MEXICO

The Revillagigedo islands or ‘Socorro’ / Cabo Pulmo / Cancun

Multiple friends had visited and spoken well of the Revillagigedos, which many refer to simply as ‘Socorro’—the name of the better-known island.

The Revillas are quite famous for their megafauna—large animals. Socorro, San Benedicto, Clarion and Roca Partida are noteworthy for a large number of sharks, including silvertip sharks, white-tip reef sharks, silky sharks, scalloped hammerheads that gather in large schools but are becoming rare, and gigantic whale sharks, the biggest fish in the sea that eat only plankton, which divers love so much.

Oceanic manta rays, which can grow to a wingspan of seven metres and are very intelligent—with the biggest brain of all fish, are frequently seen, particularly at a site in San Benedicto known as The Boiler. They are highly curious and occasionally play with divers and their bubbles.

Bottlenose dolphins are also fairly common there and are significantly less shy than in other parts of the world.

We visited the Revillagigedos with Fins Attached, a shark conservation and research organization, on their boat Sharkwater.

Researchers were tagging sharks, especially silky sharks, on the trip. We also learned about some of the famous MPAs that Fins Attached work in, which are loosely connected by swim-ways—migratory paths or corridors—used by sharks, turtles and other marine life. Cocos in Costa Rica and the Galapagos in Ecuador are hotspots, particularly for scalloped hammerheads, and their protected areas are about to be expanded significantly.

We were doing about 3 dives a day (doing 4 is exhausting and leaves little time for camera maintenance and photo backups) and focused on all the popular animals and sites, including oceanic mantas at the Boiler, sharks at the famous site known as the Canyon, and more …

We were also privileged to see Clarion Angelfish, which are endemic to the Revillagigedos and, so, very rare, which spend enormous amounts of their time ‘cleaning’ the rays—removing parasites from their skin.

Some of the photos shown here were taken during another expedition … to Cabo Pulmo, a no-catch marine reserve whose biomass increased by 400% some years after gaining its protected status.

A bottlenose dolphin becomes the light at “the boiler” in San Benedicto!

SOCORRO, MEXICO
February 2021

This was a very intimate, nearly private, and spiritual moment. My friends were over twenty meters behind me, swimming in the other direction.
There’s no way they witnessed this moment. A near-mystical animal in an otherworldly setting. I remember thinking that if the photograph even began to do justice to the subject and setting, it was going to be a good day.
And it was a great day!

A rather large and welcome octopus found on a very boring dive one of the last days of the trip.

For some reason fish and octopuses frequently interact when the molluscs are outside their hiding places (usually a hole in the sand or crevice in the reef). During the 5 or so minutes this specific octopus was observed, it was visited by at least 3 different fish, including the Mexican hogfish in this image and a very large damselfish. Recent footage indicates that fish and octopuses occasionally collaborate to hunt.

SOCORRO, MEXICO
February 2021

A beautiful silvertip shark at the Canyon site, San Benedicto, on our last day of the trip.

SOCORRO, MEXICO
February 2021

The Canyon is a site that’s usually full of sharks, whether silvertip, white-tip reef sharks or scalloped hammerheads. This particular silvertip came closer to me than nearly any other shark on the dive—and looked wonderful with some flash. It’s a little surprising that they named this species of shark ‘silvertip’ when the tips are actually white. Perhaps this is because the fins of several species, including oceanic whitetips and whitetip reef sharks, have white tips.