A great 2010 with lots of liquids...

visibility: down to around 20 feet
water temperature: stays reasonably high at 73º
currents: lately increasing to quite strong
surface conditions: with the northern wind it can be bad...

We've been diving exactly two days now in January and it has been a strange, but beautiful start of the new year. Lots of cold and strong northern wind (already kicked in!), every now and then waves to struggle with, a decreasing visibility but still nice and relatively warm water...
Picture this: we're going with an off-direction current (this means calmly, but constantly swimming into it) from north to south on El Bajo. Just past half way, we meet all the snapper, pork fish, burrito grunt etc. and in the back a tiger. In the back, so no problem...
We keep going and got completely lost in the millions of Jacks; a big school of fish, occupying all water, from bottom to surface. Just leaving enough space for 2 or 3 sea lions chasing through to get a bite to eat, opening tunnels of light in the darkness.
We are in the shadow of the fish and are almost loosing each other, (we are four divers) when we find the tiger again, frighteningly close. On the outside of the school more big shadows, not of jacks, but of bulls this time. We have to go up for the safety stop, also in the jacks, but with a bit of a rumble in the bally; where are those sharks... We made it safely to the surface, lost nobody, but all with big eyes, a glow in the face and totally enthusiastic. What a dive...
All summer the water was to hot for shark spotting and now they are back, everywhere. We used to go to La Esperanza to see them, lately we've seen nurse sharks, reef sharks, tiger- and bull sharks in El Bajo, La Esperanza, El Cantil and even in Las Navajas, the shallow part of the reef...
Didn't take video or photo camera, because the conditions were not too good: video wouldn't have worked for the low vis, lack of light and the distance of the predators, maybe stills would have... Hey, weren't we fighting this same law of Murphy some months ago?
Anyway, no sharks, but happy divers.

Happy New Year and let's see something special in 2010, both above and under water!