GALAPAGOS DIVING: ISABELA DIVE CENTER REACHES NEW DEPTHS

The trip was flawed from the start. Eight of our sixteen tour members for the Galapagos wanted to dive off Isabella Island. No problem. We all paid $110 the night before and spent the morning mentally preparing for diving in the Galapagos. An hour before we were set to embark, our guide said this: “…but, there is just one problem. You need one dive master per four people and this company only has one dive master and you have eight divers in the group. So four of you cannot go diving.” Classy.
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Luckily for us one of the eight happened to be a dive master. Our Finnish friend Ora has done quite a few dives and agreed to be a dive master so we could all go under the sea. It was a low -rent tour we had, indeed. BYODM– Bring Your Own Dive Master, and you’re all set.
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As we approached the docks we see there is a smattering of small crafts and dingys in the harbor with a few more notable ones further out. Our amigo Jez points to one particularly small boat. Laughing, he says he’s found our boat. Talk about the wrong time to be right. Eight divers and three crew members crowded onto a boat fit for about four or five. (No way this can go wrong). Stashed aboard with us is all our gear strewn about the boat in no particularly organized fashion, a cooler of beer and water, and about five life jackets. Good times.
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The dive master asks us for our names, nationanlities, and how many times we’ve dived. No paperwork at all, no signatures. For all he knew I was allergic to water and boats and broken English accents. He tells us that he has dived in this spot over four hundered times and that our equipment is “Grade A”. No problem.
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We get to our destination: a huge rock about a forty-five minute jaunt from the docks. Time to get dressed into the wetsuits. Eight men (with me not even being the biggest) trying to get into wetsuits on a boat suitable for about four divers is truly a spectcle. I felt like it would be appropriate to witness the whole scene in a black and white film, speed it up and put player-piano music to it. Basically, an expensive circus act. Suits were too small, weight belts not properly weighted, fins everywhere. Stupid is a good word for the whole deal, certainly more fitting than “Grade A”.
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Finally ready we all plop into the water (one hour after arriving at the dive spot) and only four of us can submerge. The rest of us did not have enough weight on our belts so the crew gave us weights to attach to our belts one at time: another 2o minutes. I noticed the shadows on the nearby rock island growing longer.
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The first of two dives wasn’t that bad. Of course, this is coming from a novice diver who still has more fingers on my hands than dives. We saw a sea turtle, who gave us the “who the hell are you and why are you looking at me?” and swam off. We saw a ray which slowly drifted along without a care in the world. We encountered a few brightly colored fish and some coral and then it was time to surface. Good. Not great but a solid dive.
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When doing two dives it’s important to surface for a bit of time, the length of the dive determining the length of surface time. Our little bit turned into an hour and a half. We relocated to the other side of the rock island where the currents were more rough. The sun was now alarmingly low (at least for a diver), with storm clouds looming in the other direction. One by one we ended up off the boat bobbing in the rough swell. I had one fairly notable problem, evident even to a novice like myself. A stream of air bubbles were shooting out of my tank. I maneuvered back to the boat to inquire about my situation. The dive master (it’s really hard to call him that. In fact, let’s replace the word ‘master’ with ‘guy’) leaned over the boat to investigate. I asked him what the bubbles meant. His answer: “It means you have less time.” Not the answer I was looking for. In fact, it is the principle mission of human beings to avoid having “less time” in most any circumstances. Not satisfied with that response I went over to Ora (the real master of diving on this day) he shook his head and said simply “Don’t go!” Good enough for me. How sensible–heaps of air seeping our of a diving tank and maybe you should stay above the surface. Agreed.
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When I went over to the boat to see the dive guy he was nowhere to be found. He had gone into the sea on the other side of the boat. I had a couple crew members drag me in from the water. I ripped my Grade A equipment off amid a chorus of choice words to express my thoughts on this feeble dive establishment. As I sat and looked out over the water I was surprised to see the whole party still on the surface. They were spread out like a soccer team looking confused and trying to locate the dive guy. Little by little they all submerged. I was watching a real life lesson of how not to dive. To compound the difficulties, the good people at the Isabela Dive Center had us swimming against the current, which is a great way to get exhausted quick and run out of air. As for visibility the sun was behind the mountains, so what little light remianed was that of the sky at dusk. I was a bit worried because they had all submerged in different spots, and with this current it would have been easy to be lost.
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When they finally did surface, black little silhouettes among the waves, and got onto the boat the stories began. No vision, swimming like hell and going nowhere because of the current, equipment failures. Jez, who has a healthy sampling of dives under his belt said his air gauge didnt work. The tank has 3000 pounds of air and the gauge lets you know how much air, and essentially how much time you have underwater. After ten minutes he looked and his gauge read 2700 lbs. “Not bad,” he thought. Ten minutes later: 2700 lbs. “Shit,” he thought.
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The ride home didn’t prove to be any safer. We were now shrouded in complete darkness. Naturally our vessel was not equipped with a light, so we pushed on towards the docks blindly. The eight divers toasted warmish cans of beer to being alive (for now) and to the notion that our steadfast dive center crew be jobless when the sun came up tomorrow.
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As we approached the land one of the crew went to the front of the boat to check for rocks and reefs and boats and any other menacing objects in our course. At the dock we were greeted by an Ecuadorian Naval officer. He looked grim and serious. We were hoping for a hefty fine for the dive center, maybe even a public lashing. But as the crew disembarked he greeted them with smiley handshakes and helped them take off the Grade A equipment.
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My plan is to write to Lonely Planet and Rough Guide to share how blatantly unsafe the experience was for everyone on board. Hopefully, with some creative wording those guide books can make it so that the Isabele Dive Center has a little “less time” to endanger more people.