Galapagos, Cocos, Socorro - Anyone been to all three?

[Scuba Lawyer]

P.S. All the liveaboards do land excursions as well.

 

[Doc]

P.S. All the liveaboards do land excursions as well.

Not to be confused with the actual land based experience. Again, most all readers here at SB have only done it as LOB, note Dunning–Kruger effect - Biases & Heuristics | The Decision Lab

..made it sound like if you're not in a dry suit,...

Different months and locations change everything, but I've done 78 degree temps there in a Polarfleece, (Wetsuit got lost and I'm not an easy fit for rentals) As with any such discussion, it's much more relevant to cite temperatures, dire warnings as the dry suit reference should be regarded as a fairly suspect opinion-better to focus on water temps and repetitive dive recovery.

The same with the hundreds of similar comments on any destination. What you or I wear is irrelevant. If you do not yet know what thermal insulation you'll need through your logbook, if you don't understand what repetitive dives will fo to diminish recovery, if you don't know how the effect a LOB surface interval will affect recovery? Sorry to say, but you've exceeded your experience base, you're biting off more than you can chew.

From other discussions way back, I'd been under the impression Wolf and Darwin were the best of the Galapagos diving sites, and generally reached by live-aboard. Is that true?

A loaded question. They most likely offer guarantee of quantity. It is 1.5 days steam across rough rough seas, each way. Will you see anything different? No. There is absolutely brilliant diving available as land based, especially if you hook into a premium outfitter, i.e. Scubaboard Iguana.

Do day boats get there, too?

If someone were headed to the Galapagos for one trip only, without the option (in time and/or money) to spend a few extra days on land, how appealing would the live-aboard route be vs. land-based?.

Again, a loaded question. If LOB is your only option because of time and money, then it's your only option. Day boats do not go there.

A week of intensive land based vs LOB? It's about 65% cheaper doing it land based.

No easy answer, but as Scuba Diver Magazine once proclaimed about the Galapagos: "Live Aboard, our readers would have it no other way". Largely because of advertising money coming in buckets from LOB vendors, ad placement and those thinly veiled advertorials that look like trip reports. There's no money flow from land based and there is no awareness.

I regret that this is a diversion to the thread and should be all together another thread, but I'll just offer that above clarification of opinion.

 

[Scuba Lawyer]

I am certainly surprised that you are asserting that members of ScubaBoard have low cognitive ability with illusory belief in their own superiority. I, for one, take extreme offense to such an intentional disparagement. As youmust be aware:

"In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability have illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is."

Regardless, I am a firm believer in free and unfettered speech and you are as entitled to your opinion as the next guy.

M

 

[qwimjim]

Lets get back on track folks

 

[davehicks]

Go to Socorro.

If all you want to do is Diving then it will knock your socks off. You'll spend less time and money traveling and see tons of big animals. I have done Socorro three times Nautilus and highly recommend them. There are several operators going there now, ask around for feedback and reviews.

 

[Sam Miller III]

@Scuba Lawyer

"I am certainly surprised that you are asserting that members of ScubaBoard have low cognitive ability with illusory belief in their own superiority. I, for one, take extreme offense to such an intentional disparagement. As youmust be aware:

"In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability have illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is."

Regardless, I am a firm believer in free and unfettered speech and you are as entitled to your opinion as the next guy."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hombre
Well stated !
You apparently traveled a lot to exotic dive locations
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@Doc
You now state you are not certified ?
Yet earlier posts you were PADI before PADI

Can you clarify your statements ?

Sam Miller, 111

 

[runsongas]

(Yes, done all three)

You might be unknowingly making a false assumption from the get go.

After many trips, I now dive Galapagos land based. Most "Americans" go liveaboard, but in reality, far and away, most visiting divers do it land based. I've seen enough Hammerheads without again enduring that 3 day slog back and forth to Darwin.

That said, the Galapagos is much more than diving. It is the history, the culture, the entire land based available experience. Can't get that bobbing around on a ship, the only thing that Cocos and Socorro offers.

Normally, I will travel great distances and skip things like the Pyramids (or go to Hawaii or NZ just to only ski), eschewing any tourism or lost dives due to drinking. The Galapagos is way beyond the experience afforded to "must do LOB" divers- locked on a ship with only a few hours on terra-firma. It is a real exception, but understood only by a very few.

Aren't most residents transplants from the mainland? Not the same as say Easter Island as far as native culture/history. It seems like the big draw for land tours is from the naturalist side.

 

[qwimjim]

From watching a lot of Galapagos trip report videos on youtube it seems the biggest difference between it and Socorro is that whale sharks don't seem to be a given at all on a Socorro trip, nor schooling hammerheads, but water clarity seems to be much better on average, and there's dolphins, seals, and lots of in your face manta action.

