Hurricane Odile caused an enormous amount of physical damage to the communities of Los Cabos but it wasn’t long before the local activity companies got down to assessing the impact on their operations. The fishing charters and golfer were among the first to get positive reports out that they were all up and running and that the fish were there and the greens clear. Now it is time for the diving operators, an increasingly popular activity around Los Cabos, to come out with a post-Odil assessment.
The Manta Scuba Diving team teamed up with Cabo Adventures to assess any potential underwater damage and they team worked to clean up a few sites at the Cabo San Lucas marine park, including North Wall, Pelican Rock, Middle Wall and The Point, also known as Land’s End.
What they found surprised and delighted them: much of the sand had washed away from the dive sites, leaving most about 20 feet deeper. The result is that completely new dive sites with hitherto-unseen rocks and cracks for marine animals to hide in. In addition, Land’s end — a small shipwreck in Los Cabos that was previously buried by sheets of sand — has been revealed.
Along with newly uncovered dive sites, schools of goat fish, pompanos, puffer fish, grouper fish, yellow snappers, bumphead parrotfish and grunts were abundant and green moray eels were seen swimming about in broad daylight, in about 83 degree-water.
The divers and tourists who usually frequent Los Cabos are needed more than ever to help the area recover quickly, said Hagai Tzur, Manta manager and PADI scuba instructor.
“We got hit very hard by Hurricane Odile,” he said. “Fortunately, all our team is safe and we had only minor damages to our facility and boats, so we were very lucky!”
Yet another reason to come on down to Cabo!
