Magdalena Bay

The trip is a search rather than a dive schedule. Boats leave from the fishing town inside the bay, run out through the mouth and then spend the day covering water, watching for working birds and for the surface disturbance that marks bait being pushed from below. When something is found, guides put swimmers in for short bursts: slide in, swim hard, climb back aboard, reposition, and repeat for as long as the action holds. Some days deliver hours of it and some deliver nothing at all.

There is no bottom reference and no site in the usual sense. Everything happens in the top few metres of open ocean, and the banks work as a search area rather than as a mark on a chart. Fitness decides how much you actually see, because the bait keeps moving and anyone who cannot cover ground in swell ends up watching from behind the action. Boats are small and open and the days are long, so seasickness and sun exposure matter as much as the water, which sits in the low to mid twenties.

Kit is minimal: a thin wetsuit, long fins, mask and snorkel, and a wide lens if you shoot. The useful preparation is swimming rather than gear, since the day is a series of sprints, and a little breath-hold work helps, because dropping two or three metres and staying still is what keeps you in the encounter rather than chasing it from the surface.

It suits confident open-water swimmers, freedivers and photographers, and works badly for anyone picturing a conventional dive holiday with a guide and a briefing. Most people book several consecutive days so the blanks average out, and many attach scuba elsewhere in Baja on either side of the trip. The bay's other trade is grey-whale watching from boats in winter, roughly January to March, a separate business with its own operators and no in-water diving attached.