Diving with Marine Iguanas of The Galapagos

I was lucky enough to take a long awaited dive trip to the Galapagos in 2021! This trip was a liveaboard on the Galapagos Sky, but it wasn't your ordinary liveaboard trip either. For one, we got to go to the northern most islands of Wolf and Darwin. These islands are quite a bit further north, so they aren't visited nearly as much as the other islands. These islands also offered the most impressive shark dives on the entire trip. I saw more sharks on any one of those dives than I have seen on all my hundreds of other dives put together.

The second reason this trip was a little extra special was because everyone on the trip was diving rebreathers. This really kicked it up to the next level because the marine life doesn't get spooked by rebreather divers like they do by regular scuba divers with all of their noisy bubbles 😉. Personally, was diving a Poseidon Se7en with all of the tech upgrades. But there was a mix of rebreathers represented on the trip by various divers.

Marine Iguanas are something special that only exist in the Galapagos. They are something that sparked my interests many years ago. But, they were something that I didn't think I would ever get the chance to see in person. As you can see in the video above, I did actually get to scratch the marine iguanas off of my bucket list! The penguins in the beginning of the video were an added bonus that I didn't really expect to see in the Galapagos, but "two birds with one stone" I guess! It's amazing how many species only exist in the Galapagos!

The underwater footage was on the way back in from a 150 foot deep dive a ledge below. I didn't get a lot of video footage because they were in very shallow water and the surge was crazy, especially while trying to manage buoyancy with a rebreather and in a dry suit. I felt like I was in a tumbler up there! Never the less, I was ecstatic to see the ones that I did see! 

Even though there were three dives left to do on the trip, this ended up being my last dive because I was super congested and couldn't equalize my sinuses. My sinuses actually started bleeding on this 150 foot dive. This was during the COVID pandemic and one of the requirements to get back in the United States was a negative COVID test. Well... I ended up failing that test and got stuck quarantining in Ecuador (event though I was vaccinated). I guess that was probably the cause of my sinus issues during that dive, and the reason I had to skip the last three dives.

 I hope you enjoy the video. If you do, I'd appreciate it if you'd take a moment to like it and subscribe to the YouTube channel. I have a lot more videos to post, including all of the sharks from this Galapagos trip!