Diver and yellowtailed surgeonfish at Cousins

Diver and green sea turtle at Cousins

by Dan and Ann Holden Bailey

We were at Garner Bay. It was our last day of diving. To tell the truth, I really didn't want to do this dive. During a week in the Galapagos Islands, we had experienced fantastic diving. We encountered large masses of schooling fish along with schools of spotted eagle rays, lots of sting rays, a couple of giant manta rays, gregarious sea lions, white tip sharks, Galapagos sharks, and huge schools of very large hammerhead sharks.

We had dived this same spot a couple of hours earlier and were very disappointed by the lack of marine life. It was easily our worst dive of the week. However, my newfound friend, Ellsworth Boyd, wanted to dive and needed a buddy so I suited up again.

As soon as I entered the water and looked down I saw four whitetip sharks lying on the sand 40 feet below. After taking a couple of photos of them I glanced up and saw a pair of spotted eagle rays swimming overhead. Minutes later we came across a green sea turtle sleeping under a rock ledge and nearby, a large moray eel peered out of his lair. A dark cloud in the distance turned out to be a huge school of snappers and grunts that completely enveloped me as I swam into the glittering mass. For a mesmerizing moment, I felt like a caterpillar in a silver cocoon, but when I emerged I was no butterfly.

And then, out of the blue distance, a pair of eight-foot hammerhead sharks appeared, followed by a group of four and then by an even larger group until we could see 50 or more at one time. The huge school stretched past the limits of visibility in both directions and seemed to go on forever before the last straggler glided by.

We headed back to our ship with one more unbelievable dive stored in our memories, an especially fitting one for one of the best diving destinations in the world.

Geologically young, this archipelago of 13 main islands and several dozen smaller islands and islets was formed by volcanic action over a span of four million years, beginning around five million years ago. Towering, still-active volcanoes dominate the landscape of the western islands. The older, eastern islands are flat, their volcanic slopes eroded by centuries of wind, rain, and wave action. Despite their equatorial location, the islands are surrounded by relatively cold water that is swept northwards by the Humboldt Current, which originates in the Antarctic.

You don't expect to see penguins at the equator but they are there, waddling around on the black rocks like Walter Lantz's Chilly Willy. Ungainly on land, they are transformed into black and white rockets as soon as they hop into the water. The Galapagos penguin is only one of the oddities found in this Pacific chain of volcanic islands. Cormorants here have lost the ability to fly, and now behave much as the penguins do. Sparse vegetation on most of the islands has forced one of the archipelago's two species of iguanas to become a marine animal, feeding exclusively on algae in the sea.

Centenarian land tortoises weighing several hundred pounds lumber around like all-terrain Volkswagens, and sunflowers here have evolved into trees.

A diver gets close to a fairly indifferent sealion.

There are a handful of small settlements in the islands. Some of the residents make their living from fishing or farming, but most work in the rapidly growing tourist industry. A fleet of nearly 100, ranging in size from six-passenger day boats to 100-passenger liveaboard ships, transports visitors around the islands, dropping them off at designated areas for island exploration. Groups of no more than 15 are led by a naturalist who is certified by the Galapagos National Park Service. Park rules, intended to preserve the animals and their habitat, are strictly enforced.

A trip to the Galapagos Islands is relatively expensive, even if you decide to stay in one of the small hotels and visit the various islands by day boat. The problem with staying on land is the islands are spread out over thousands of square miles of Pacific Ocean, and it just isn't practical for day boats to visit many of the best areas. To see the most of the archipelago, you should stay on one of the many liveaboard boats which transport visitors on a leisurely tour of the islands, anchoring in a different spot each night.

The biggest and best of the liveaboards is the 300-foot Galapagos Explorer II. Built in 1990, this 100-passenger cruise ship ferries its passengers about in the height of luxury. The cabins are all suites with the amenities you'd expect on the classiest cruise liners, including air-conditioning, rich wood paneling, marble baths, televisions with VCRs, and telephones. Elsewhere on the ship are an outdoor pool and jacuzzi, a well-stocked boutique, bar, and a library. International and Ecuadorian cuisine are served in the ship's restaurants. A doctor is on board to handle minor illnesses, as is a staff of park naturalists who lead island forays during the day and give informative lectures and slide shows in the evenings. Diving is done from dinghies, and rides to the dive sites are very short.

Everyone should visit the enchanting Galapagos Islands at least once in their lifetime. It's impossible to come away without an increased appreciation for the animal kingdom, and a greater awareness of the importance of conservation and protection of this invaluable resource. At present, there is enormous pressure on Galapagos wildlife by fishing interests, a burgeoning tourist industry, and accidents such as the recent oil spill . Luckily, currents quickly washed the oil away from the islands before it could impact wildlife. Conservationists are waging a tough war against these pressures, but it's a bit like the Dutch boy with his finger in the hole in the dike.