All of that sounds great but.....

I'm pleased to report that Cabo Pulmo has been clear and blue all week and didn't seem to get stirred up by the high winds of last week at all! Visibility has been well over 100 feet and bottom temperatures are averaging 85' Fahrenheit, perfect conditions for diving. Yesterday we descended straight through a massive school of Big Eye Jacks, momentarily losing each other as the throng immersed us. Large Sea Bass and masses of Leopard Grouper were everywhere, Golden Grouper glided amidst them shining bright like a beacon. Fish of all colours as far as the eye could see, three Golden Cownose Rays lazily moved towards us, subtly they adjusted their flight path to a more circuitous route. Find of the day for me had to be the tiny juvenile Rockmover Wrasse that we found flitting around a small rock in the sand. I could have spent the rest of the dive there, enthralled, but I'm sure our guests would have far rather moved on to check out the Snapper, Grunts, Morays, Parrotfish, Lobster, Moorish Idols etc that we continued to encounter on this most relaxing of dives.

All of that sounds great but sometimes it makes a pleasant change to head off and look for sharks...big sharks! With that in mind we headed off to Esperanza reef to check out the Tiger and Bull Sharks that we have been seeing there of late. Sure enough, on descent, I caught glimpse of a shark which I thought to be a Tiger but couldn't be sure. We arrived on top of the reef and levelled off at 60 feet, all eyes alert for another sighting. The reef seemed especially lively, more fish than normal and I felt a tingle of expectation in my spine, a sure sign of cool things to come. A couple of minutes passed before a Bull Shark swam by checking us out....here we go! A trench runs alongside the reef which is nice to swim in and offers protection from any surge, current or shark for that matter. So we all positioned ourselves in the trench and decided to watch and wait. I found a nudibranch in a coral head and pointed it out to my buddy. Looked up and there was 7 feet of Bull Shark, in the trench, swimming slowly towards me at a distance of twenty feet. As I made eye contact he exited and swam past. We all hi-fived, buzzing with excitement and ready for more. Then a 9 feet long Tiger Shark, above and towards us, once again veering off but this time closer. I turned to see our guests watching it swim past and had the sudden thought to check behind them. Checking us out was a huge Tiger Shark, much bigger and fatter than I had ever seen, I reckoned it to easily be 15 feet long and pointed it out to the others who couldn't believe their luck and signalled with arms wide just how big it was. This proceeded to go on for the rest of the dive, one shark passing by in front of us, another from a different angle and then another, all the while we watched from our vantage point, clinging on to whatever security we could find. Reluctantly, we had to go up so linked arms and slowly ascended together covering all angles. As we made our way up we could see them moving beneath us and even from the surface the big Tiger looked monstrous, "more like a whale shark from above" commented our guests. Guestimations in size varied from a conservative 12 feet to an impressive 18 feet so we all decided to agree on 15 feet which was probably fair. I chatted to some Marine Biologists diving the same reef a day later and they sized it at 16 - 18 feet, that's a big shark!