Galapagos - Ecuadorean Presidential Decree

[EnronX]

Congratulations onderwaterfoto...that really is great news! for you and everyone else with a trip booked this fall/winter.

We flew to Ecuador at the beginning of this month, not knowing 100% if we were actually cleared to dive Darwin and Wolf...it was an amazing relief once we were on the boat and our captain told us we were on our way North! I can't tell you how excited I was to wake up and look out to see the dolphins jumping in our wake and Wolf in the distance...

To answer your question, we were in Galapagos from 8-6-2007 until 8-12-2007. Unfortunately we didn't have the best of conditions, the weather was fine but overcast a number of days...The water up at Darwin was cloudy and the dive-masters seemed frustrated we weren't seeing the big schools of Hammerheads and fewer sharks than usual. We did see one Whale Shark just off the Porch, and one large school of Tuna, lots of dolphin, and please say hello to the albino moray we found and photographed...he was special.

Look back a few pages for my dive buddy Drew's(djac5700) trip report he posted when we were in Guayaquil on our way home.

 

[onderwaterfoto]

Thankx EnronX for your answers. Do you have some more online pictures from your trip? Like to see more...

 

[EnronX]

Here is the album I uploaded this morning...please let me know if the link works!

http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=175084674/a=53457872_53457872/t_=53457872

 

[NTSilver]

EnronX
Great photos. I especially enjoyed the land creatures. We were scheduled for June 08 but decided to cancel. Maybe we'll make it someday when there isn't any controversy. Glad you had a great time.

 

[EnronX]

Sorry to hear that NT, I hope you were able to get a full refund?!? It's interesting for me to look back on how stressful the entire month before our trip was...At the end of the day, I think all the hassle and heart-ache over the potential cancellation made me appreciate the experience even more...The divemaster on our boat seemed quite frustrated by the lack of big hammer-head schools and the paucity of whale sharks, but I was just thrilled to be in the water and didn't take that for granted one bit.

Hopefully you can reschedule on one of the two boats that don't have issues with the diving "cupos", the best months for whale-sharks we were told repeatedly are July and August.

 

[Mossman]

Glad you made it out there! I'll be there two weeks from today. So, how were hte conditions, diving, currents, animals???

Conditions were great at Wolf and Darwin. A real show of eagle rays at Wolf on the way up (8/18), whale sharks on all dives but two at Darwin (8/19-22), and decent conditions at Wolf on the way back (8/23). The central islands were good on the way up (8/16-17), but horrible on the way down (8/24-25) - i.e., no viz green water at Cousin's and Gordon's Rocks. Water temps 66-69 in the lower islands, 72 at Wolf, 73 at Darwin.

Water was rough, not only the crossing to/from Darwin & Wolf, but also the trips among the central islands, which I remember being glassy on my 2004 trip.

The boat had a few issues. One panga went down most of one dive day, our toilet exploded during a particularly rough inter-island crossing and the raw sewage sprayed all over our bathroom wasn't cleaned adequately, and a little drip of an a/c condensation leak that fried a camera battery that happened to be sitting under it the first night ended up saturating my bed and the floor during another rough crossing. And a cockroach problem - I only saw a few running around the deck, but one a fellow passenger had one in her bed. Oh, and just like the Okeanos Aggressor, the capt. advised putting used TP in the trash, not the head. That's plain sick, especially when they only change the trash every three days. Not at all what I expected from my first (and probably last) Peter Hughes boat.

Otherwise, lounge was nice, food was very good with lots of different salads and veggies and a spectrum of fresh fruits and juices, booze was plentiful and top shelf, dive deck and pangas comfortable, and most of the crew worked hard, to the extent of washing and hanging all our gear to dry at the end of the trip. Still the boat didn't measure up to my GA II trip in 2004.

 

[Mossman]

Frankly I don't think our trip will happen which I find devasting as we have had this booked for almost 2 years, not to mention the potential loss of several thousand dollars. I was also dissapointed to read EnronX's report as there does seem to be far fewer hammerheads than we thought we might see, I had visions of hundreds of schooling hammerheads.

It's all a matter of timing. We saw numbers in the mid-teens at least at certain points in certain dives - hard to qualify more since the viz was half that of Cocos and other hammerhead meccas. Still, you'd seem them consistently through each dive, albeit more often in packs of 2-10 per cruise-by. The Galapagos sharks were more solitary, though I'm envious of one diver who got enough alone time that she saw a parade of them coming at her. They're even more skittish the the hammerheads.

I wasn't disappointed in the least. After all, this wasn't peak hammerhead season, it was peak whale shark season. We'd have two to three whale shark sightings per dive, some more distant, others so close that you're whacked by the tail (I knocked two remoras off one).

 

[suzbo]

Mossman, it sounds like the housecleaning left a lot to be desired, but I thought that the majority of boats - anywhere - ask you to put your used toilet paper in the trash can, not down the head (though it's also been my experience that they then clean out your trash cans at LEAST once a day! ick!) They also do the same on land in many of those 3rd world countries, since their sewer systems aren't on a par with more developed countries. So they all do that at their homes, too, and don't get why we think it's disgusting. I'm always glad to get home again where I can just flush the TP! But I'm disgusted that they weren't scrupulous in cleaning up... and you said that was Peter Hughes' Sky Dancer? (ulp... that's the boat my hubby works on. uhhh.... afraid to ask if he was on your trip and whether you liked or disliked him! ;-) )

And as Mossman said, as to what you see - it always varies, you can never predict it, even if the previous week they saw something fantastic, it may not be there for you. It's nature. it moves around! ;-) I understand there were 2 orcas, and a humbback whale mother and calf in the last 3 weeks up there, along with a fairly regular amount of whale sharks.

Anyone who can go now - go! there are no guarantees what you will see, but take the chance!

 

[cowjazz]

The last trip report from one of the Aggressor boats looks good:

http://www.aggressor.com/capt_log.php?log_id=1195

Keep in mind there were orcas in the area when Enronx was at Wolf and Darwin. From what I have been told, the trade off is a chance to encounter orcas, but the sharks scatter when the orcas come to town.

 

[onderwaterfoto]

Thanks for the advice suzbo. We can't wait and are excited that our trip will continue. Hope the authorities will come to reason for 2008 and confirm that it is not the diving industry (liveaboards) that cause much negative impact on the environment.