EAST CAPE DIVING REPORT FOR VISTA SEA SPORT MULTI-DAY DIVE TRIP

July 30, 2005, Rich Torkington, East Cape diving report, Baja California Sur, Mexico:

My family is back in Arizona but we continue to sift through the memories of so many beautiful sites of our past week in the East Cape, diving 7/24 through 7/28/2005. We dove a wide variety of dive sites with Vista Sea Sport, all the way from Isla Cerralvo down to Los Frailes.

The water temperatures were a little schizophrenic, low 80s one day and high 60s the next, and we found that a layered wet suit approach made sense. The abundant sea life didn't seem to mind the swings, though, and every dive site we visited was carpeted in schools of fish and invertebrates.

Topside was glass smooth most days, with one day of modest swells. Visibility at times was very good but variable, ranging I'd estimate from 30 to 70 feet. Thermoclines made the water a little shimmery for any wide ranging video, so I stuck to closer shots.

Our great memories include a river of bigeye jacks streaming down from the surface at Los Morros, the stunning amarillo of Panamic porkfish schools at El Cantil, and beautiful rays of the morning light shining around the rock walls of Islote. Topside there were a couple schools of porpoises and a school of shy pilot whales racing south in the Punta Perico area.

We sighted so many interesting species, we can't list them. Among them: colorful spotted boxfish, beautiful giant hawkfish, big foraging blunthead triggerfish, mating nudibranches, patterned coral hawkfish darting about in coral crevices, and Pacific razorfish that have an amazing ability to dive bomb directly into the flat sand.

For two days in a row, it seemed to be a Panamic green moray frenzy, with so many of them free swimming during the day I finally stopped taking video of them, especially thick at Rock Highway and Punta Pescadero. At the site called Las Casitas, there were six of them all perched in the same crevice, jaws agape.

Couple all this with great camaraderie on the Vista Sea Sport dive boat and expert captains and dive masters.