Dive Traveller
those who’ve logged enough time diving challenging conditions. Neatly summed up, these are two of the premier spots on Earth for divers seeking adrenaline overload in the midst of marine megafauna. A long overnight steam has
brought us more than 100 miles (160km) to the Landslide along Wolf’s southern coast. The sea is a bit warmer (about 71°F/22°C) and bluer (visibility 50 feet/15m) than we’ve averaged in the central islands. There is a healthy current as expected, so we waste no time in dive-bombing down to the reef, where we promptly grab on to barnacle covered rocks. Yes, gloves are a diver’s best friend in the Galapagos. The moray eels, on the other hand, not necessarily so. The reef is filthy with them, and I have to search for a handhold not already claimed by the overgrown, snaggletooth serpents. Our eagle-eyed guide’s rattle
snaps me to attention, and I squint 46 Magazine
into the still-dim early morning water. Spotted eagle rays, a squadron of eight, swoop in close and glide gracefully past. Before they’re even out of range I hear squeaking, and of course, more rattling. Bottlenose dolphins zigzag towards us, showing off. The next 30 minutes pass all too quickly, with repeated eagle ray flybys, twenty hammers, wahoo, bigeye jacks and more.
Frenzied Drift The peak for me, however, comes on the fourth dive of the day in late afternoon’s gloaming hour, with light levels low and vis declining. The current has picked up, so we speedily drift over the shallow boulder field, enveloped in a frenetic mass of thousands upon thousands of plankton-picking red creolefish. Dozens of green jacks are dining, punching through the creolefish crowds. Marauders with a taste for fish flesh, they wreak havoc, tearing through the densely
Above: California sea lion. Top middle: The
Galapagos Sky
liveaboard. Right: Whitetip reef
sharks resting in a cave
packed biomass. Upping the action another notch, Galapagos sharks join the fray. Serious sharks built for business, they are seven to ten feet (2-3m) long and girthy. They carve through the chaos, hidden from my view one second by the piscine blizzard, then appearing suddenly within arm’s length when the scaled curtain parts. How many sharks are here? Five? Ten? More? Not knowing adds to the suspense, quickens the pulse. I love dives like this. But I also like the Anchorage,
where during a night dive on a sandy slope in 92 feet (28m) I photographed Wolf’s most garish celebrity, the rosy-lipped batfish, a twisted misfit with a red-rimmed piehole. Exciting and rewarding, in a very different way.
Anything Goes And then, of course, there is Darwin Island. 25 miles (40km) farther north, its position at the top of the Galapagos chain is well-
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