Imagine hanging by one hand from the top of a tall cliff. Strong winds blow you back and forth, first in one direction then another. You come close to losing your grip on the stone that is all that keeps you from being hurled bodily into the sky, but you hang on somehow. You hang on because the air in front of you is so crowded with creatures of every shape, size, and color that you can hardly see the sky beyond.
The sky is filled with a silvery mist that makes everything beyond 50 to 60 feet away dissolve into an indistinct twilight blue. And out of that murk strange shapes emerge from time to time: a manta slowly flapping its massive wings. It makes a pass directly overhead, pivots with stately grace, glides by again at eye-level, then unhurriedly disappears back into the mist.
Another time it might be a wall of hammerhead sharks, ten high, two or three wide, and seemingly endless in length, shark after shark swimming lazily out of the blue to your right, undulating past not twenty feet away, and merging back into the blue on your left, perhaps 300 of them in all.
(Photo by Andrea Bläsi who was on the boat with me)
Then you look up and you're face to face with one of these strange creatures.
(Photo by Andrea Bläsi)
Or an eagle ray.
A 15-foot tiger shark swims by streaming a trail of obsequious cleaner fish.
Then you let go your grip and swim out to meet the biggest fish of all--a 20-foot whale shark swimming close enough to touch, its huge mouth open to gulp down the plankton that fills these rich waters. It swims slowly enough that you can keep pace with it, making eye contact before it fades into the blue.
(Photo by Andrea Bläsi)
All this takes place over a week of twenty-one amazing dives from the luxurious dive boat Jesús del Gran Poder, aka Galapagos Aggressor III.
I dove with 13 other divers from around the world. The boat was extremely comfortable, the food was excellent, and the company was a lot of fun.
80 feet down and waiting for the show to begin.
We visited many of the islands, including Wolf and Darwin, which are located about 160 miles northwest of the main group.
Wolf and Darwin have some of the most dramatic dive sites in the Galapagos. Because they’re so far out, very few boats visit them. We spent 12 of our 21 dives there and saw just about everything we’d hoped to see.
As we passed Isla Isabel we passed within about seven miles of the Wolf volcano which is currently erupting. At night, we could see clouds of steam and smoke from the crater glowing bright red from the eruption. Here's a video of the eruption taken a couple weeks before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Y3aO-rBOE It wasn’t quite this active when we were there.
We visited dive sites on several other islands as well where we saw much more of the biological diversity the Galapagos are famous for.
Including a lot of playful sea lions.
Seemingly endless schools of fish.
Sleepy sea turtles.
Well-camouflaged stone fish.
And dozens of marine iguanas.
The iguanas eat the moss that grows on the rocks a few feet below the surface. Being reptiles, they can only function in the cold water for a few minutes before their muscles lock up and they drown. So they spend most of their time sunning themselves to raise their body temperature enough to make another underwater foray.
They are positively prehistoric.
I don't have an underwater camera, so all these photos were taken on our trip by our divemaster, except those credited to Andrea Bläsi, a Swiss woman who took a lot of great photos of our dives.
My dive buddy on the Galapagos trip, Heng Yirui, a veterinary student from Singapore volunteering at a clinic in the Galapagos, created a great video of highlights from our 21 dives. All the best stuff is here, and Yurui did an excellent job of shooting and editing this.
https://www.facebook.com/heng.yirui/videos/10152999374851194/
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