GIANT MANTA RAY  ISLAS SAN BENEDICTO  REVILLAGIGEDO - MEXICO-------------------------This image was taken off Islas San Benedicto in Mexico. This area is frequented by Giant Mantas looking for all the world like giant butterflies with a wing span reaching as much as twenty feet from tip to tip. They will come gliding out of the deep blue ocean towards you and circle about as if offering to give you a ride. Large saucer like eyes much like those of ET study you carefully. They will often allow you to hold on to the front top of their body and will take you for the ride of you life. These gentle creatures are filter feeders much like many whales. Eating only tiny plankton they collect from the water sweeping it into their huge open and toothless mouth with two large flap like fins on either side of their mouth. When these fins are not in use for food collection they can roll them into pointed cones for aerodynamic travel through the water. Mostly black on top and white underneath. Each has its own distinctive markings, many with a white symbol of sorts on the black background of the top. Some are all jet-black top and bottom looking much like a stealth bomber. In this area it is not uncommon to drop in the water and be surrounded with six or more of the magical creatures. Unlike other rays they have no stinger near the tail or any other defense mechanism other than their huge powerful wings that with one flick can take them out of sight and off into the deep. A first encounter with one of these giant birds of the sea will leave you breathless. I have spent many a dive pleasantly gliding along on the back of one of these rays without ever flicking a fin the whole dive. Often you will find you are not the only free loader along for the ride, these rays often have one or two remoras stuck to their backs hitching a free ride. The remora is a fish that attaches to rays and sharks with a suction cup on the top of its head. Leaving it most of the time in an upside down position unless stuck to the bottom of its host. The suction cup allows them to move freely about the host without losing contact. Remoras are a rather ugly troll like looking fish, with a skin that is very slimy to the touch. They will also frequently have numerous parasites moving rapidly about on their skin surface. Contact with these fish is a rather disgusting experience. Never the less I have held on to the tails of two while riding a manta but one has to grit your teeth as the parasites move from the skin of the fish to yours and back. A TALE OF THREE SISTERS Known as Islas Revillagigedo, it is pronounced (rev eeah hi haydos). It is the second of a number of archipelagos located in the eastern pacific off the west coast of the Americas as you go south on a map. Diving this area is without comparison in the world for the sighting of Deep Ocean pelagic, fish, sharks, rays and many others. Giant Bluefin tuna in excess of six hundred pounds, huge schools of Hammerhead sharks, Oceanic White tip sharks, Tiger sharks and Humpback whales migrate through the area among others. This includes the Deep Ocean monster of fable, the giant squid. A creature reaching lengths in excess of one hundred feet, sporting numerous legs with hundreds of suction cups ringed with fang like teeth. It has only been sighted by a very few, usually only a glimpse at night and its gone. I am not sure I would want to meet this beast eyeball to eyeball on a night dive. Very little is known about this creature and only a few have being netted by fisherman around the world or washed up dead on some beach. I first visited this area some twenty-eight years ago, at that time few divers knew of its existence and the area was only visited by passing sailboats and a few sport fishing boats venturing out from Cabo San Lucas. At that time there was only one dive boat that would visit this area two to four times a year. A decrepit but lovely old fishing boat built in the thirties. The salon was all beautiful mahogany and brass, craftsmanship rarely seen in boat building today. Top speed was about eight knots and it took two days to make the crossing from Cabo to the Islands, most advisable to bring a good book. It is not a trip for those who get seasick. Located some three hundred and fifty miles southwest of the tip of the Mexican Baja peninsula and four hundred miles from the west coast of Mexico. The area is comprised of three islands each approximately one hundred miles from one another and surround by the deep Pacific Ocean. This area has a long, illustrious and sometimes tragic history. Some may find parts of this story hard to read, but I feel compelled to tell this story of these three lovely sisters, if only for their protection and preservation. This area is volcanic, the middle island San Benedicto is almost one giant cinder cone. The area had remained volcanically dormant until only a few years ago. Last erupting in 1956. About seven years ago one of the sisters San Benedicto arose from her slumbers. For a period of a week she spewed huge rock and cinder ten miles in the air. The outer island is Clarion, named for the angelfish endemic only to this area and found nowhere else in the world. The Clarion angelfish is by far