Baja Snorkeling

Shelley and I got out snorkeling three times, to Coronado, Carmen, and Danzante islands. Coronado is the closest and most common snorkeling spot; it's where we snorkeled last year. We were pretty lucky with calm, sunny weather. But there's no avoiding the cold water this time of the year, 16c (60f). It's not too bad with a 7mm wetsuit, hood, boots, and gloves.

It's always hard taking underwater photos. At least snorkeling on a sunny day you have a decent amount of light. Scuba diving, especially in poor visibility leaves little light for photos. My Canon SD700 IS isn't the ideal underwater camera but it's nice to have some photos. Good underwater cameras get pretty expensive.

Adobe Lightroom (or similar software) is almost essential to make the most of the photos you do get. You can improve some photos quite dramatically. Ideally, the shot would be perfect out of the camera, but until I can achieve that, Lightroom is a big help.

I omitted the worst of the fuzzy ones but they're still not all that sharp. But hopefully they give you an idea of the fantastic sea life that abounds here. There's lots more that I didn't get pictures of, often because they move too fast!

Baja only has one coral reef, at Cabo Pulmo. But there are lots of individual soft and hard corals on the rocks.

We used Dolphin Dive Center for snorkeling and diving. Raphael, the manager and dive master, is a great guy. And Ramone, the boat driver, is great too.



As usual, click to enlarge (and then click on "Slideshow" if you want)