Northwest Dive Club

I returned last week from a fantastic trip to Galapagos from a 10 day trip on Master Liveaboard's "Deep Blue". It was a really great trip that delivered on all counts. It was my second trip to the islands and this one was even better than the first. Last time was in September on a different boat. The water visibility and vessel were much better this time around. 80 foot vis at Wolf and Darwin for the big critters and sharks, and a very nice boat and crew. We did three dives a day for 7 days, and three more dives with 1 or two dives each. All were fantastic.

Here are a few of the pics:

Wow! Super great! The hammers got close! So did the mola mola!

Each one of these pictures deserves a poster. I still hope to see a whale shark one day. Congratulations. Being a whale geek, I am guessing those are bottlenose dolphins. Do you know?
Thanks, Curt

Glad you like the photos! The two days at Darwin's Arch were full of surprises including 200-300 Bottlenose Dolphins that buzzed our crew many times, especially when we at the surface towards the end of dives. Lots of amazing interactive experiences.

This picture has about 35 dolphins in frame!

Amazing pelagic pics!!! And you got to see hammerheads, a whale shark, and a mola mola! Glad the boat and viz were even better this time!!

Freaking amazing Dave!!

Very very cool DLH! Excellent shots.


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Really cool iguana photos. How close did you get to the whale shark? I remember how hard it was to get a shot of one with good white balance at that depth. Looks like you were at 60-70ft?

derekcs wrote: ↑Wed Mar 04, 2020 2:30 pm Really cool iguana photos. How close did you get to the whale shark? I remember how hard it was to get a shot of one with good white balance at that depth. Looks like you were at 60-70ft?

We were probably around 60 feet when the whale shark came by. I was out to the right flank of the diver group and it came right in toward me. I jetted out and took a first round of shots as it swam right to left in front of me, maybe 10 feet. Then it did a 180 and came right back toward me for that shot that I posted. I was within 6 feet or so and it passed right over. I was shooting my D850 with a 16-35 lens and my Inon 330's very close to full power. Shot at ISO 320, f9, 1/160, 27mm.

Some major bucket list critters BTW. Hammerhead, mola mola, whale shark, dolphins. You checked a lot off the list.


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And the iguana too


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Wow!!!! Such a fantastic report!!! Super beautiful snaps!

Nice photos. I'm surprised you saw a whale shark since it's out of season there. We did October in 2016 on the Aggressor and doing it again next October. I wasn't lucky enough to get the dolphins you did, but we got some pilot whales. The boat before us had a pod of Orca come through which I'm insanely jealous about.

Beautiful photos. Did you give that red lipped batfish a big smooch from all of us?!