I look forward to going to the enchanted archipelago again in the next few days, hoping for extraordinary encounters with the spectacular fauna of Galapagos.
Watch this space, new imagery coming soon!
In the meantime, check the stories from the islands in my blog.
This little cove was home to at least eight turtles. For years I wanted to take a split image of a turtle breathing on the surface. I followed this massive friend around for about half an hour. I missed two opportunities and got the shot at the “third breath”. This turtle was the big boss in the pond because it demonstrated a territorial behaviour towards the smaller turtles. The visibility was rubbish, so the photos are not great. However, I’ve got them if anybody needs them.
This bird followed me for some time, very interested in what I do snorkelling around with that big black box.
The Panamic cushion stars (Pentaceraster cumingi) are indigenous and common in the shallow waters around central and southern islands of the Galápagos archipelago. I mean they were everywhere. It was not that difficult to find them in a pleasing formation on the Day 1 when we dove alongside Islota Mosquera between North Seymour and Baltra.
The Landslide appeared to be our most popular dive site at the Wolf Island. We usually checked the Eagle rays and then continued to the hammerheads enjoying the ripping current. Unfortunately, the breathtaking scenery was ruined by a thermocline which blurred the view and renders the images unusable. I descended beyond the edge of a sloping wall to approximately 25 metres to get deeper below the thermocline and to capture enough of the hammerheads without the blur.
It was getting late. When the sun gets low above the horizon and the wind makes the surface choppy, the light does not have much chance to penetrate the water. Only four of was (I think Damien, Theresa, Nadya) out of usual seven were up for this dive. Shortly after negative entry, we encountered a big school of jacks. My three buddies went to check them out. I felt the low light would not suit a good picture. I stuck with our dive guide Juan Carlos and gave the others a few moments with the Jacks. As it took some time Juan Carlos and I moved closer to the reef to find a good spot for watching the hammerheads. And they arrived. One, two, five, eight, fifty… There were moments I did not know where to turn my camera as they were everywhere. Over my head. From left. Right. Behind my back. I just screamed through the regulator when I thought I got a shot. This took good fifty minutes, then a nudge to the shoulder scared me to death. Hammerhead? No, Juan Carlos reminds me it is time to go up. My buddies were already on the boat. It turned out that they were swept by current as they took pictures of the jacks and they had to resurface after nine minutes as the current carried them into the dangeous rocky area (deadly Sector #1). Thanks to all of them for spending almost an hour on the boat waiting for the two of us. Juan Carlos and I were extatic, the three were tired and longing to go back to the boat. Juan Carlos called this the dive of the year so far. I do not have such an experience to compare but it certainly was mental!
The Secret Cave at the Wolf Island is formed by a partially submerged lava tube. A lava tube is a natural conduit formed by flowing lava which moves beneath the hardened surface of a lava flow. The entrance into the Secret cave is submerged as is the majority of the cave. There are two pockets of air in the Secret Cave. The smaller one – a dome with a diameter of perhaps 2 metres and then a large one, which feels like a proper underground hall within a cave. The large hall serves as a kind of sanctuary for sealions. They find a relaxingly cool place inside away from annoying flies. Our guide Solon assumed the role of a model and he managed to strike this beautiful pose at the entrance, after good five minutes of moving around without breathing.
I spent the last two days waiting for the right opportunity to photograph the spotted eagle rays at the Wolf Island. They love to glide in the current away from the reef and back again in an effortless move. If treated with the respect they will happily hang above divers’ heads for few moments. It took them 6 dives with us before one of them assumed the bomb-deployment position above my head. This image is special to me. I took a very similar photograph on the same place five years ago and that picture made it to a double-page spread in a national diving magazine. Although the eyes of the eagle ray were blurry because I had the aperture way too opened. Believe me, I was determined not to make the same mistake again. With f/19 the eye is pin-sharp!
As soon as we arrived to the Darwin island we were astonished by its life teaming waters. Dolphins played around the boat and we saw an occasional breach of a whale from a small pod of what we thought were pilot whales. After the second dive, we convinced our skipper to take us snorkelling with the pod. We tried to quietly slide into the water from the zodiac. The pod has some baby whales amongst themselves so they were quite vary. The males came closer to us showing their size, standing upright in the water and blowing bubbles. Time to get back into the boat. When I looked closer on the images I believe these were no pilot whales, I guess these are False killer whales (Pseudorca crassidens).
04–13 November 2019
Enjoy world-class diving with Josef Litt to encounter hammerheads and whale sharks at Wolf and Darwin Island, and also marine iguanas at Fernandina. Seven nights aboard the economy-class yacht Pingüino Explorer. Includes flights from Prague or a nearby airport.
Price: 135,000 Kč (approx. £4,700)
The foam indicates that this crab will begin to shed its exoskeleton soon.
Swallow-tailed gulls spend most of their life flying and hunting over the open ocean. The main breeding location is the rocky shores and cliffs of the eastern Galapagos islands where the water is warmer.
The pups in the rock pools of James Bay at Santiago were particularly playful. This one indulged in Zen-like floating pose and snored.
Its giant pouched bill and enormous size (4 feet long with a 6.5-foot wingspan) make this bird immediately recognizable. As such, it is usually the earliest bird identified by visitors. Nesting year-round on most islands, they are usually brown, but adults develop bright white and chestnut head and neck markings throughout the breeding season.
Galapagos sea lions breed from May through to January. Because of this prolonged breeding season and the extensive care required by the pups from their mother, there are dependent pups in the colonies year round.
The red-footed booby comes in a confusing array of color morphs, ranging from individuals that are all white except for blackish on the wing, to individuals that are entirely dark brown. Some birds fail to fit neatly into any of the typical color morph categories, and many variations exist. Color morphs do not segregate; individuals representing several morphs breed in a single colony.
The crabs and marine iguanas live in a symbiotic relationship. The iguanas welcome that the crabs feed on their old skin.
Most of the scuba diving trips to Darwin and Wolf stop by at Seymour Norte, an extraordinary place for breeding birds, home to one of the largest populations of nesting blue-footed boobies and magnificent frigate birds.
I found this Galapagos green turtle while snorkelling at Punta Vicente Roca. The visibility was poor due to the sandy bottom and the green algae in the cold water.
The limelight may have been stolen by Darwin’s more famous finches, but it was the mockingbirds of the Galapagos that had the greatest early influence on his theory of Natural Selection.
These birds were busy with courting and they did not care about me taking scandalous pictures of their intercourse. The action was so hectic though, that I did not manage to take a single good picture when they were frantically on it. Only when they rested I was able to document their relationship.
The youngest and volcanically most active island, Fernandina, hosts one of the largest colonies of marine iguanas in Galapagos.
04–13 November 2019
Enjoy world-class diving with Josef Litt to encounter hammerheads and whale sharks at Wolf and Darwin Island, and also marine iguanas at Fernandina. Seven nights aboard the economy-class yacht Pingüino Explorer. Includes flights from Prague or a nearby airport.
Price: 135,000 Kč (approx. £4,700)
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