December 31st, 2021
Even though it had been six years since I last went scuba
diving, I knew I had to try it again while visiting the Galapagos. My last dive was in Panama and it was
epic. I saw multiple whale sharks, about
15 meters in length, super up close and personal. In the Galapagos, there was a chance to see a
few more sea creatures that I’ve not seen while diving like giant manta rays
and hammerhead sharks. Gotta try.
Before going to Isabela Island, I visited a few dive
shops. Due to my lack of “currency” in
diving, one shop said I could dive at Gordon’s Rock, the spot for seeing
hammerheads, but I would need to pay an extra $120 to have a dive master
dedicated to me, since that dive spot is known to have some challenging
currents. A day of diving (2 dives)
costs $170 so I opted to make a reservation with another dive shop that had
availability at some easier sites and then I would be good to go to Gordon’s a
few days after that. That made more
sense to me, so I signed up with Academy Bay Dive Shop.
We met at the shop at 7:10 am and hopped into 3 pickup
trucks to head to the north end of the island where the boat was located. I was in a truck with an American couple in
their thirties, Thomas and Kate, who were from Atlanta. Thomas’ parents, Dave and Karen, were in one
of the other trucks with Tami, a pediatrician from London who was also on her
own, so she ended up being my dive buddy.
Getting on the boat, I met another couple, a Russian and
Belorussian who now live in Cyprus, Dennis and Valerie, and there was also an
Israeli family of four. They had a son
who was around 17 years old, and his sister was only 11 and had done 7
dives in the past year…pretty cool. The
boat left the dock and the main dive master, Angel, introduced himself and the
rest of the crew. We had Carlos the
captain, Kevin a deckhand, and two other dive masters, Leo and Sergio.
I wasn’t sure what sea creatures we were going to see, but I
was shocked when only 10 minutes out from the dock we saw an octopus, while we
were still sitting on the boat! This
wasn’t your everyday type of octopus either, this one is worth over $200
million. No one else seemed to really
care but there was this massive blue yacht nearby and I was quite sure that it
was the late Paul Allen’s Octopus, a 414 foot
boat that features not one but two helicopter pads, several bars, a spa,
library, cinema, gym, basketball court, a recording studio, multiple lounges
and more. It requires a crew of 63 for up
to 24 lucky guests. Get this, it has two
submarines! One is a remote submersible
and the other can fit 10 people and go underwater for up to 8 hours…incredible. I received confirmation a few days later that
it was indeed the Octopus.
The Octopus...should have got my phone out sooner, when it was closer.
Angel explained that we were first going to a shallow,
sheltered spot where all new divers to their company would do a checkout
dive. We would hop into the water with
our buddy, go down 10’ to the bottom, do a few checks and come back to the boat
after a few minutes. The main purpose
was to see if we had the correct amount of weight for our buoyancy. Tami and I flipped backwards off the boat
into the water and emptied the air out of our BCDs to descend. However, no matter what I tried, I could not
sink below the surface. I swam back to
the boat and Angel gave me some more weight to hold in my hand to see if that
would help but it didn’t. He gave me a
bit more, still no luck. “Okay, get back
in the boat.”
Well, that didn’t instill a lot of confidence. We set off for the first dive site called
Seymour Island and Angel told me not to worry, he’d give me some more weight
for the dive. I was very impressed with
how thorough he was with his briefing and the fact that they did a checkout
dive. It was definitely more in depth
(no pun intended) than any other diving outfit I’d been with before.
Tami and I were matched up with the Israeli dad and his son
Daniel and Sergio would be our divemaster.
The plan was to descend to the bottom where we would likely see some
small eels poking out of the sand and then let the current take us towards the
wall of the island and gradually ascend in shallower water towards the end of
the dive. Well that was the plan, and it
didn’t quite go that way.
We descended to the bottom and the extra weight made it easy
for me to get down there. The five of us
then sat on the sea floor for upwards of five minutes. I guess we were waiting for Angel who was
accompanying the mom and daughter, but they never found us. It really seemed like a waste of time, but it
did give me a bit of time to acclimatise.
I knew that I was breathing faster than I should, but I didn’t want to
stress about that.
