Free Shore Snorkeling 2016 Idle Idyll Idols

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein

You can do the same thing every day with the ocean and you MUST expect different results as the ocean chooses.

This year's Christmas season snorkels as always were between Las Gatas, along the south shore of Zihua Bay and around to the Madera side of the rocky point offered many familiar themes with many other regular specimens not around for me, notably the eagle rays who are normally very plentiful. The water was exceptionally clear on some days, especially right around Christmas and Boxing day.

Most days I would do an early morning snorkel entering at the big boulder at the south end of La Ropa and following along the shore, maybe forty feet from shore or wherever the visibility was best. I would swim out toward the jetty that sticks out into the bay where the shore road to Las Gatas becomes a path. There are some large submerged boulders before the jetty, easily visible from the road, that rise up and offer better visibility on rougher days. The boulders that make up the base of the jetty shelter many fish and there is one very large freestanding boulder just past the tip of the jetty heading towards Las Gatas that always shelters a variety of large and small fish like this juvenile Cotez angel.

Other days I would head down to the big rocks at the north end of La Ropa and around to the Madera Side, quite far on calm days, based on visibility in that mostly deeper water with many spires and ridges rising up underwater much like the spires that break the surface do. Time of day and tide action can also change experiences but both ends can be good throughout the day and I would do a long afternoon snorkel everyday at one end or the other but with more time in the south this year. If the visibility is not great at the northern rocks you can switch to birds who let you drift quite close.

I saw many clouds of fish including yellow tailed surgeon fish in a variety of sizes and some butterfly fish and Moorish idols from the title and many colours and varieties of damselfish with some of each in this vidcap.

I also swam among thousands of one pound silver fish being herded by some Jack Crevalles once again this year. I saw both Green turtles and Olive Ridleys with one recorded on the video link below. I saw green and spotted moray eels and spotted snake eels, gars and needlefish, triggerfish, puffers by the hundred in many colours and types many wrasses in many states of development notably the purple and pink Cortez wrasses and the rockmovers from last year. Here is a link to last year's report with more photos and some identifications.

http://www.zihuatanejo.net/tablero/messages/87549.html

This years highlights were found at Las Gatas in the area near the statue of Jesus. There is often a King Angel fish or two to be seen in this area but at a good depth and with some degree of skittishness.

This year there were many King angels and they were sweeping back and forth between even larger groups of the Moorish Idols of fifty or more like something from West Side Story. An idyll is an extremely happy, peaceful, or picturesque episode or scene, typically an idealized or unsustainable one. I felt privileged to be out there in this awesome scene.

There is a new Youtube video for this year with some truly incredible behaviour from the Moorish Idols, especially, who were present everywhere around the bay this year. It's quite long as there is a lot to see with great diversity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH5Tp1skJUk