The Revillagigedo Islands, also known by many as “Socorro”, lies in the Eastern Tropical Pacific at around 386 km (240 miles) out of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. And here is how my adventure to this incredible destination went.
How do you get to Revillagigedo Islands?
I boarded the boat in Cabo San Lucas after expending a few days diving locally, to be honest I was surprised with the amount of life we saw just off Cabo!
After a great week in and around Cabo san lucas, we went on a long journey to Revillagigedo Islands.
This Archipelago is compiled by 4 main Islands, San Benedicto, which will be our first stop, Socorro, the one that takes all the fame and for which most of the divers know this destination for, Clarion, the furthermost island of the four, and the world famous Roca Partida, though called “Island” but let me tell you that it’s not much bigger than a rock sticking out of the water.
After almost 24 hours of cruising into the weather and dancing up and down, we finally made it to our first destination, San Benedicto Island! And what a sight! The volcano last erupted in 1953, whipped out all the vegetation of the Island and went dormant after that. Pretty much all of the vegetation still gone throughout most of the island so it gives this unique look similar to the moon, extremely rough but beautiful at the same time. The hills in the west side are full of deep dry lava canyons which gives it this quite a extreme look.
San Benedicto
After the briefings were given we suited up and jumped into the tender, and off we went to our first dive of the trip!
We started at a site called the Canyon, right next to our anchorage, so the expectations were not too high for the first dive.
But what a surprise, at first we dropped to a sandy bottom but after we drop down to the depths and found the reef, and started swimming along the edge, we started seeing quite a lot of schooling fish such as Big eye trevally, Barracudas, Snappers and all sorts of wrasses. Suddenly the guide stops and points out to a little rock ahead of us, when focusing on it, we saw that it was a cleaning station for Silver Tip Sharks! “That’s amazing! I have never seen Silver tip sharks getting cleaned that shallow!”, that cleaning stations sits at about 21 meters, 68 feet.
We started swimming closer to them, and realised that pretty much all of them were juveniles, not fully grown yet, so this guys were really curious!
The adult individuals were a bit more shy and kept their distance, though we could see them occasionally out in the blue.
The ones in the cleaning station started swimming closer and closer to us, coming in pairs, four of them together at times! We were so focused on this beautiful animals that a big Galapagos shark sneaked behind us, giving us a bit of a scare!
Some little white tips showed up chasing little fish around, its incredible to see how they work together with Jackfish to catch their prey!
Is there any big fish around?
With all that happening, the Dive Guide calls our attention and starts pointing frantically towards the blue, we swam right behind him to find a little group of Scalloped Hammerheads coming up from the depths! Again couldn’t ask more from the first dive!
This dive totally exceeded our expectations, and from now on I can say that every dive got better and better.
After that excellent first dive we moved over to a world class dive site, The Boiler.
When we jumped in, the first minute or so I thought to myself that this dive site wasn’t that “good” since there wasn’t much to see but, as soon as we started swimming around this bare rock sea mount, the place got busier and busier with marine life, Schools of Big eye trevally, Barracudas, White tips patrolling the top of the Boiler and chilling around the bottom cracks, and suddenly Mantas! Huge Oceanic Manta Rays! What a sight right there! Such a graceful and beautiful animal!
This dive site is know for its oceanic Manta rays population since they use it as a cleaning station and they are common visitors pretty much all year round. But that’s not all, by the time we were focused enjoying the graceful manta rays a pod of Bottle nose dolphins decided that they wanted some attention too! Dolphins here are incredibly interactive, they would come right next to us, play around, come and check our cameras out and bring the little ones together to take a look at this strange bubble making creatures!
I have to say that I have seen dolphins underwater many, many times, in many destinations, but the interactions that we had here with this individuals were something else, definitely a highlight from this location!
Socorro Island
After San Benedicto we moved over to Socorro Island, completely different landscape and topography found here, and also this is the island where the Mexican Navi has their main base on the Park.
Around Socorro Island there are quite a lot of dive sites, but we focused our dives in just a handful of them due to not so favourable weather.
First one was Cabo Pearce, located on the east side of the island.
Here we found a beautiful ridge going quite far from the main island into the sea were the currents can be quite strong at times and were the marine life thrives like nowhere else. You will find a deep wall on the northern side drop to more than 50 meters, 170 feet, if you follow the ridge there are a lot of little outcrops rising from deeps ranging 20 to 50 meter, 80 to 170 feet. Here is where most of the fish aggregates.
On the first dive here we saw a lot of different marine life, from Hammerhead sharks passing over our heads, Galapagos Sharks, Silky sharks out in the blue, white tips and even a Whale Shark swimming along the north wall!! That was quite a surprise!
Another dive site that we loved was Punta Tosca, again another ridge outcrop, smaller than Cabo Pearce but with an incredible amount of life too. Here we encountered. Big group of silky sharks, over 12 individuals, big silver tip sharks, Galapagos sharks and a big Tiger shark!
Roca Partida
Next day the weather eased up a bit so the day for Roca Partida finally arrived, and what a day! This “island” is a sea mount that rises from very deep water and that the top breaks the surface with its highest peak at 35 meters above the water.
Once you jump in, you quickly realise that this is an incredibly special dive site, dramatic topography dropping down to the great depths, were the currents can be extremely strong and where the marine life thrives under the crashing waves above our heads. Hundreds of white tip reef sharks can be seen around this dive site, and there are “terraces” on the drop off that they use to shelter and relax, you can count more than 20 individuals resting together!
But that’s not all, out in the blue schools of yellow fin tunas cruising up ad down the currents looking for there next meal. Barracudas forming huge groups out in the blue, silky sharks patrolling the open waters surrounding the rock. Silver tip sharks and Galapagos sharks cruising the deep part of the walls waiting for the night to come to start hunting, and even schools of scalloped hammerheads sharks get close to Roca Partida!
Over all this was one of my favourite spots, and definitely including it in my personal Top 10 dive sites list.
Clarion
We then made a quick visit to Clarion, which was good but not as exciting as the other islands, we did have some amazing interaction with dolphins too but overall we were not very lucky over there. Weather turned on us again so we focused on a small part of this big island, although we came with the intention of doing exploratory dives, most of the places we wanted to reached where not accessible due to the weather. We will come back another time!!
Tips for your Revillagigedo Islands trip.
- When to go? November to May is when all the live aboard boats do their season here since its when the weather its the best, calm seas, sunny days and good visibility over all, good time to see manta rays and if you are lucky enough you will be able to encounter humpback whales!!
- Best way to visit? Definitely with a Live aboard boat, there is no other way to visit the Revillagigedo islands. All boats depart from Cabo San Lucas and finish in the same port. So its very easy to arrive to this destination.
- What to bring? If you like bird watching or want to have a better experience when encountering whales, maybe binoculars will be a good thing to take with you, sun is pretty harsh here so definitely take a hat with you and also a camera to bring back this unforgettable memories back home!
- Dive Equipment: Water si not ver cold here so with a 5mm if you are a cold diver, or a 3mm will do for this trip, make sure to bring long wetsuits to have better protection against any little jellyfish around the area. Preferably bring all your dive equipment, but if you need to rent something make sure you contact the dive operator well in advance to book the equipment that you need.
- Experience and Dive conditions: As you can imagine this place has quite a bit advanced diving, some dive sites might be easier depending on currents, but you should definitely be an experienced diver and be conformable diving with strong currents before joining a trip here. Seas can be rough and currents can be strong, but if you are up for it, this place will not disappoint!
