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GALAPAGOS! |
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Trip Log—Galapagos |
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Trip Log |
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Dive 8 — Darwin’s Arch 110 ft. for 50 minutes Again, an amazing dive — Two Whale sharks, and lots’o’hammerheads schooling and alone. Big Galapagos sharks. Lot of eels and puffers. Brought the camera down for the first time this trip. Went very deep this time on accident. (Whale Shark #1 was deep) and it was much lighter than the last dive. The sun came out, and it was deceiving how deep you were. Since I had been so deep, I was staying a little higher than Gene, (I was almost in the red on my gauges) |
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The second whale shark had been spotted as I was hovering and I looked down. I could see it clearly and the people that were near it. As I gazed down, wishing I could get closer to get a clear shot, I noticed one diver right on the tail, probably arms length from the massive tail… it was Gene. I laughed into my regulator. He was having a good time. Other people said they got pictures of him… we’ll have to wait and see. |
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Dive 9 — Darwin’s Arch 86 ft for 42 minutes
Gene sat this one out, I went with the camera. I like the group I’m diving with, so I didn’t have any worries about going “buddy less”. We saw 4 Whale sharks — swam very close to one (arms length, that was about 40 ft. Truly amazing animals, so peaceful, so huge! Saw a school of hammer heads, maybe 20 or so, circling below. Scorpion fish, and a dolphin that swam right through the sharks, scattering them. Lots of eels and Hogfish, Puffers and Trumpets and Barber Butterflies, probably thousands of them. Beautiful. |
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As I sit on the top deck writing this in my journal, I’m surrounded by birds. Darwin’s Arch is straight ahead and Darwin’s Island, a sheer cliff — is at my right. Juvenile boobies are sitting on the stern railing. The cliff to my right, is sheer in places about 250 ft up. It is filled with thousands of birds. Masked Gulls, Red Footed Boobies, Frigate birds soar, swallow tailed gulls, Terns and Tropic birds. The boobies are the most comical, and curious enough to come to the boat. They are clumsy in the landing and usually it takes many tries for a successful landing on the rail. They have been known to land even on a persons head (Virginia) and “dropped” on more than one person so far. Shit happens! |
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Dive 10 — Darwin’s Arch 66 ft. for 36 minutes Last dive of the day and the visibility has deteriorated. Seemed darker. When we hit the ledge, it was a slack tide, we went immediately into the blue. Quite a bit of activity of schooling fish, huge walls of fish moving fast — thousands of jacks. It was dizzying at times. Most of the dive was a drift dive, about 20 minutes of blue diving. The schools of fish were amazing, swirling and switching directions in unison, then back again. Lots of turtles and hammerheads as we drifted. Very different diving from the first 3 dives.
A hot shower and a beer and we all sat down for dinner. After dinner a slide show of fish Identification, but after 4 dives , poor Fabians efforts were under appreciated. We were all pooped! Swimming with sharks takes it out of you! |