Galapagos land based question

[Stichus III]

When is the best time of the year to do land based dives in the Galapagos? I'm interested in knowing when the viz is best and when it's the best time to see Hammerheads and/or Galapagos Sharks and/or large shoals of fish?

 

[Guy Carrier]

Stichus,

The best diving we saw in the Galapagos by orders of magnitude was at Wolf and Darwin Islands. You need to do a liveaboard to get there. We did see a few sea lions, mantas and a couple of hammerheads in the central islands but we saw twenty whale sharks and hundreds of hammerheads and other shark species at Wolf and Darwin, the two most northwestern islands.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ge...ip-report-deep-blue-yacht-17-24-sep-07-a.html

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ge...agos-trip-deep-blue-yacht-17-24-sep-07-a.html

I would not go back if I was not going to go to Wolf and Darwin.

Guy

 

[Stichus III]

I did read your great trip report earlier Guy. Thank you for your insight.

 

[Doc]

"The weather in the Galapagos Islands is largely determined by ocean currents. Normally from June to December, the cold Humboldt current comes from the South and creates an inversion that traps a cool moist fog called a garúa near the ocean which creates a cool, dry climate. In December, normally the trade winds die down and the ocean currents change, bathing the Galapagos in the warm Panama Current from the North. The warm currents bust up the inversion and a typical tropical weather pattern of hot sunny mornings followed by clouds and occaisional showers in the afternoons generally prevails. Put all together, one can make the generalizations of: June to December cool, cloudy and dry season, December to June, warm, sunny and wet season.

All of this is completely thrown off by the infamous El Niño phonemenon or more correctly the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) when the currents warm and generally raise the air temperature and the precipitation in the Islands. ENSO also drastically disrupts the ecosystems and foodchains of the islands causing catastrophic famines in many species largely due to a lack of cold current nutrients.

Rainfalls:

Jan 68 mm (3 in), Feb 91 mm, Mar (4 in) 94 mm , April (4 in) 72 mm, May (3 in) 34 mm, June (1 in) 23 mm, July (1 in) 14 mm, Aug (1 in) 6 mm, Sep (0 in) 6 mm, Oct (0 in) 6 mm, Nov (0 in) 7 mm, Dec 30 mm (1 in) "

I have done many liveaboards over the years in the Galapagos. In the last few years I have discovered land based and found them a delightful alternative. They are 60% cheaper, you see a lot of the same stuff in smaller quantities, you dont spend 3 days of your life bobbing around at sea going to and from Wolf/Darwin. Every night a new restauarnt, a dry bed that isn't rocking, a walk along the streets of Puerto Ayorra and enjoying the people and art galleries, walking among the turtles at the Darwin Station.

Day dive ops, land based? Look at Scuba Diving Galapagos Islands - Scuba Iguana , here's my blog trip report:

Myspace.com Blogs - Galapagos Trip, Landbased - SCUBA MySpace Blog

By the way- land based, what with the current governmental squabble of permits for liveaboards.... landbased is the surest and likely only way to go. Most everyone else right now is "on hold".

 

[Manuel Sam]

If the premise is that you are going to do land-based, then your choices for home base are either Pto. Ayora on the island of Santa Cruz, or Pto. Baquerizo Moreno on the Island of San Cristobal. Moat people do Pto. Ayora (it's larger), and if that is the case, most of your diving will be in the Central Islands at sites such as Gordon Rocks, North Seymour, Mosquera, Daphne Major and Minor, and the like.

My limited experience (4 liveaboard trips) has been that the warm and wet season (December to May) was better for the Central Islands in terms of water temp, water viz, and sightings. On my last two trips, which were both in October, the Central Islands were cold and pea soup viz, so even if the animals were there, you couldn't see them if they were more than 30 ft. away.

Keep in mind that diving conditions in the Galapagos can change drastically even from day to day due to the currents, so the above are just generalizations based on what I've seen there in the past.

But if you want to see what you are looking to see in the numbers that I think you would like to see them in, your best bet, as suggested by Guy Carrier, is still to do a liveaboard that goes north. And if that were the case, then I would flip-flop and suggest that you go in the cool and dry season (June to November).

 

[Stichus III]

Thanks guys.