Diving - The Galapagos Islands - Trip of a lifetime!
Day 3 & 4 : Darwin Island
When we awoke the next morning the boat was already at Darwin Island.
I grabbed a coffee and went out on deck to look up at the Island, a foreboding lump of rock, with no obvious way of accessing the top, which I was a little surprised to see had stunted trees on top, despite the remoteness of the island.
Darwin Island
Off to my left was the remains of the iconic Darwin Arch, which collapsed a couple of years ago (oddly, not long after the Azure Window in Malta, another arch familiar to many divers) and now two pillars refered to as the 'Pillars of Evolution' by some.
The remains of the Darwin Arch, now the Pillars of Evolution
All of our diving here was to be done around the base of the 'pillars' and there was a lot to be done.
For our first day at Darwin, we had 4 dives scheduled.
The first, pre-breakfast, saw us in the water at 7AM.
My logbook records my memory of the dive as 'very strong and variable currents, but immediately starting seeing large Hammerhead sharks in decent numbers (10s, not 100s)'.
We descended down to the volcanic slope at around 17M or so and clung onto the rock in the strong current, above and ahead of us, out in the full current, Sharks swum by in large numbers.
Sharks!
Guineau Fowl Puffer Fish
Scalloped Hammerhead up close
For someone who had never seen a single Hammerhead Shark before, the sight of 10 or more within my sightline at any point was pretty remarkable.
Vis was patchy and we moved around the platform surrounding the former Arch, looking for good points to spot Sharks (notably looking for Whale Sharks, which we weren't to see all day).
There were the bigger, bulkier Galapagos sharks mixed in with the Hammerheads (we saw these following and around the boat after meals and at night too).
Overall, this was a much better dive than the previous day, but pretty challenging in terms of current management, similar to the worst I encountered in the Maldives.
As well as the Sharks, there were some Morays on the reef, lots of Tuna in the current and, of course many reef fish, including some very large Parrot Fish.
The Galapagos has plenty of colourful reef fish, too.
Galapagos Shark
Morays always look angry
Our second dive was after breakfast, seeing us in the water at around 10:15.
This, like all those at Darwin, followed the same pattern as the first.
Being a little later in the day seemed to make things better.
This was a great dive, with lots of Hammerhead and Galapagos sharks in close.
There was also a large baitball of Jacks and some large Blue Jacks, too.
Inside the shoal of Jacks!
At one point I nearly landed on a Stonefish and had to forcefully push a fellow diver's fins away from hitting it - I'm not sure he ever realised what I was doing it for.
The current was challenging again, but we found good spots for viewing Sharks and spent almost an hour doing so.
I wrote in my logbook that this was 'The dive we came to the Galapagos for', but things were to get even better.
Diving at Darwin Island
However, it wasn't to be on the next dive, which was a bit of a disaster.
This dive featured very strong and varying current.
There were lots of Hammerheads again and a few Galapagos sharks, but the problem with the dive was technical.
I was driven into a barnacle encrusted rock by the current and it pierced my drysuit close to my left knee and I got soaked as a result.
Back on board, one of the Spaniards gave me some glue and I used a patch made of part of one of my gloves that was being torn to pieces anyway to try and effect a repair as, luckily, it seemed to be one small hole.
For the fourth dive of the day, we again spent a lot of time watching out for Sharks.
Sharks, lots of Sharks!
Plenty of Turtles around
Another angry Moray
Plenty of Hammerheads again, but this time I looked at the reef fish too.
Some good sized Moarys, Parrot fish and other reef fish.
There were some impressive Green wrasse, some very smalll, delicate looking fish and other usual suspects on the reef, Jacks, etc.
Before this dive, which I did in a wetsuit loaned me by another guest as I left the repair on my drysuit to cure (and the other drysuit divers all switched to wetsuits, probably worried their suits could go the same way as mine, combined with it being far warmer at Darwin; 25C on this dive, even at 20+M), we took the RHIB out to see some Whales - We saw a Humpback, breach, a couple of smaller ones (Humboldts?) and then a small pod of dolphins played alongside the RHIB as we returned to the 'Pillars of Evolution'.
Humpback Whale tail
It had been a great day at Darwin as far as I was concerned (damage to my drysuit notwithstanding), with as many Hammerhead sharks as I had hoped for.
When you see documentaries on TV, you wonder if they spent 6 months waiting for a single 30 second clip, but I had looked down and seen the seabed filled with the unmistakable shapes of Hammerhead sharks - I was going home happy!
I had another good night's sleep, resting at anchor, but we were up again at 5:45 for a quick coffee before jumping into our dive gear again and hitting the water at an ungodly 6:33AM!
As the previous day, the first dive was good, but not as good as the later ones had been the previous day.
We dropped down and found a White Tip Reef shark and a turtle on the reef.
We then moved along and spent about 20 minutes just watching the sharks moving around and over us.
It was a little dark on the dive, so photos are probably not as good as on some previous dives, but there were still lots of large sharks to be seen.
I spotted a large Mottled Sting Ray just before we left the reef and carried out my safety stop among a long shoal of fish (TBIDed).
A good dive, if not quite a match for the later ones the previous day.
More diving at Darwin
After breakfast, though, the best dive at Darwin beckoned.
It was to be an amazing dive - The one I came for, but sadly I have no photos as my camera gave a lens error before the dive! This error remained for the whole trip, but frustratingly, if positively, on returning home, the problem had gone away - I can only assume the camera got damp and as the boat was never really dry, it didn't dry out until it was packed away in my luggage for the return trip...
