Revillagigedos Islands, First Dive Day, El Canyon 4-4-2018

We boarded our dive boat for this "Ray of Hope" Expedition, put together by "Queen of the Mantas" Andrea Marshall and her husband, Janneman, late in the morning on April 3 and started our 22 hour cruise out to the Revillagigedos Islands near noon.  The passage wasn't bad but was rough enough to require sleeping on your back to stay securely in your bunk.

Most of us spent some time on the Southern Sport's sun deck as we started out cruise out to the Revillagigedos Islands.

We were accompanied by dolphins for aways.  We saw a distant Humpback blow, would see more of both when we got to the Revillagigedos.

We approached our first stop, Benedicto Island, in the late morning after a great breakfast.

Jenny, the boat's dive master, gave us our first dive briefing where we learned that it would be group diving, never my favorite, but currents and the nature of the sites, made it safer and more manageable.  We changed dive guides each day between boats/groups.

Since we were on our first site, called "El Canyon" and Tito, our group's dive guide, was leading us at a rapid traverse of the dive site in the search of sharks and mantas, I started off with shooting this Moray, and very nearly losing the group...Jenny came to label me and my group trailing behavior as "The Rebel"...

Though we were, of course, going to see lots of White Tipped Reef Sharks, nocturnal predators that love to park and snooze during the day, I couldn't resist pausing and shooting these and thereby falling further behind the group which was zooming along in the search for Mantas and sharks...

A Flag Cabrilla, a type of grouper.  I can never resist shooting a grouper....the same was true when I used to shoot with a speargun over 40 years ago in Florida....Meanwhile the group's rapid quest continued...

Wait, why is the group way up there, off the bottom?  Oh, Tito's found a Manta!

One of our group maneuvering for a Manta ID shot, the belly pattern of spots serves as a unique ID for every Manta.  As part of our citizen science goals on this "Ray of Hope" Expedition with Andrea Marshall (http://www.queenofmantas.com/ray-of-hope-expeditions/), we were getting Manta ID photos for "MantaMatcher".   http://www.mantamatcher.org/

 Our two inflatable boats that the two groups dived from were called "Pangas" after another type of boat...

After three dives at San Benedicto, we started for our next stop, Socorro.

For some more from these dives:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/bCgeQ2QNOCTgmLeY2