Dave & Meredith's Travel Blog

When people talk about the Galapagos, the animals they usually discuss are ones on land such as giant tortoises and iguanas. But we snorkeled every day with good reason: there are many more species underwater. On our first full day in the Islands (our first snorkel), we swam in Darwin Bay at Tower Island. Our guide said we had about a 5% chance of seeing hammerhead sharks and this was our best chance of seeing them on the trip without going scuba diving. So, of course, we saw 6 adults and one baby hammerhead. “Great, Dave!”, you say, “Where are the pictures?”. Since it was our first day and I bought my underwater housing just before we left, this day was the day I brought it in the water without a camera in it to test for leaks. 🙁 Oh well.

Over the course of our trip, we saw many different types of sea life. We saw lots of other sharks (white-tipped reef, Galapagos), sea turtles, and a huge variety of fish. Most fish were pretty skittish but we had a few including a bullseye puffer that were very curious. There were jellyfish too and I had the welts/scratches for a few days to prove it. We saw huge starfish, marble rays, and some coral too although this is not the place to see huge amounts of colorful coral like the Caribbean or Australia. The highlights included swimming with sea lions and having a school of penguins swim through through our group!

I edited a short (under 5 minutes) video last night of some of the things we saw. Click here for a higher quality version and click here for a lower quality one (the latter is better for slow connections though).

We also saw animals on the surface:

Sea Lions relaxing on their backs

Penguins swimming

A Marine Iguana

Sea turtles coming to the surface to breathe

False Killer Whales right next to our boat!

A Spotted Eagle Ray just under the surface.

– Dave