March 2010    Download the Entire Issue (PDF)

Vol. 25, No. 3   What's this?

Rocio del Mar, Sea of Cortez, Mexico

good liveaboard and fish life, with well-trained crew -- and sea lions

from the March, 2010 issue of Undercurrent  

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Dear Fellow Diver:

I’m in the middle of the Sea of Cortez, surrounded by scores of darting sea lions. Their underwater barks seem as loud as if I heard them on land. So I came with a surprise, a double-horn Dive Alert that I blew underwater. And guess what? I stopped them in their tracks. Every sea lion stopped barking, spun around and looked at me. If sea lions can look amazed, these did. I motioned to one curious guy by waving my hand toward me. “Come on over.” He moved a little closer every time I beckoned so I kept it up. When he got right up next to me, I spun my finger and he twirled away as if we had rehearsed it. I turned around and my fellow divers were clapping.

A trip to the Sea of Cortez has its marvels, and the first of them is that a trip on this spanking new liveaboard, the 110-foot Rocio del Mar, begins by deplaning in Phoenix, Arizona. Following is a four-hour van ride to Puerto Penasco, but no matter where you go, there’s always a van ride somewhere. By skipping a change of planes, I figured I’d come out ahead, and I did. I was so pleased after my July trip that I went again in October, arriving with nine others at 4 p.m. for a 6 p.m. sailing.

The Rocio del Mar, with room for 22 passengers, was built for diving. Owned by captain Lolo Sandoval and his wife Dora, a dive instructor, the craft took nearly three years to construct. The builders -- those who did the electrical, welding, engine installation, woodworking and fiberglass -- all became the crew! Rest assured, they can fix any problem because they built the boat. And now the entire crew is working to become divemasters. Jorge and Julio pilot the Zodiacs and stay on board during dives. Aurelio, the master carpenter, manages the dive platform. Dora joins nearly all the dives and Lolo is on many. Lea, another divemaster, lives in Rocky Point and owned a dive operation in the area. José Luis Robles from Puerto Vallarta was hired for the trip; he’s a college professor and teaches diving....