When I first started hearing about it being possible to see and dive with marlin and sailfish hunting baitballs. I thought, sounds cool, but not that cool. It also sounded like hard work, I mean until recently no one had images of free swimming sailfish and marlin, so why would it be possible to all of a sudden be able to jump in the water with them? Well when my buddy Nathan Meadows came back from his EPIC trip in Baja with stories and images of marlin and sealions chewing up baitballs, and then having a Byrdes whale show up in the middle of it. I was completely sold. Nathan sent me images that I published right away (issue # 20). His stories and images changed the direction of our magazine, because up until then it was 100 percent sharks, other than the occational stingray article, (but they are kin to sharks, so it made sense). But an article about marlin? So yea, his stories changed the mag forever - and since then I have made sure to include other types of big marine animals in our mag. So you can thank Nathan Meadows for that.
Shortly afterwards, Nathan went out to Isla Mujeres and filmed sailfish on baitballs. Again my mouth was drooling for one of his adventures. It seems I have been trying to play catch up with Nathan ever since. Since then, he has backed off the baitball dives and has been spending his summers up in Alaska shooting salmon sharks. (Still chasing his amazing adventures.)
Anyway, after hearing about Nathan's sailfish adventure, I decided to organize an exploratory trip out in the waters around Isla Mujeres to seek out sailfish baitballs. This was such a high risk type of adventure because there was a strong chance that we would get totally skunked, because this was a natural encounter, and we had to rely on the skill of our boat captains to help us find sailfish. Something I am willing to do when it is just me and a couple of the SDM team members, but when I am trying to organize a dive for the public, I normally prefer something that feels a little safer. Especially after our Cabo experience. Back in November 2009 I orgainzed an exploratory trip with Nathan, myself, and SDM shooters Andy Murch, and Paul Spielvogel to seek out marlin baitballs...and we got skunked. We had a blast regardless of the baitballs not running but I was scarred from the experience and was feeling like this type of chasing was not for me. I decided to try it anyway. I had a good group that was anxious to experience it, a great operator and so in February of 2010 we went out in search of sailfish baitballs. Of course after our less than stellar turnout of the bulls in Playa, and the marlin skunker trip running through my mind, I was praying for something different. But the one thing I have learned is that the guy who puts in the time is going to eventually come back with the story. And I felt like I had paid my dues at sea for everyone, and now it was time for something amazing to happen. Thankfully, I was not wrong...
The key to finding sailfish on baitball are the frigate birds. They are the ones who do all the work for us. They are up high in the air and with their amazing eyesight, they are able to see the sailfish down deep working up the sardines. So when the sailfish pin the sardines to the surface of the ocean, the frigates start diving bombing, picking off trapped sardines. When we see frigates down low by the surface we haul ass over to them to see whats going on.
Frigate birds above the surface trying to catch sardines that get too close. Sailfish here are circling the sardines trying to get them into a tight ball.
It was only our first day on the water, and within an hour we spotted our first flock of frigates dive bombing the surface. I told my friends to get in and they jumped in to an amazing spectacle. Around 40-50 sailfish attacking a slow moving baitball. Normally what happens is, when swimmers jump in, the baitballs are running for their lives and swimmers have to chase them and the sailfish. The fish are so fast that all we often see is the shiny glittering of fish scales slowly floating down, and no fish in sight. Today we had sailfish everywhere. I was sitting on the boat watching, thinking, ok, they should be back up here in about 5 minutes. But then 5 minutes passed, and then 10 minutes passed, and then 20 minutes passed, and so I finally jumped in the water, to what we had, which was a static baitball.
The small school of sardines decided to use the swimmers for protection against the sailfish and were hiding amoung us. Every 30 seconds or so, they decided to make a break for it and tried hard to drop back down, but every time they were met but the sailfish that would run them back up to the surface, and then the sardines would swim back to us. For over 45 minutes we had sardines with us, until the sardines made one final attempt at running and the sailfish managed to keep them away from us and they disappeared back out into the blue. We were laughing and in total disbelief at what had just happened and slowly we all climbed back into the boat in search of another baitball.
We found a few more baitballs but it was nothing like our first encounter. Excited we finished our day and returned to port, all of us so on fire from the experience. The only thing that felt wrong was how easy it was to find the baitballs. With everything I had experienced in Cabo, and the stories I had heard about how hard they are to find and stay up with, it sort of felt wrong. But hey why second guess Karma? I did mention that I had paid my dues to the ocean gods for my skunker trips, it was time for something amazing to happen, and happen it did.
We set out on day two only to be turned back by foul weather. So we spent the day pouring over footage from the previous day. On our third day we were able to head out, and again we scored another amazing static baitball. We had another 45 minute session with the sailfish. Again the sardine baitball decided we were the safest place to be. So again we witnessed this amazing spectacle. Witnessing something like this is hard to express in words...it is a humbling thing to see, and I know we all felt privilaged to be here seeing what we were seeing. This is the kind of stuff we had all seen on TV, but never something we ever dreamed that we would be experiencing ourselves. You hope, but with the ocean and with natural encounters like this, there are never any guarantees.
On our last day on the water we got skunked, and it was wild, no one was upset, or bummed out, in fact it was sort of welcomed. Our previous days out there had been so amazing, we started thinking that seeing this event was way too easy. We realized it wasn't, and so it sunk in that everything we had experienced over the previous days was truly a privilage and a gift from the ocean. We laughed and chatted all the way back to port excited about the adventure we had all just had, and stoked as we planned out the next one!
A huge thank you to the Friscione family, Solo Buceo of Cancun, and our guests who joined me out there for this amazing adventure...can't wait to see you next season!
Un Abrazo.
Here is a short video I made to share what sailfish baitball diving is all about...
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