Photo by Joel Poledna
The Dirty Dozen Expeditions Galapagos Rebreathers ONLY PHOTO DUMP/BLOG - FIRST DAYS.
I wanted to try and do a photo blog approach of our expedition to Galápagos Islands since we have connectivity instead of internet blackout (more on that later)
Few days ago 16 rebreathers (and their owners) started flying from all over the world towards Quito/Guayaquil in Ecuador en route to the Galápagos Islands.
The flights are simple and short from North America, with United offering direct flights to Quito which is Ecuador’s United Hub, where there is a direct flight to San Cristóbal where you embark the boat.
Once you are in Quito/Guayaquil, you pass a booth to get a Galapagos Transit Control Card (20$), and then head over for biosecurity scanning of your luggage, where you get a blue ribbon around your luggage signaling that your contents are safe to land in the Galápagos.
The flight from Quito to San Cristóbal is around 4 hours, and SC is just absolutely breathtaking.
This team also really enjoyed spending time there, surrounded by iguanas, sea lions and tons of endemic species while getting rid of jet lag and making sure luggage arrived safely.
Photo by Martin Broen
Finally, on Monday at lunchtime the team embarked our expedition vessel - where myself and the owner and operators of Galapagos Rebreathers Javier Mahauad and Eduardo greeted them with hundreds of kilos of fresh sofnolime, medical grade o2, large variety of onboard and bailout cylinders - all included.
After welcome briefing, boat briefing and boat safety briefing - a lot of equipment setup (faffing) followed. The units onboard on this trip are:
6 x JJ’s
4 x rEvo’s
2 x Choptima
2 x SF2
1 x Sidewinder
1 x XCCR
1 x P2
1 x AP
Once equipment was setup - safety drills and dinner followed by a fantastic presentation from Eduardo on history, vulcanology, marine currents and geology of the Galápagos Islands.
6AM the following morning (today), we went to North Seymour for a SPECTACULAR land-tour, where the team was greeted by courting blue footed boobies, frigates, sea lions, marine iguanas, land iguanas and Galápagos lava gull. There are some INCREDIBLE photos in this album from this visit.
Photo by Joel Poledna
After the land visit - Antti, myself, Javier and Eduardo did our 2 hour diving procedures safety briefing which has been standardized for our global operations and audited by Gareth Lock and The Human Diver: Human Factors in Diving, for a consistent and safe experience in all our locations.
This afternoon we prepped all the rebreathers for a check dive, where the team was able to test their rebreathers and equipment in detail after the travel, get into solid teams and establish strong team diving procedures, and practicing essential skills like bailout drills and SMB Deployment as well as utilizing our SPLASH checklist.
Now we are back on the vessel and 18 hour steam en route to Darwin Island - where we will spend 2 glorious dives tomorrow in the “theatre” hopefully accompanied by hundreds of hammerheads sharks and more.
Oh, and by the way, the reason we have connectivity instead of internet blackout is that we brought our SpaceX Starlink onboard which we have tested on the mainland, the islands and now on the boat steaming and its working beyond belief well. It is a complete GAMECHANGER.
The average internet connection in Galápagos Islands is extremely poor, about 1 Mpbs connection if we are lucky and complete internet blackout once we board the vessel normally. Now we have 100Mpbs connection and we are planning to implement this tool in ALL our operations with a big announcement to follow.
Photo by Martin Broen
We have spots for our CCR ONLY Trip in 2024 - find more information here: https://cutt.ly/D301QTw - Email us on info@thedirtydozen.org to reserve your spot.
WELCOME TO THE REAL JURASSIC PARK!
That’s it for now. Stay tuned!!
Photo by Martin Broen