Eventually, Sergio waved for us to start swimming in one
direction. The first part of the dive
plan was accurate, there were tiny eels sticking up about 1-2 feet and were
spaced out about a foot each. They wavered
back and forth in the current and looked like some kind of sea grass instead of
eels. However, when you got closer to
them, they would retract into their holes.
We also saw a 3-4 spotted rays swimming which was cool, but I got closer
to those kind of rays when I was snorkeling at Isabela Island a few days before.
This was pretty much how the rest of our dive
progressed. We were kicking our fins,
seemingly battling a current, not floating with it, over this barren
terrain. We didn’t see any other sea
life apart from a long, skinny and almost transparent cornetfish, which was
cool. But we never made it to the
seawall.
Sergio, the dive master, rarely looked back to the rest of
us which was a bit disconcerting. Wasn’t
he aware that I hadn’t gone diving in 6 years and it had been 4-5 years for
Tami? Finally, he looked back and asked
us our oxygen levels. I started the dive
with 3100 psi and was down to 1200, as was Tami. On the boat, Angel had stated that at 1000,
we should start ascending and at 700, it was time for the 3 minute safety
stop.
Soon I was down to 1000 psi, and my depth gauge stated that
we were at 80 feet. Later I found out my
gauge was a bit off, the deepest we went was 70 feet. I communicated with Tami that I was getting
low. When it became apparent that we
couldn’t get Sergio’s attention and I was down a bit below 700, I signaled to
her that we should go up. We stopped
around 15-20 feet for the safety stop and soon the rest of the divers joined
us. The group surfaced and we found
ourselves in 3-4 foot waves, far away from the island. Seems like we went in a wrong direction. Academy Bay doesn’t seem to believe in diving
with a snorkel. I’ve never not gone
diving without one, just for this scenario, waiting for the boat to pick you up
while in big waves. Their policy is to
keep your regulator in but that doesn’t help if you run out of oxygen. I checked my gauge and I was down to 50 psi! Not cool.
I was not happy with Sergio’s supervision of the group. Tami later suggested that perhaps he’s
new…but still, he should have been checking on his divers more frequently.
Back on the boat, it seemed like none of the three groups
had a very good dive. I guess that’s the
nature of the scuba diving beast, you never know what you’re going to see…or
not see. We peeled off most of our gear
but kept our wetsuits on as we would have an hour break before the second dive,
at another site called Daphne.
The boat motored about 25 minutes over to the other site
which was at the base of a small island with tall, near vertical walls. We had a small snack and began donning our
equipment again. This time Angel would
be our dive master and what a difference that made. Before each dive, he would say “Have a
beautiful dive. 3, 2, 1…go” and the
divers sitting on the edges of the boat would roll over backwards into the
water.
Tami and I plunged in and somehow I surfaced first and then
she knocked into me and then popped up right between my legs…made me giggle
through my regulator. We began to
descend in the water and the five of us met up near the bottom, beside the wall
of the island. The visibility was worse
on this dive but there was a lot more to see than the first dive with lots of
fish swimming around.
Angel led the group along the wall and towards a small cave
that he had mentioned in his briefing.
As we got close to it, I saw a sea lion swim by in the murky
distance. I couldn’t get Tami’s
attention before it was gone but little did I know, that was just the opening
act. We reached the opening to the cave
and Angel was inside, looking out, and then it began. Two or three sea lions starting swimming
around us, seemingly having fun with our expelled bubbles of air. A few times they got right close up to Daniel
and Angel’s cameras. “The dogs of the
sea” they seem to be. So playful. It was a fantastic experience. The only unfortunate thing was that later we
would find out that Angel didn’t get any good footage of them and I never got
Daniel’s contact info to see what he recorded.
Nonetheless, a fantastic experience.
The rest of the dive was good and this time I didn’t come
close to running out of air. I did have
one tricky issue near the end of the dive where I just couldn’t seem to stay
down even though my BCD was empty of air.
I had to point my head down and kick towards Angel’s outstretched hand
to get back down to 15-20 feet. No big
deal though.
So this isn't from this dive, but one Tami did after I left...but it gives you an idea how playful the sea lions are.
All divers seemed much happier with the second dive, and it did make the day that’s for sure. Can’t wait to see what happens in a few days, diving at Gordon’s Rock!
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