one of the loveliest of its species with perhaps its only rival the Emperor. The adult is a brilliant and blinding orange with lovely blue edging to all the fins. The juvenile sporting the same orange body but with light blue vertical bars along its sides, then god sprinkled them with purple glitter. They are a prized fish for salt-water aquariums I am sorry to say, fetching five hundred dollars a fish in the stores. Up until the end of world war two France laid claim to Clarion and maintained a small military base there. During the events of the war Clarion was all but forgotten. After the war some government official sifting through records came upon mention of the island. France sent an expedition to visit Clarion but the long forgotten all had perished by then from starvation and thirst. There was an ensuing argument between the two countries for ownership of this island, Mexico prevailed and now lays claim to all the islands. They maintain a small navy base on the eastern side of the inner most island Soccoro. All passing vessels that visit the area must do so by permit and check in at this base first. They also have a small airstrip on the center of the island. The other two islands are now only inhabited by sea birds, some feral goats and cats left by previous human inhabitants. Until recent years the most frequent visitors to the waters surrounding these islands were foreign commercial fishing ships. At this point the tale of three sisters takes a turn for the worse. These vessels fish off the islands illegally. The navy base if it can be called that is equipped with little more than a couple of decrepit old diesel driven whaleboats, far too inadequate to patrol the hundreds of square miles of ocean surrounding these islands. The larger vessels in the small Mexican navy are rarely commissioned to visit these islands. Far out of sight and un-policed these pirates pillage and plunder. It is hard to describe in words the visage of the carnage that takes place before your eyes; it leaves one speechless and breathless with horror. These huge ships carry nets that trail out some twelve miles behind the vessel and a mile wide, dredging the ocean bottom and capturing everything in its path regardless of market value. Capturing and killing hundreds and thousands of species they throw back in the ocean dead. Leaving behind miles of what becomes literally dead desert under the ocean. This carnage goes on twenty four hours a day, at night they generate so much light to attract fish, believe me when I say this they look like the sun rising on the horizon. One day we witnessed them hauling giant mantas like the one in this image up the side of the vessel with huge meat hooks. Capturing these beautiful fish only to cut off a few feet of the wing tips and throwing the tortured and dying creature back in the water. From these wing tips they stamp out small pieces of meat they market as scallops. Many of these vessels have one or two helicopters they use to scout hundreds of square miles of ocean looking for schools of tuna. They cannot see the tuna but know they are there when they spot schools of dolphins leaping along the surface. The schools of tuna will follow under the schools of dolphins, at this point they call in their factory ship, trailing out miles of net to capture the tuna, they also capture the dolphins. Being air-breathing mammals the dolphins are caught in the nets and usually drown before the nets are hauled in. Killing hundreds of dolphins, which are also just thrown back in the ocean. In recent years there has been some pressure brought to bear on the tuna industry by negative public opinion to curtail the number of dolphins killed while fishing for tuna. Some changes were made to modify nets to allow release of most of the dolphins before the nets were hauled in. This is costly and time consuming for the industry, which has to this day given the matter mostly, lip service. This industry still continues to kill thousands of dolphins each year, despite those cute little dolphin safe insignias on their cans of tuna, don t believe it. The shark fining industry also frequents the islands because of the large populations of sharks found here. There has been a radical drop in the shark populations in Mexican waters in the last ten to fifteen years do to this practice. Killing thousands of sharks each year only to cut off the tips of the fins for shark fin soup and discarding the rest of the fish. In recent years with some outcry from divers the Mexican government has stepped up patrols of the area with larger vessels and is making some effort to protect the resources of this wonderful area. It is still not enough and these pirates continue to pillage the wonderful bounty of treasures found here. If nothing else I hope this reaches a few who will pause on their next visit to the fish counter at your local market and select items that use more environmentally friendly collection practices. It is common practice in the fish hawking industry to assign cute names to items that are not really what they are being called or sold as. So don t be afraid to ask the generic name of the item, they usually know but will not tell you unless grilled to well done.