We dropped in and saw plenty of Hammerheads straight away.
Galapagos Shark
Hammerhead head on, nearly.
Yellow Fish
Hammerheads above me, Hammerheads below.
Reef fish were here in abundance, too - A Yellow Surgeonfish, I think
Initially spotted a Moray and a small fish, which I videoed and then my GoPro reported the SD card was full! So no camera at all for this dive...
After spending some time sitting on the rocks watching the Sharks swim around us, we swam out into the blue, where we swam among the circling Hammerheads and the odd Galapagos shark, which was a pretty amazing experience.
As we swam back into the Arch platform, we saw a huge shoal of Trevally and then spent some more time moving around the rocks, spotting Sharks around and over us.
On the reef, we spotted a Lobster, which are more like very large Crayfish (Spiney Lobsters, in the UK, I guess).
Finally, we swam out to start our safety stop, but as we did we saw a hundred or more Hammerheads schooling beneath us over white sand - The iconic image of Darwin and we saw it!
A dive to remember! I just hope Andy got lots of video footage!
Andy captured the sharks below us. This is a still from his video
We had started early this morning as we were headed back to Wolf Island for our post lunch dives.
These islands are relatively close together, but still a couple of hours cruising time.
Day 4 & 5 : Wolf Island
We arrived at Wolf Island in the early afternoon.
We were promised "more Sharks", which oddly seemed to disgruntle some of the Americans who were expecting very different dive sites on each dive.
The rest of us, however, were happy to accept that the dives depending on the locations where the currents worked to the Sharks' advantage - There was no point sitting on a rock somewhere or drifting miles out to sea, if we didn't see anything!
Elephant Rock at Wolf Island - Daniel, one of the guides, on the right
If I'm honest, I enjoyed the dives at Wolf the most, especially the third one, but more on that in minute.
Wolf is roughly crescent shaped and we were anchored in the concave side, which was very calm.
The diving, of course, was mostly on the corner and around the other side, at two sites, called Landslide and Shark Bay.
Our first two dives were at Landslide.
We dropped in from the RHIBs and immediately found a group of Eagle Rays, as predeicted by our guides.
Very quickly we were seeing hundreds of Hammerhead and Galapagos Sharks passing by as well.
The procession was endless and my photographs and videos show 20 or more in one shot.
Sharks at Wolf Island
We moved along the ledge of Landslide, but wherever we went there were more Sharks.
We didn't do a lot of swimming on this dive, as there was a good current to move us along and most of the time was spent stationary, but it was an excellent dive with the kind of numbers of Sharks you hope to see in the Galapagos!
We had seen a pod of Dolphins on the surface from the Boat and the RHIB and I could hear them underwater. Some others said they saw some dolphins, so I guess there may be some I didn't notice at the time in my GoPro footage.
At the request of a number of divers, we did a night dive here.
Night diving at Wolf Island
To be honest, I would have happily swapped it back for another Shark dive, but the Americans, especially, wanted a change and it was OK, although we didn't risk the currents for this dive, so there were no chances of encountering a Hammerhead or Galapagos Shark at close quarters in the dark, as we dived close to the boat in the anchorage bay.
We spotted a Hermit Crab, a Slipper Lobster, other Lobsters (like Spiney ones in the UK/Med), around 6 cornet fish in a group, a turtle and a sea lion buzzed past at one point, but mostly it was a typical night dive, moving around trying to spot something interesting in our torch or video light beams.
There were loads of Morays around, including 3 fighting or mating, hard to tell which.
Next morning we were up early again for another dive at Landslide.
More sharks at Wolf
This was very much like that the previous day, another dive in significant current.
We stopped in numerous spots to watch Sharks and rays
There was similar life to previous dive here, but it seemed to me like there were less sharks overall.
The vis was a little poorer than the previous day as well.
After breakfast, we were dropped off at a slightly different location, to dive the part of the island referred to as Shark Bay.
This was definitely my favourite dive at Wolf, due to excellent light and vis.
and more Sharks...
Once again, most of the time, we just sat and watched the Sharks go by, but there were LOTS of Sharks (both Hammerheads and Galapagos), they were close and the light and visibility meant that they were excellent to watch.
At one point, I was looking out and there were around 10 Hammerheads swimming past that turned in my direction, suddenly something startled them (we were told it was Dolphins) and then burst over and around me like a display by the Red Arrows - I recall laughing, it was truly an amazing moment and Andy managed to capture it from his perspective, which wasn't quite as good as mine, that's me, with the yellow float handle on my GoPro, that they zoom over and around!
Andy's video of the Hammerheads being startled
At the end of the dive, we did a fast drift, rising up to around 5m for a safety stop on the go.
Altogether an excellent dive and a highlight of the trip for me.
After lunch we had a final dive at Wolf Island.
Diving at Wolf Island
We entered at Landslide and the dive consisted of a bit of drifiting and a bit of sitting watching sharks.
The vis was poorer than the previous dive, so, although the sharks were there, they weren't as clearly visible, but there were still some great moments when a shark or two came close or my vision was full of Hammerhead sharks passing by.
Towards the end of the dive, we drifted some considerable distance up to the safety stop and the boat, where we spotted a turtle, which I think I'd seen on the first dive at Wolf Island.
A decent dive, but not as good as the previous one.
We had a long trip back south back to Isabella Island, so shortly after we were back on the boat, we were heading south.
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