BSAC London No. 1 Branch: December 2003

Dollar Deal on Darwinian Diving
01 December 2003

Trip report by Megan Peat
First published in London Diver, March 2004

Any interest in going scuba diving in the Galapagos later this year?" Well, I wasn't exactly going to say no…

Complicated by the fact that the friend I was going with lives in Boston, we decided to book everything over the internet rather than pay extra for the services of a travel agent that only one of us would be able to utilise. Extensive research took place – consisting of accosting people at the Perseverance and typing in "diving + Galapagos" into Google.

The Lammer Law seemed to be the boat of choice, but was booked up, so we ended up going with Peter Hughes, who run the Dancer fleet of liveaboard boats. Our boat was the Sky Dancer, newly refitted and very luxurious – a daily delivery of early morning coffee to the cabin; endless supplies of towels; hot drinks and fresh food after every dive.

Arrival in the islands was awesome–after completing the airport formalities, we boarded a minibus for the five minute drive to the port, where everyone rushed to the shore to gaze at the sea lions, pelicans and blue water.

The first dive was a checkout dive, to iron out problems. I took in my camera case, minus the camera (top tip, thanks Alex), crystal clear water at 22°C, angelfish and sea lions—all a bit of a change from Scapa Flow!

That afternoon we went on a land visit, where I realised that all the stories I'd heard about the Galapagos were true. It took our party of fourteen about ten minutes to disembark from the RIB, as there was a family of sea lions, with feeding pups, basking on the pier and we were all too scared/amazed/busy taking photos to pass! The islands themselves were nothing to write home about, rather lunar and barren, but the birds and animals were in no way scared of humans, giving the rather bizarre impression that you are walking around unnoticed in the middle of a David Attenborough wildlife programme.

The diving in the southern islands was lovely, water temperature ranging from a low of 19°C to a high of 23°C and an average viz of 20 m+. Dive sites ranged from wall dives with rare black coral (which is, confusingly, green) to scenic coves. On the whole, the underwater topography was not what I'd expected – bare rocks and sand rather than coral, but for someone who's done the vast majority of their diving in the UK ("what did you see?", "a grey fish…") the sheer variety of underwater life was amazing. Triggerfish, puffer fish, a stonefish, hundreds of morays, lobsters; one of my favourites was the aptly named chocolate chip starfish, which resembles a cookie with chocolate chips embedded in a star pattern. The sea lions were friendly, nibbling fins and peering though air bubbles, and for once I was the old hand, having dived with the seals in the Farnes.

On the second dive of the trip, I saw my first seahorse, which was a beautiful red and surprisingly big (they are supposed to be the largest type) and also my first marine turtle. The turtles, like the land mammals, weren't scared of humans and seemed to take great pleasure in playing chicken—swimming in a statesman like fashion straight at you until you were forced to duck. The snorkelling was also amazing, seeing penguins and marine iguanas in the water and for once, I didn't feel like it was a poor substitute for a dive.

After a couple of days in the southern islands, with two to three dives a day, a land visit and a snorkel we began the twelve hour journey up to Wolf and Darwin Islands, where the hammerheads hang out and no-one, other than divers, visits as no land visits are allowed.

Waking up in the morning, I went on deck and immediately saw a pod of dolphins playing in the wake–they followed us until we dropped anchor, when they got bored and went off, but I counted 100+ and that was only on one side of the boat.

After breakfast, the first dive in the northern islands. I've done drift dives, I thought I'd dived in currents before. Not like this I hadn't. You basically rolled out of the RIB and dropped as quickly as you could to the bottom, where you grabbed hold of a rock and tried to find your buddies. Down there it was like some bizarre children's game, hiding behind a boulder and occasionally, gripping your reg. between your teeth and holding on to your mask, sticking your head up to play peek-a-boo with a hammerhead. After thirty minutes or so of this, the guide would bang on his tank and we'd all let go and get dragged by the current into 'the blue'.

In the dive briefing, this sounded like the boring bit, drifting along in the current and carrying out any necessary safety stops. In reality, it was possibly the best part of the dive, with schools of hammerheads passing below us and dolphins flashing by in a blur.

We'd been warned that we had very little chance of seeing a whale shark as, in early December, we were in the wrong season. That didn't stop the jokes—as we were diving in two groups of seven, each would claim to have made a sighting to the disbelief of the other. One amazing dive, however, we were coming to the end of our time in the blue when I heard someone shouting through their reg and looked down to see a huge white-spotted back passing majestically just below me. Dive plans be damned—I immediately started finning down to try and catch him up, along with everyone else, needless to say. However, the shark's stately progress belied the actual speed of movement and one by one we gave up trying to keep up and returned to do our deco stops, cheering and whooping at each other through our regs and dancing bizarre jigs. Unfortunately, no amount of wishing, hoping and peering off into the distance earned us another visit, but I think the memory will stick for a few years to come.

The water temperature here was a balmy 26°C but felt colder than in the south as you spent so little time finning. We'd do four to five dives, averaging an hour each and towards the end of the day I was starting to clock up deco time, despite the fact that we'd rarely go deeper than 25m. Most of the rest of the group were diving on nitrox and I'd recommend that anyone who goes get certified first.

Geographically, we were 50% US and 50% European, with most of the others having done several exotic liveaboard holidays before. I met one of the few people of whose lives I can genuinely say I am jealous—the North American Rolex scholar—who gets to spend a year (and a bursary) diving. The bad news being that the age limit for application is 25!

The boat was very comfortable, the food good, plentiful and fresh and the crew friendly. The drinks free flowing, although no one took full advantage of the alcohol. The accommodation was pleasant, we had the cheaper cabins, but the above deck ones were more spacious and airy (but not worth an extra $200 pp). I became blasé about so many things that before the trip had seemed so exciting, seahorses, turtles, hammerheads, sea lions, reef sharks, Galapagos sharks, white-tips…

The diving was world-class and so were the land trips, if it's not heresy to say so. I could almost wish we'd had a more even split between the two or, even better, would recommend spending more than a week there. I won't pretend it's a cheap holiday—the boat, with all diving and food included, cost $2,150, flights to Ecuador £540 and from Ecuador to the islands $390, but with the current dollar–pound exchange rate, now is a good time to go and I can truly recommend it as the experience of a lifetime.