Galapagos Islands - Diving Wolf and Darwin
DAY 3 (Wolf Island)
Diving begins early to get in all 4 dives in a 12-hour day. A night dive (optional) where you can see garden eels and the red-lipped batfish on a sandy bottom.
AM: Wolf is one of the reasons Galapagos is on most divers’ bucket list. Scientists have designated Wolf and Darwin (together as they are so close together) as the sharkiest place on earth because they have the largest biomass of sharks on the planet, 17.5 tons of sharks per hectare (2.47 acres). Only divers visit Wolf. There is no chumming in Galapagos. This is where sharks come naturally. There are no land visits. Wolf is located 115 miles north of the central islands.
PM: Sightings include huge schools of hammerhead sharks, Galapagos sharks, whale sharks (in season), silky sharks, eagle rays, sea lions, fur seals, mantas, turtles, jacks, trumpetfish, butterfly fish, morish idols, moray eels and dolphins. Some sites at Wolf are covered in coral and all of the tropical fish species that live on coral reefs. Dive sites include Shark Bay, The Landslide, La Banana and Islote La Ventana. On the island itself, there are hundreds of thousands of seabirds including all 3 types of boobies in Galapagos – red footed, blue footed and nazca. There are frigates, pelicans, lava gulls and red billed tropicbirds.
Day 4 (Darwin Island)
Darwin’s Arch is an icon, the symbol of diving the Galapagos. It is located 229 km / 142 miles north of the central islands. In addition to Wolf, this is where we find massive schools of hammerheads. Huge, pregnant whale sharks pass through Darwin Island each year for reasons unknown.
Darwin is the warmest dive site in Galapagos due to the tropical Panama current. You spend a lot of the dive stationary, on a platform that drops into the blue where hammerheads swim against the current. It is like being on the side of a hammerhead highway watching traffic pass. You leave the platform to swim out into the blue when a whale shark is spotted. That sometimes means swimming through the hammerheads, a truly magnificent experience you will carry with you forever.
Day 5 (AM : Darwin Island, PM : Wolf Island)
AM: Darwin Island. We have 2 more dives at Darwin in the morning.
PM: Wolf Island. We have 1-2 more dives at Wolf in the afternoon. There is an optional night dive at the Anchorage site. Anchorage has a sandy bottom where you may see garden eels and the red-lipped batfish.
|