Dive Trip Report
Bottom time: 49 minutes Max. depth 106 ft.
Drift dive. Viz. 70-80 ft.
Darwin arch. This particular dive had a lot of large schools of medium size fishes such as big eye jacks, spick jack and tunas. we also saw several hammerhead schools, maybe 50 sharks in total, but not as close as we was used to (one day ago...) This situation was kind of disappointing, i mean, this nice place full of life and we was just wanting more and more sharks.....
The rocky bottom was full of life too, with a lot of color and a great viz. the blue color of this first dive was so intense, i love it. There were a lot big eye jack's couples, one silver, one black, male turns black to attract females, so it might was mating season for them. Also there were spotted eagle rays, galapagos grunt, bumphead parrotfish, green eels, trumpet fish.......
Bottom time: 44 minutes Max. depth 92 ft.
Drift dive. Viz. 60 - 80 ft.
Darwin arch. Same location than the previous dive. This time the current was completally opposited so we had to move our legs... after 10 minutes of the dive, a huge bottlenose dolphin arrive, and stayed with the group for about 5 minutes, he pass too close to me, and i saw a lot of scars and scraches on the skin, then the dolphin turn again very slow as if he wanted to be sure that everybody has noted his presence, and then suddenly, started swiming so fast to the deep and just like that it dissappear. After that we saw 2 or 3 times, groups of 5-6 dolphins near the surface. There were also hammerhead sharks, and large turtles, huge school of indopacific - bonito, jacks, yellow trumpet fish, eels, creol fish.... At the end of the dive, there was a lot of surge on surface.
Bottom time: 53 minutes Max. depth 96 ft.
Drift dive. Viz. 50 ft.
Darwin arch. This was a combination of the two first dives on darwin, a lot of life, huge fish schools, specially tuna and jacks, the difference was that we started the diving in a different spot, with sandy bottom, and it was full of galapagos garden eels, once we tryied to get closer to them, they just dissapear under the sand. and all the others were going up and down, looking at us, waiting for the moment to go hide, with half body inside the sand and half outside... also we saw schools of hammerheads, dolphins, lobsters, crabs, eels, creol fish, almost at the end of the dive, the rocks seems like a labyrinth, and we saw there a shark inside of a cave, a sleeping turtle inside another, a very well hidden stone fish, and a really nice flounder clingfish (lenguado) on a rock. Must to mention again the intense blue of the landscape. amazing..
Bottom time: 45 minutes Max. depth 74 ft.
Drift dive. Viz. 40 ft.
After 3 dives, we spend some time snorkeling with dolphins. There were a lot of dolphins around us, even when we couldn't see any we could hear they were around. love that sound. It was really nice, we had to stop snorkeling when the dolphins disapear, and the sharks started swiming around us, and a really large silky shark came from the deep, very fast, to check us out and then turn back to the sea.... This was scary... After this, we better got our gear on and went to dive. The viz was low, about 40 ft., but still we could see large hammerhead schools, and some dolphins near surface. Again the place was crowded with Jacks and schools of creol fish. We saw a big turtle sleeping in a cave, eels, puffers, lobsters, yellow and grey trumpet fish, stone fish, and again large schools of hammerheads, but they where quite far from us, so we left the rocks and started diving in the blue trying to get a better view of the sharks, after that, since we couldn't go back to the arch rock, we finshed our dive on a different location, it was a rocky and sandy bottom, with a lot of sea stars, and schools of juveniles (mainly butterfish, surgeonfish and angelfish) and for the safety stop, a school of 5 or 6 hammerheads were around us.