27 dives, 13 islands, thousands of hammerheads, manta rays, sea lions, penguins and much more! We started our diving at North Seymour with mulliner nudibrachs and clouds of creolefish. The water temperature was 73 degrees F and my 7mm semidry was toasty enough that I started the trip without a hood. We encountered huge schools of yellowtail surgeons and saw jeweled and finespotted morays, barberfish, yellowbellied triggers, the bullseye puffer, streamer hogfish, sea lions, white-tipped reef sharks and three different kinds of rays. All of the divers were very impressed by the blue color phase of the blue sea star and the various colored cushion stars.
Bottlenose dolphins enlivened the trip to Cousins Rock.
The water at Cousins was very green and a cloud of black-striped salema so covered the reef that it was like going into a cave. The water temp was 75 and that seemed perfect for the sea lions who lived on this tiny sliver of volcanic rock. They were all around us and in and out of the salema. One even caught a barber fish and laid it on the bottom next to me! Our guide for this dive was George Garcia and he found us the endemic 6’ high Galapagos seahorse. I’d forgotten how many of the underwater species are found only in the Galapagos. We were to become very used to hearing the word “endemic”. King angels and barberfish were abundant as were the White tailed damselfish. Creoelfish were present on every dive by the thousands. Other fish that were encountered on a regular basis included black tipped and pink cardinalfish, the barred Serrano, three or four large blennies and the streamer hogfish. Scorpionfish were found on all our dives at Cousins and we saw a few white-tipped reef sharks.
We left Cousins after two dives and headed for Wolf Island. We
stated our dives at Wolf at a place called The Landslide and it was hammerhead
city! These were all female scalloped hammerheads who had come in
from deep water to have their mating scars cleaned up by the numerous barberfish
and king angels. Here we also saw our first Moorish idols.
It was difficult to take our eyes off the sharks who were all in the 7 to 8 foot range and they were pretty much non-stop for the duration of the dive. What an intro to the Northern Islands.The water temp varied from 78 to 80. A strong current swept across the site but all we had to do was hold on to the barren lava. Since Galapagos is bathed in fridgid water for 6 months of the year coral growth is very limited. There were large clumps of barnacles dotting the lava with attendant blennies peering out from the empty shells. Finespot morays were everywhere but it was the sharks that dominated both my memory and logbook pages. We swapped guides every day and it was our turn to dive with Fabian.
We did two dives at the same site on Wolf and saw countless hammerheads and only a few Galapagos sharks. Seems as if the Galapagos sharks will take baited hooks but not the hammerheads. Even though all of Galapagos enjoys protected status, fishermen still sneak in and wreak havoc. All in the name of Shark Fin Soup. So sad!
We traveled on to Darwin Island and there the hammerheads were even
more plentiful. Even the guides were amazed at the sheer numbers.
The water was a warm 80 degrees and the visibility varied between 50 and
70 feet. After the dives we would sail off into the blue for our
ascent and safety stop. There we were treated to marlin, wahoo, more
sharks, melonhead whales and bottlenose dolphin!
Our third dive of the day at Darwin saw a school of jacks that was so huge it blocked our view of the school of hammerheads! Mixed in with the jacks and sharks were rainbow runners and both yellow and bluefin tuna. Turtles would drift by mixed in with the sharks and gave a somewhat comical appearance as if they were asking what they had gotten themselves into.
After our 4 dive day at Darwin it was back to Wolf Island and its shark parade. Then it was time to head back to the airport to drop off Sue and Peter. It was with heavy hearts we said goodbye but we realized that we’d enjoyed some really spectacular stuff. As we neared the main island of Santa Cruz we found out that Ecuador had won there first ever World Cup match and Puerta Ayora was going wild. Giant flags in the streets, tv’s in every store and the team t shirts were all sold out!
We did an early morning land visit to North Seymour and were treated
to blue footed boobies with chicks, great frigates with their mating pouches
extended, the cutest baby sea lions, and our first marine iguanas.
