Visiting the Galapagos Islands has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember. In many ways, after my recent trip there for a week on a liveaboard dive boat, it still has a dreamlike quality to it. One of the lures of diving in the Galapagos is seeing schools of hammerhead sharks. And we did see these schools. However, with the strong currents and the imperfect visibility, we were rarely able to get very close to these beasts. As you can see from the dive videos, they were mostly ghosts gliding through the ephemeral waters. It was more like watching creatures in a dream than the clear view of sharks I’ve seen in my Mexican and Central American dives.
It was still a wonderful experience. There’s probably nowhere on earth quite like Galapagos. It’s a magical place with an insane abundance of life, both in the water and on land.
There were 12 of us on a dive boat (Humboldt Explorer) designed for 16. The group included 7 Swiss from a dive shop in Geneva, a Spaniard from Barcelona, a French woman who spent the past 3 years teaching at a Galapagos school and 2 other Americans. There were also 11 crew members, so we were well taken care of.
Most of us flew in on the first morning and spent the afternoon getting sorted out on the boat. The day, on our first full day on the boat, we did 2 dives in Punta Carrion, the channel between North Seymour Island and Baltra Island. We then spent the afternoon with a naturalist touring North Seymour Island and seeing blue-footed boobies, frigate birds, seals and iguanas.
Late that afternoon we started the long 16 hour journey up to Wolf Island. The next day we did 4 dives at Wolf Island. The following day we did 2 more dives at Wolf and then made the short journey to Darwin Island where we did 2 afternoon dives. We did 4 more dives on Darwin the next day. That night we went back to Wolf Island and the following day did 3 dives by the early afternoon, and then started the long ride back south to the main islands.
The last full day we did 2 dives at Cousins Rock and then did a land tour at a ranch on Santa Cruz Island and saw scores of the famous Galapagos giant tortoises. We had a group dinner that night at a nice restaurant in the main town of Puerto Ayora.
It was an intense trip. All the dives in the north had incredibly strong currents. Most of the time we were hanging on to rocks with our hands, legs and knees to avoid being pulled into the currents as we watched the sea life pass by. Many times the currents would swirl and, just when we thought we’d have the perfect hold, the direction would change and we’d get pulled up and have to quickly find something else to grab onto. Sometimes just trying to film anything was impossible. Everybody were pretty beat up at some point in the trip. No one was up past 9pm any night, and probably over half the group ended up skipping at least one or more of the 19 scheduled dives to rest.
The dive videos
We were not officially in whale shark season, but we got amazingly lucky on one dive and dove directly onto one when we left the boat. The first picture is from me and it shows our Spaniard, Alex, working hard to get a great film.
This is what Alex filmed. It’s fantastic! Our dive guide estimated that this one was about 30 meters long.
Just near the end of the dive we saw a second one below us. Our guide estimated that this one was around 50 meters long.
At the beginning of one of our dives we spent a few minutes watching sea lions joyfully play in the water above us.
Hammerheads are one of the stars of Galapagos diving. We saw tons of them swimming like shadows in the murky blue waters. These videos are just a few of the times we saw hammerheads.
There were also scores of large Galapagos sharks and black tipped sharks swimming amongst the hammerheads.
I missed our last dive because I was not feeling well that day. The first dive that morning was nice, but uneventful. I was told this second dive I missed was also a bit tame, until the last few minutes when a huge school of rays passed by. Fortunately, Alex gave me a couple of his videos so I could experience what they saw.
We saw a ton of other rays on the trip and here are a couple of videos of these.
We saw scores of sea turtles on our dives. They are always some of the most enjoyable creatures to watch underwater.
Two of our divers seemed to sitting on some food this turtle wanted access to
There were moray eels all over the Galapagos. I can’t count how many times I went to grab a rock in the current and saw a moray eel nearby and had to find another place to hold on to.
Oops, this eel decided to claim the area where we were wedged against
We also saw a ton of garden eels on our first dive as they popped back into their holes like prairie dogs on the great plains of the US.
One of the best things about diving in the Galapagos is how abundant the general sea life is. These videos capture some of that experience.
A shy turtle and then a cloud of yellow fish
This fish was a bit annoyed I plopped down in it’s territory to avoid the current. He kept trying to get into the spot I was in. I’m sure it was happy when I left 🙂
We spent a dive in a place called Secret Cave off Wolf Island. It was a bit like going through a cenote in the Yucatan.
And, finally, a video of us surfacing just off Wolf Island.