Galapogos videos from Aug-Oct all seem to have massive whale sharks show up, in your face encounters, schools of hammerheads (sometimes distant), seals, marine iguanas, not always mantas, and no dolphins.

And then I saw one Cocos videos from June 2012 that had just as many if not more hammerheads than Galapagos videos, in clearer water, closer.. and a whale shark, and dolphins, and even orcas! But no mantas. And most other videos didn't have whale sharks or orcas so I guess those are pretty rare.

Guess there's no where that has it -all-, reliably?

 

[Hoag]

From watching a lot of Galapagos trip report videos on youtube it seems the biggest difference between it and Socorro is that whale sharks don't seem to be a given at all on a Socorro trip, nor schooling hammerheads, but water clarity seems to be much better on average, and there's dolphins, seals, and lots of in your face manta action.

Galapogos videos from Aug-Oct all seem to have massive whale sharks show up, in your face encounters, schools of hammerheads (sometimes distant), seals, marine iguanas, not always mantas, and no dolphins.

And then I saw one Cocos videos from June 2012 that had just as many if not more hammerheads than Galapagos videos, in clearer water, closer.. and a whale shark, and dolphins, and even orcas! But no mantas. And most other videos didn't have whale sharks or orcas so I guess those are pretty rare.

Guess there's no where that has it -all-, reliably?

As a wise person once observed: "Sometimes it is better to be lucky than to be good."

I have only been to Socorro once. The first couple of days were kind of a bust, but then we went to Roca Partida and everything changed. On our 2nd dive of the morning, we rolled off of the Zodiak, and right below us at about 30ft was a school of (I'm guessing) about 100 Hammerheads. They were pretty shy & wanted nothing to do with us but they couldn't be bothered to get away from us either. Instead they just formed a big "donut" around us. They were close enough to see, but too far away to get a picture of. Back on the boat at lunch, the basic train of thought was "Well, it'll be impossible to top that. We might as well just go home now." (We were wrong.)

On the first dive of the afternoon, we rolled off the Zodiak and again, right below us at about 30ft was a whale shark. Not only was she passing by, but she seemed to genuinely enjoy our company. She "hung out" with us the entire dive and then followed the Zodiak back to the LOB and did a couple laps so that everyone could get one last look before she went away.

In both of those cases, if we had hit the water a minute earlier or a minute later, or if we were 50 yards left or right of where we were, we would likely never have had either of those incredible encounters, but on that day, luck was on our side.

Schooling Hammerheads and Whale Sharks may not be things that you can count on at Socorro, but if you are lucky, very, very lucky, then you might just see both.

 

[DiveTheGalapagos]

Ok, I'm biased, but...Galapagos. Whale sharks are seasonal, however, when I went to snorkel with the humpbacks in Silver Bank, my first thought was that our whale sharks are larger. Almost 99% are pregnant females. Huge schools of Hammerheads, Galapagos Sharks, Silky sharks, Black Tip sharks, White Tipped reef sharks, Mantas, Eagle Rays, Stingrays, Cow Rays, Dolphins, tons of turtles, Mola Molas (sunfish), massive schools of jacks & barracudas, tropical reef fish, puffer fish, trumpet fish, octopus, lobster, nudibranchs, sea horses, sea lions, fur seals, marine iguanas, penguins, sea stars, moray eels, garden eels, snake eels, blue footed boobies, flightless cormorants, Orcas and humpback whales...The diversity and quantity of marine life is why the Galapagos are on every diver's bucket list and why no one who goes ever regrets the cost, just that it spoils diving elsewhere for them. Plus the land before time vistas when you're anchored with 4 active volcanoes in view.

And sorry Doc, land based diving in the central islands simply does not compare to diving the northern and westerns sites from a liveaboard. It's cheaper, yes, but not comparable. The analogy I use is that if you walk downtown in Marfa, TX, you're bound to see people, but not nearly as many as the numbers and diversity you see walking around midtown Manhattan. And there is no manta season. Manta sightings are more site based than seasonally based.

Go in high season when the whale sharks are around. Typically they begin showing up in June and are there until mid Nov. Scientists tracking whale sharks have shown individuals are always different and only spend a day or two in the north before moving on. It's a migration route that they assume has to do with calving, probably in very deep ocean northwest of the Galapagos, though no one has ever witnessed whale sharks mating or calving.

Galapagos is like the perfect storm of currents: The warm Panama current from the north east, equatorial currents from the west and the polar Humboldt current that arrives in June. High season does concur with reduced visibility, but it's the nutrients the currents bring that causes the explosion of life. I personally don't care if there's 100' visibility if I'm watching hundreds of hammerheads 25' in front of me, like I'm on the side of their highway and they are the traffic.