Then we dove Daphne Major in 73 degree water. Welcome to the Central Islands. Again starfish littered the bottom, sea lions came to play and there was an abundance of fish – long snout and coral hawksfish, cardinals everywhere, the everpresent Creolefish, king angels and several types of blennies including one of the largest in the world. Mosquera was also 73 degrees and there we saw large schools of Galapagos and golden eye grunts, several rays, rainbow wrasse, bacalao, and jeweled morays.
Dove Gardner Reef on Sunday morning with garden eels, balloonfish, the world’s largest sand dollar, spinster and chameleon wrasse, six turtles, two marbled rays, jeweled morays, barnacle blennies, bicolor and bumphead parrots, dog and Amarillo snapper, blue and gold snapper, the barred Serrano and the yellow color phase of the guineafowl puffer. Our second dive included perhaps a dozen white tipped reef sharks and the infamous red lipped batfish. Fabian got quite excited over a peacock flounder. Seems they’re uncommon in Galapagos.
After two dives at Gardner we did a land visit on Punta Suarez which coincided with the courtship rituals for the waved albatross. 12,000 pairs of albatross! Marine iguana were everywhere, Nazca boobies, swallowtailed gulls, more blue footed boobies and the Galapagos hawk. The photo of Lauren and the sea lion (at the top of the page) was taken at Punta Suarez.
We saw dozens of white tips again at South Seymour and my first three banded butterfly along with garden eels, sgt major, puffers, Galapagos mojarra, coronetfish and lots more.
On the 12th of June we dove Rocas Gordon. This is what’s left of a volcano that is almost completely eroded away and washed by strong currents. It was a chilly 75 degrees and featured lots of white tip reef sharks and several large hammerheads. Scorpionfish clung to the lava and many rays appeared and disappeared throughout the dives. We did two dives here before moving on.
Tuesday the 13th we dove a place I have recorded as No Name. There we saw all the usual suspects plus boxfish, Peruvian grunts, yellowcheek surgeonfish, turtles and our first big manta. From there we revisited Cousins where I tried a fish survey. Once again the school of salema blocked not only the sun but also much of the site. It was here I witnessed Elizabeth Fagenholtz trying to compose a picture of a turtle when a young sea lion became very curious as to what was so interesting in the viewfinder. He edged closer and closer trying to peer through the finder at the same time as Elizabeth. Elizabeth was so intent on her composition that she never noticed the sea lion until his whiskers brushed her face. Her reaction was priceless! I ended up recording 44 species on the first dive and 34 on the second. Water temp again about 75.
Then it was on to Roca Redonda where the water was green ( and 71 degrees) and vis less than 10 feet. We did see the harlequin wrasse, found a horse conch and Lauren discovered Darwins endemic sea blob. Snorkeled with fur sea lions before heading out for Punta Vicente Roca.
The wall dive at Punta Vicente Roca was a wonderland of nudibranches, flatworms, leopard anemones, and sponges. It was so lush that there was no place to put even a finger for support. We found octopus, horse conch, the gold spotted sheepshead, wrasse ass bass, comatillo, rainbow basslet, horned sharks and more red lipped batfish. This was also the place where we encountered the golden snouted cleaner prawn. Many of the divers delighted in the ministrations of these cleaners but I wasn’t about to pull my gloves of at 68 degrees! We did two dives here and a panga ride to see both flightless comorants and Galapagos penguins. Two of the biggest surprises of the trip occurred here when Lauren and I saw a giant ocean sunfish (our first ever!) and a killer whale passed under one of the kayaks.
We were left with only two dive sites. One was billed as “the
dive at the center of the Earth” as the equator passed through the dive
site. This was called Cape Marshall and yielded the second large
manta of the trip. Our last dives were at Albany where we saw small
Galapagos sharks, (Hope for the future?) mobulus rays and schooling
barracuda. Temp here varied with depth. We started in 75 degrees
and it dropped to 68 at 125 feet.
We finish up with land tours at James Bay with fur sea lions, sea lions, iguanas, herons and sally lightfoot crabs. A personal highlight was an inter-boat soccer match at James Bay. World Cup fever having struck hard. Italy and the USA tied as we flew back to Miami.
