This post is by expedition team member Alan Dynner.

As the open boat zipped through the Sea of Cortez towards the El Bajo seamount, Greg Stone, Jeff Gale and I checked our dive gear with eager anticipation. Although I have made thousands of SCUBA dives all over the world since I started diving at age 16, each new dive is magical. When we dive we enter an alien world, with strange and beautiful (and sometimes dangerous) animals and plants, devoid of most sounds. And best of all, we are flying through the 3 dimensional space of the ocean. So as we splashed into the water and descended 80 feet to the summit of the seamount, we were again thrilled.
The seamount is totally different from the colorful coral reefs that divers usually frequent. It is volcanic rock, but not totally bare because some corals and other flora make their homes here. El Bajo is also an apartment house for green moray eels, with their beady eyes and vicious-looking teeth. Actually they are not aggressive and can be easily approached, but don't try to grab one. At certain spots where plankton was upwelling from deep currents, clouds of little anthius fish were feeding along with a school of lovely surgeon fish (so called because of the scalpel-like spike hidden in their dorsal fin). But there were no large fish around and no sharks at all. Commercial fishermen have taken most of the large fish.

Divers once traveled to the Sea of Cortez primarily to see sharks, and especially huge schools of hammerhead sharks. Our dive master, Alfredo, lamented at how fleets of Asian boats seeking shark fins for Chinese shark fin soup had over the years nearly extinguished the species. As Alfredo put it, "they have murdered the soul of the ocean." [Interestingly, Alfredo, who did not know about the New England Aquarium's role in helping to create the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, said, "I've heard of a marine protected park in the Phoenix Islands in the Pacific. I wish we could establish such a park in the Sea of Cortez to save our marine life."]

Our second dive was in the shallow waters surrounding a huge structure of rocks, looking like ruins of Classic Greece, but covered with birds up high and down low inhabited by dozens of sea lions. We entered their realm and were welcomed like old friends. The females and their pups soared playfully around us, up and down and staying just out of reach. They seemed intrigued by the red faceplate of my dive mask (a color correction device for diving, where the color red is lost first as one descends). They would come up within six inches and stare at me eye to eye. We moved over to a group of females in a rock cove, and suddenly out came the male "beachmaster," defending his harem. He swam up to us and grunted menacingly.


A playful sea lion

That evening we met with the owner of ARGOS, the ship that will be our home for the active expedition. With him were two of the pilots of the submarine that will take us down to 1,000 or more feet, well below the depth safe for SCUBA diving. Avi, the owner, has over 30 years experience with dive ship operations, and the two Israeli navy veterans who will pilot us to the depths inspired confidence. We are looking forward eagerly to our other expedition members joining us and to the ship getting under way.

-Alan Dynner

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Labels: Alan Dynner, anthius fish, ARGOS, El Bajo Seamount, moray eel, SCUBA, sea lion, seamounts, surgeon fish

The monsoon weather cleared magnificently on Friday, September 12, to open blue skies. Even though the wind was still up a bit we charted a small 24 foot "panga," which is an open skiff with an outboard and canvas cover, headed to sea for our first look at the marine life of the area and the El Bajo seamount. I went with expedition members Alan Dynner and Jeff Gale.

It took an hour and a half as we pounded our way on waves and wind 25 miles out to sea to the seamount and made our first SCUBA dives down to its submerged summit. Our guide was a Cuban born local expert diver named Alfredo Barroso. As the waves slapped against the side of our boat and the hot sun bore down from the sky, we hoisted our heavy SCUBA tanks on our backs, grabbed our cameras and splashed into the water.

The ocean was warm, 85 degrees, and I could see the rocky summit of El Bajo 90 feet below. We drifted down to the sea floor and saw patches of orange coral, several dozen green moray eels poking their open jaws from cracks in the rock and small schooling multicolored fish everywhere. I recommend this PDF report for more details about seamounts, corals and deep sea fishes.

The water was clear, I could easily see 70-80 feet, and above us the narrow outline of our boat. With SCUBA tanks, you can only dive safely to 100 feet or so. But the ocean is so much deeper. With the sun streaming down, I gently kicked and floated out over the sedge of the summit of El Bajo and looked down into the dark abyss, the area, up to 1500 feet down, that we would soon have access to with the DEEPSEE SUBMARINE.

As our tanks emptied of air, we had to surface all too soon. I wanted to stay underwater longer but at that depth, we could only stay about 40 minutes. Because this was a relatively deep dive, our next dive had to be shallow, so we zipped across the now calmer ocean to an island called Isla Espiritu Santo to study, film and photograph more of the marine life of the area.

On this dive we stayed shallower than 30 feet. We found lovely fishes here, but also a colony of sea lions. The large males kept their distance and I could hear the grunts underwater, which I took to mean stay away, which we did. But the smaller females and pups swam over to us, circling and blowing bubbles in what appeared to be a gesture of playful spirits and curiosity toward us divers.

ARGOS arrives today and we will begin submarine dives on Sunday. In the meantime, here's a slide show of what we've seen so far.




-Gregory Stone

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Labels: El Bajo Seamount, Greg Stone, moray eel, SCUBA, sea lion