I recently went scuba diving for a long weekend down in Cabo Pulmo, a small and quiet village about 2 hours east of rather large and very unquiet Cabo San Lucas. Cabo Pulmo is pretty undeveloped and has about 150 residents and several bungalows that can be rented by tourists. It's a bit off the beaten path, with the last 30 minutes of the drive on a dirt road (often with cows wandering around on it). The village operates on solar power, so the thatched bungalows have solar panels on their roofs - an interesting blend of old and new. Cabo Pulmo is blessed with the only coral reef system in North America, thus the diving there is quite good. One of their most famous dive sites is El Bajo. There is an amazing coral reef there with plenty of beautiful, colorful fish, including huge parrotfish, green moray eels, and lots of huge puffer fish.

We went to this dive site 3 times, one of them being a night dive. The day dives were amazing. We entered the water and dropped to the bottom at about 50 feet. While descending, I looked to the left and saw a wall of fish! Thousands and thousands of Silver Jack fish were in a huge school - the largest I've ever seen! It was a glistening, silvery wall of fish. When our group reached the bottom, next to the wall of fish, we held onto some rocks on the bottom so we wouldn't be blown away by the current, which was rather strong. Soon our little group was engulfed by the fish. They formed a little cocoon around us, just about an arm's length away. So no matter where you looked, there was the wall of fish, with a ceiling of fish formed above us. We were inside a silvery, moving, living and breathing house, made of fish. This was incredible. It was like being inside an animal. Strange thought, I know (I often have those), but they were like individual animals but also together they were like one giant animal. Similar to how our bodies as human animals are made up of many different cells. So we were inside this beautiful silver animal, and then all of a sudden it opened up in one section - the fish fled - a huge sea lion was hunting! He made a pass, not catching any of them, and once again they formed a cocoon around us. Every few minutes the sea lion would make a pass through the fish, scattering them, only to have them form into the massive wall once more. We didn't see the sea lion catch any of the fish. Later on, the divemaster told us they hunt like that, making several passes to determine which of the fish is weakest, hence being easier to catch. Once they determine which are the weakest, they will go for them and almost always are successful. Very interesting, as to me, they all look the same, all 10,000 of them. So how can the sea lion remember where the weak one is, if he does spot one?! Ah, the mystery of nature... So we experienced this same event on our second dive in that area, although this time there were two sea lions hunting together. One was smaller, so it must have been a mother teaching her offspring to hunt. Both these dives were fantastic and at the end of the second one I was able to see 3 manta rays! Rays are my favorite sea creature, so I was very excited about this and too bad they 'flew' away so quickly. I would have liked to swim with them a bit. Apparently in the winter and spring, you can see hundreds of mantas together in one area of the sea! Wow. I need to go back there.

As for the night dive, it wasn't so pleasant for me. It was my first night dive and there was a very strong current - not a good combination. We all wore glowing sticks attached to our tanks, with the divemaster wearing a different color. But it was actually quite difficult to tell who was who (except for the divemaster), so I was never quite sure where my buddy was. I'd find him and later he'd turn into someone else. So after about 15 minutes of floating mostly backwards and upside down in a disoriented way down the reef, my buddy, Alex, and I realized we were getting farther away from the others. He was somewhat above me, so I went up a bit. Big mistake. The current was stronger there and he motioned for us to swim towards the others, against the current. Well, I was swimming and swimming with my light pointed downward and started noticing that I didn't really appear to be moving at all - I was swimming in place. I look up for Alex and he's way ahead of me (being a stronger swimmer). Everyone's lights are growing dimmer and dimmer, and there I was getting farther and farther away, alone in the deep dark ocean! So, I started feeling a bit, um, uncomfortable with the situation, so I surfaced. Perhaps you'd think I would be glad to be on the surface, but the feeling was worse. Now I was on the surface in a dark ocean of waves with no one else in sight, with god only knows what lurking below. Should I pull up my legs into a ball so an unsuspecting shark doesn't inadvertently bite me, thinking I'm a tasty meal?! These thoughts run through my head and I feel like I'm alone out there forever, where no one will find me, I'll float here for days…. Crazy thoughts, I know. I still had the regulator in my mouth and it was honking. It does that when you breathe too fast through it, which you tend to do when you're nervous. So, I remove it and try to breathe slowly and not think about the sea monsters below me in the deep, dark abyss. I shine my light around on the surface, thinking maybe I can signal the boat. Where is it??! No sign of the boat, but about 30 feet away, Alex surfaces. Company! Yeah, I feel much better already. Better to be lost at sea with someone else than all alone! I was probably only alone for one or two minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. A few minutes after that, I hear the sound of the boat. It arrives and we're saved! So that was my first night dive. No more night dives in strong currents for me, not at least until I'm a more experienced diver.

January 2004 Kristin Piljay