The Dives
After a few hours, we arrived in the most famous diving site of the
Galapagos Archipelago, Darwin. There's only one place to dive : on
Darwin's Arch. It's very simple : you jump into the water, go down to
20m, hide a little onto the rock, and then you wait.
There's a cleaning station for the hammerheads, but what most divers
are waiting for, is whale shark.
Between june and october, the adults whale-sharks are coming to Darwin
to give birth to their young ones. In 15 years of diving in Darwin, our
guide have only witnessed once this great event (and no video on this
day!). They're circling around the Arch, because of the shallow waters.
What make this place so special, is that you can meet adult animals, in
scuba diving, and with a big belly !! Sometimes, they're as big as
whales!
I went twice to the Galapagos, on the same dates, with a 4 years
interval. The first time, I saw 2 whale-sharks, the second time 15. So
even in Galapagos, the pelagic is still the pelagic.
In terms of size, the animals you can see dive with, are
reaching an average 10m in length. But the second WS on the
sequence is slightly smaller, and the biggest one I swimmed with (on
another sequence), is about 16m long.
Although very peaceful, their huge tail allow them to swim very fast !!
In Darwin, we stay on the reef for about 20mn. In the meantime, if "Le
Big Señor" is showing, it will be in more shallow waters (<10m).
Then you go back to the rocks. And after a while, you follow the guide
to the blue to see more animals. That why, on the second WS, we're only
two divers.
If I can, I try to have at leat one another diver on the film, that
gives a good idea regarding the size of the animal, and what
we felt when we saw the animal! As you can see, he's very peaceful, and
it's very easy to get near him...
The Editing
On this sequence (with the 2nd whale-shark), I used my film as well as
my guide's, and I synchonised both of them. I was on the right on the
animal, he was in front on the left, than on the left, and after that
on the rear. So you can see me on the begining, filming on the left
(with the other diver bellow and ahead of me) , and at the end, you can
see me again, at the tail of the animal.
The
guide's images are smaller because their quality were lower (worst
definition due to less good equipment, and the tapes'transfert from
NTSC to PAL).