Friday, December 16, 2005

We awoke in the morning at North Seymour Island. Breakfast was at 6:30am, signaled by a loud bell that one of the crew members carried around the boat. In the lounge Winter presented us with a menu of the available breakfast options, along with juice, coffee and fresh fruit. We chatted with Jonatha, Sage and Jimmy, excited for the trip ahead.

After breakfast we had a dive briefing at 7:30am, then geared up and hopped in the panga at 8am. Most of the diving for the week was done from one of the two pangas. It was usually only a minute or two ride from the main boat to the dive site and the panga was always right there when we surfaced to pull us out of the water.

  • Nudibranch
  • Fine Spotted Moray

There wasn't much current and the visibility was about 40 feet. We saw hundreds of tiny blue nudibranchs, a spotted moray eel and a big puffer fish. After our first dive we were greeted back on board with hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls, what service! After an hour surface interval we went back down and saw much the same fish. The water temperature was a chilly 69° but our wetsuits did a good job of keeping us warm.

  • Porcupinefish
  • Porcupinefish
  • Spotted Sharpnose Puffer

After the dive we met Stephan and Roby, who had just come aboard. They were from the Charles Darwin Research Station and were coming out to Darwin and Wolf with us to do some research on fastening mooring lines for use by boats instead of anchoring. Roby worked at the station and Stefan was a volunteer from Germany.

  • Frigot Bird
  • Lava Lizard
  • Sea Lion
  • Marine Iguana

We had a land excursion to the island where we saw sea lions, marine iguanas, lava lizards and frigot birds. The island was very dry lava rock everywhere. As our tour looped inland it became much hotter very quickly.

Just before 4pm we headed back to the Aggressor which then began it's 16 hour journey to the NorthWest, headed for Darwin Island at the very edge of the Galapagos. The Aggressor 1 had started their journey two hours before us, but we would arrive two hours before them since we had the faster boat!