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Published: February 8th 2015
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Jacques Cousteau described the Sea of Cortez as the "aquarium of the world" due to it's large concentration of sea creatures ranging from tiny reef fish, great white sharks, enormous Humboldt squid, and whale sharks as well as five of the world's seven types of sea turtles and several types of whales. John Steinbeck also visited the area and described the area around Cabo Pulmo "clinging to the coral, growing on it, burrowing into it, was a teeming fauna...one small piece of coral might conceal 30 or 40 species and the colors on the reef were electric."
We headed to breakfast after being sleep deprived the previous night due to our work schedules and sleeping for almost 12 hrs despite some roosters crowing in the distance. We met with our dive group and launched off the beach to two dive sites in the most northwestern part of the marine park. The first dive was El Morros with a max depth of 17 meters. The surface water temp was 73 and bottom temp of 69 necessitating a 7mm wetsuit. The visibility was about 10 meters and we had a bottom time of 40 mins.
I had read many
tortugamixed reviews of diving in Cabo Pulmo so my expectations were kept low and realistic given the location. Wow were we surprised at the health and vibrancy of the reef. Honestly, it was some of the best diving I have done in terms of reef health and fish life. I saw types and sizes of coral that I had never seen before and reef fish that were twice as big as I'm used to seeing. We were lucky enough to see a moray eel, a golden ray, a green sea turtle and the biggest grouper I have ever seen measuring at least 5-6 feet long! One of the divers in a our group aggressively swam up to it in an attempt to touch him thus scaring the fish off. Our dive master quickly grabbed him and ordered him to the surface putting him in "timeout" for such an irresponsible act. The diver was the same idiot asking if parrotfish were delicious to eat and if it was legal to spear fish here.
Our second dive was at El Bajo, a shallower site at about 15 meters deep. Here we saw a huge schools of a 100+ jacks and tarpon.
The ocean was really rough, with swells of 3 ft. or so and we were in a tiny little boat rolling back and forth so I started to get a tad bit bit sea sick, but soon I was too distracted to feel ill anymore. We were beginning to drive back to shore when we spotted a humpback whale and baby surfacing only 50 ft from our boat. We watched them for about 15 minutes, mesmerized by these beautiful creatures.
No great diving day is complete in Mexico without a nap, reading in a Hammock and eating some fish tacos with a Margarita to finish it off. Our trip is off to an amazing and relaxing start!
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