Pearse (courtesy of Bela Asztalos)

We also saw, again, more dolphins, as shown in Figure 21, below.

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Figure 21: Bottlenose dolphins in Cabo Pearse (courtesy of Matt Niesen)

Dive 7 was a repeat of Dive 6 at shallower depth (107 feet depth) with more daylight and better visibility (80 feet). We saw more mantas cruising by few inches above our heads, asking for bubbles.

After checking in with the Mexican Navy in the afternoon, we had a night snorkeling with silkies in the rear of the boat. It’s an interesting experience. The back light from the rear of the boat was not bright enough to make good video and video light was not allowed for night snorkeling with silkies, but camera strobe light with single flash was allowed. So, I just snorkeled behind my dive buddy with his big camera, filmed the flashing actions with my GoPro 6 and screen captured the images, as shown in Figure 22 and 23, below.

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Figure 22: First image of silkies taken during night snorkeling from the back of the boat.

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Figure 23: Second image of a silky taken during night snorkeling with from the back of the boat

After we were done with the night snorkeling with silkies, we cruised down to Roca Partida for 3rd and 4th days of diving.

3rd & 4th Days of Diving
The diving in Roca Partida could be challenging due to the exposure to open ocean, as the island is just a small, steep rock in the middle of pacific ocean, as shown in Figure 24, below.

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Figure 24: Roca Partida (courtesy of Brian Forman, Mate of Nautilus Belle Amie)

Figure 25 shows the dive site, again illustrated by Pato, our DM of Shark 2 (the best and luckiest group of divers on that trip, LOL)

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Figure 25: Roca Partida dive site (courtesy of Pato, DM of Nautilus Belle Amie)

Dive 8 to Dive 14 were all done in Roca Partida with depth around 97 to 128 feet, 80 feet visibility, medium surf, a bit of choppy, typical ocean diving. There were some horizontal currents that our DM swam against, as he spotted something good to see. We tried to follow him to no avail, finning like crazy, but going no where. Some of us tried to swim to the sheer vertical wall of Roca Partida to hide from the current, to use nook and cranny of the wall to hide and push ourselves forward against the current to the other end of the corner, using our naked hands (gloves were not allowed there), but the surging ended up shearing some of the skin off our hands. We were warned and told not to do this, but swimming with big cameras won’t be as streamline as the divers without cameras, and our regular fins won’t be as fast as the DM’s long skindiver-type fins. So some of us (myself included) just gave up, started to drift with the current and left behind. There was an upwelling too, where I just couldn’t swim against it even by deflating all the air out of my BCD. It bought me near to the surface, but the upwelling somehow died down near the surface and I was able to descend back to the deep in relatively short of time. What a ride that was.

To be continued to the next post.
 
Luckily, currents bring pelagic fish. We saw another pod of bottlenose dolphins, schooling of yellowfin tunas, schooling of hammerheads, and juvenile whaleshark, as shown in Figure 26 to 29, respectively, below.

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Figure 26: Schooling of yellowfin tuna in Roca Partida

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Figure 27: Yellowfin tuna in Roca Partida

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Figure 28: Schooling of hammerheads in Roca Partida (courtesy of Nicholas)

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Figure 29: Juvenile whaleshark in Roca Partida (courtesy of Matt Niesen)

Another interesting site to see in Roca Partida is the Balcony, where local resident of whitetip reef shark sleep during the day, as shown in Figure 30 and 31, below.

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Figure 30: First local resident of The Balcony of Roca Partida (courtesy of Bela Asztalos)

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Figure 31: Second local resident of The Balcony of Roca Partida (courtesy of Bela Asztalos)

5th Day of Diving
On this day we went cruising back to southeast of San Benedicto to an underwater mount dive site called The Boiller, as illustrated by Pato in Figure 32, below.

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Figure 32: The Boiler dive site (courtesy of Pato, DM of Nautilus Belle Amie)

We dived 3 times there (Dive 15, 16 and 17). During the first dive of the day, around 7:20ish, I spotted tiger shark at the bottom (at the 140 feet mark in Figure 32, above). It was too deep and too dark to see it closer. I didn’t get a good picture of it, but some other divers did. Other than that, The Boiler was hot with oceanic mantas and again with a pod of dolphins, which at this point I saw enough of them, stopped taking pictures or videos and just watching the show while hanging in the blue water. By the end of Dive 17, current started to pick up and Captain Shep decided to move us back to The Canyon for our last and easy dive, before sailing back to Cabo in the next morning.

Dive 18, our last dive, in The Canyon, I just took it easy and snapping pictures of fish uniquely found in eastern pacific, like the redtail triggerfish and clarion anglefish, as shown in Figures 33 and 34, respectively.

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Figure 33: Redtail triggerfish in The Canyon

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Figure 34: Clarion angelfish in The Canyon

The next day, we headed back to Cabo San Lucas. We had all day to dry up our dive gears in the sun and packed our bags. We arrived in Cabo San Lucas on 15 January morning, disembarked the boat around 8:30am.

Some of us headed straight to the airport to fly home or to Sea of Cortez for their next adventure. While I spent another day in Cabo San Lucas to meet some old friends, Gaby & Rene of Kraken Divers to start planning for our next trip back to Cabo in May.

Conclusions
My impression of the diving and the trip are very positive. If you want to see giant mantas and bottlenose dolphins in close encounter, Socorro is the place to go. The liveaboard is very well organized and programmed to meet the COVID-19 protocols while on the boat. The boat is huge, stable, and quiet. It is the kind of boat we need to have to spread out and keeping social distancing during this pandemic period. I will be coming back for more diving in Socorro, with the same boat in May, as shown here: One spot available in Nautilus Belle Amie May 11-19, 2021 $400 off | ScubaBoard. Hopefully this time we will see the baitballs with birds, pelagic fish, sharks and dolphins shooting through the bait balls, in addition to the usual suspects.
 
Prior to boarding the Belle Amie in the evening, Nautilus' dive center, See Creatures, next to Tesoro Los Cabos, offered a complimentary warm-up dive in the morning. Some of us took that offer. We went on two-tank boat dive in Land's End and Pelican Rock, near marina, where the Belle Amie was docking. After the dives, we went to the Belle Amie and drop off our wet dive gears on the dive deck of Belle Amie, so we won't need to haul our wet dive gear from the hotel to the boat. Below is the warm-up dive video.

 
Wow. Nice report. I think you saw everything on my diving bucket list. I have to do this some day.
 
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Reactions: Dan
Awesome report! Thanks @Dan ! It brings back wonderful memory of our Socorro trip last Nov.
Looking forward to your next trip reports to Belize, Maldives and Socorro (again)...
 
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Very nice. Thanks for the topside shots, not just the natural splendor of the islands, but the boat. Dive site fauna and conditions may vary, but the boat tends to be a stable experience others will share.
 
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Reactions: Dan
Very nice. Thanks for the topside shots, not just the natural splendor of the islands, but the boat. Dive site fauna and conditions may vary, but the boat tends to be a stable experience others will share.

Thanks for your kind words. I got a lot of helps. There were a bunch of great photographers there on the boat.

Very nice boat! It is par with the Blue Manta, if you ever get a chance to go to Indonesia, consider Blue Manta. I’ll be there in August, if they are open for foreign tourist by then. We’ll be on White Manta, the new & improved version of Blue Manta.
 
Awesome report! Thanks @Dan ! It brings back wonderful memory of our Socorro trip last Nov.
Looking forward to your next trip reports to Belize, Maldives and Socorro (again)...

Thanks for your kind words!

I’m preparing for the Belize trip. So far so good. Fingers crossed.
 
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