Bathymetry

We’ve been here for just over 2 months now and I feel that I have more geographical knowledge on the underwater portion of this magical place. I’m quickly closing in on 15 dives now and I think I might be super close to 100 snorkels. We had a few dives with Judith’s class (Marine Ecosystems) which took us through Tijeretas, The Karahua Shipwreck in the bay, and Leon Dormido which were awesome experiences, but I’ll have to say that the dives we convinced our teacher to do and did on our own in this past class were the best and most exciting of my life. Luis “Lucho” Vinueza made a return as our professor for Marine Conservation in this class that has just passed (without having giving us grades from our first class *cough*) and was his usual goofy self, sorpresas and all. Our class focused on mostly marine invasive species, debates about the Galapagos, and as many dives as we could fit into this small time frame. Luis accompanied us when we went to Leon Dormido. It was a pretty smooth dive splattered with Lucho moments of pretending to sleep on the bottom, pointing out every whelk we passed (you have no idea how important whelks are), and showing us that they are super good to eat with spectacular hand motions. The only thing that could make it better would be if it was on some coincidentally special day, like por ejemplo 11/11/11! Pues, it was and we all exasperatedly waited and hoped that we would be under the water for 11:11am to roll around. And wouldn’t you know we were!!! Everyone with watches tried frantically to signal to the rest that fue el momento that we’d all been waiting for, and joy was had by underwater dancing by all (even if we were buddy breathing)

Our next dive would be ‘neath the Eastern Tropical Pacific’s evening sky. Scott, arranged a night dive. These in San Cristobal happen at the old pier near our university’s beach (lammeeeee) but since there were so many of us we went to Tijeretas. With the sea as calm as the starry sky above it we motored out to dive spot. While listening to Shay and Angel give us instructions we watched the familiar Orion reflected in the dark waters until we noticed that the water was glowing too! Plankton at it again, illuminated the boat’s wake just increasing the intensity of our excitement.

Splash! Into the water with wide eyes and lights, we dove and were met with a sea floor covered spine to spine with urchins, lobsters peeking from crevasses, and a very confused ray that kept nonchalantly following our lights till it realized it was about 5 meters off the bottom (whoops). Yeh, it was eerie at times with swift, dark shapes zooming past us (sea lions, siempre chistoso). While ascending we all occupied ourselves by covering our lights and flapping like mantas till the plankton around us started to glow. We did this until we surfaced we another dream fulfilled and Orion a little further up in the night sky.

But Lucho’s class wasn’t all fun and diving; we played soccer sometimes, and had debates too! Our first one was on the Malecon (boardwalk) so we could watch the sunset over the water and discoos over some cervezas (can you say priorities?). Being here for around 2 months and we these beautiful people for about 3, we could talk candidly bout tourism. It’s the root for high standard of living of the Galapaguenos and also the root for most of the environmental problems here as well. Although we will live here for awhile it’s difficult to separate us from the tourists that come here. I can’t blame them for wanting to come here, it’s truly enchanted, and don’t get me wrong I, as well as my friends, have developed a huge superiority complex over the gringos extranos. But, we see this place differently and I don’t think any of us could come up with an answer except for limiting the tourist numbers. If the Galapagos isn’t for everyone though, where is? The discussion got pretty deep and I still ponder about where my place is here> we all agree we all wanna come back, and this place feels like home, but unlike my dear friend, Jessica, Studying abroad in Montpellier, I will never fit in here. Soy un gringo por la vida. C’est la vie.

Next is another trip to Santa Cruz for the last week of our penultimate class!

Also, just so you know Bathymetry is pronounced (ba-thim-uh-tree) not (bathie-metrie) we all have gaps in our knowledge.

Also, Save the whelks.

You’re whelkcome. 

Fredinator out