Galapagos Dive Live a board situation - Updated April 16, 2008

SUMMARY - As of today only 4 yachts have a permit to offer dive trips in Galapagos.  Those 4 yachts are the Sky Dancer, the 2 Aggressors and the Deep Blue.  The Deep Blue is the most recent addition to this list and so this particular yacht still has some space available in 2008. The other three yacht have only a very limited amount of space left at this point in time.  For a list of available trips, please visit

http://www.galapagosadventures.com/page8.html

The information posted in this area of my web site is posted here to help everyone understand what has been taken place in Galapagos concerning diving trips.  This information is NOT to be published and/or posted on any other web site without written authorization from Galapagos Adventures.  The primary reason for this is the fact that this information is dynamic.  I will modify the contents of this web site as new information comes to light.  Once the information leaves this website, I can no longer make modifications to it which is why I want it to stay here.   However, please feel free to share the link to this site with any other concerned persons. 

Disclaimer.  I am neither an Ecuadorian nor a lawyer.  This is my interpretation of the situation in Ecuador.  This information has been collected by me over a number of months and some of it is second hand knowledge.  It may or may not turn out to be completely true.

UPDATE  - April 16, 2008
In March of 1998, a law titled RETANP  (El Reglamento Especial de Turismo en las Áreas Naturales Protegidas or in English - the Special Regulation of Tourism in the Protected Natural Area) was passed.   This law called for the issuing of "Tour Navegable de Buceo cupos" (or in English, permits to operate dive trips) but these were never issued.  The fishermen have lobbied for an interpretation of this law that would give them sole rights to diving in Galapagos and it appears that a number of Ecuadorian politician have agreed with this interpretation.   If this was indeed the intention of this law, it was meant to move some of the fishermen from the fishing industry into the tourist industry by giving them an alternative way of making a living.  Unfortunately the authors of this law did not take into consideration the ability of these people to actually use this right.   The probability of any of them being able to come up with the money to purchase or build a multi-million dollar dive yacht is remote.  The fishermen as a group are very poor and uneducated.  Few if any of them are scuba certified and many of those that have attempted to use scuba to assist in their fishing activities have ended up in the recompression chamber.  Therefore even if they are able to come up with an acceptable yacht, they lack the expertise to operator or market diving trips.  Yet none the less, it does appear that in the near future, the GNP will issue Tour Navegable de Buceo cupos and the fishermen will be giving the top priority when the GNP decides who will receive these new cupos.

Each year every yacht in Galapagos is issued a patente from DIGMAR (the merchant marine) that certifies the yacht is safe to operate and authorizes the specific economic activity of the vessel.  Printed on the side of the patente there is an itinerary that has been approved for the yacht.  This is the itinerary the yacht is allowed to operate without asking for additional permission from the GNP.  Next to each site, (which by it's listing on the patente gives approval for LAND activities there if they are allowed), is a list of additional activities that the yacht is authorized to participate in at that site.  "Buceo" (diving) is not listed as an activity on ANY patente because diving has been an unregulated activity in Galapagos. 

Most of the yachts in Galapagos that were offering dive trips prior to 2008 also offer naturalist tours.  As diving was an unregulated activity BUT land visits were regulated, their patentes listed the naturalist itinerary on the side.  The exception to this was the Sky Dancer and the Aggressors.  These three yachts ONLY ran dive trips so on their patentes was (is) an itinerary which includes the islands of Darwin and Wolf.   As diving was an unregulated activity and as no one is ever allowed to go to shore at either Darwin or Wolf, the yachts with the naturalist trip itineraries on their patentes simply skipped their regular land visits and went up to Darwin and Wolf to dive.  This was NEVER a problem in the past and several yachts had been doing this for over 17 years.  All of the yachts were doing this with the full knowledge of the national park.  All the past GNP directors were aware that the yachts were doing this and none of them were bothered by it. 

Sometime prior to the summer of 2007, Raquel Molina was appointed as the director of the Galapagos National Park.  Raquel was the person who was primarily responsible for all the chaos in the Galapagos dive industry.   Eventually she was fired (on March 7, 2008 to be exact) for the following reasons (as stated by her boss, the Minister of the Environment):
Raquel Molina has been rude and disrespectful.
Raquel Molina is ungovernable.  She does not listen to her superiors.
Raquel Molina does not follow the guidelines of the minister of the environment and the government and follows a policy of her own. 

I am posting this information because this gives the reader an idea of the type of personality that was involved in making the decisions at the National Park in 2007.   Raquel Molina ran the park as a dictator - and not a very nice dictator.  She listened to no one and she was unconcerned how her decisions affected anyone.  Most of the time, it was not so much as to what she did, but rather how she did it.  I personally watched as she alienated almost everyone involved in the Galapagos tourist industry.  This is very ironic because the tourist industry is the industry that has the most to gain from the conservation of the islands (the primary objective of the park) and had been in the past extremely supportive of the Galapagos National Park. 

In June of  2007 UNESCO  - (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) declared Galapagos as an endangered "World Hertiage Site". 
The reasons given were:
1.  There are too many tourists visiting the islands.
2   There is too many illegal immigrants living in the islands.
3.  The presence of invading plants and animals that compete for space and resources with the endemic flora and fauna.
4.  The insufficient capacity of the administration of the islands to confront the problems listed above.

As a result, Raquel Molina decided to strictly enforce the regulation of the national park and to her that meant strictly enforcing the itineraries that were listed on the yacht patentes.   She also sided with the fishermen's argument that the yachts offering dive trips had assumed an unauthorized and unregulated economic activity that by rights should belong to them despite the fact that the vast majority of the yachts which were operating diving tours had what the owners of the yachts termed "acquired rights" - i.e. that the cupo associated with their current yacht had been associated with a yacht that had run dive trips prior to 1998 when the law was past and were thus "grandfathered in" to this activity.   

On July 10, 2007 without prior notice, she ordered all the dive operators in Galapagos that did not have Darwin and Wolf on their patentes to immediately shut down their operations.  She refused to discuss this decision with any of the yacht owners despite many of them traveling to her office at the national park headquarters to beg her to reconsider.  Her decision was done with total disregard for the hundreds of tourists that had used their hard earned money to come to Galapagos to dive and even divers who were already in Galapagos were told that they could no longer participate in the activity.   

Needless to say, the created an international outrage among the divers and dive operators all over the world.  The resulting political pressure traveled all the way to the president of Ecuador's office.   After almost 2 months of chaos, an agreement was finally reached to allow all the operators who had promised and booked dive trips to resume their operations until December 31, 2007.    This agreement was delayed on numerous occasions by Raquel Molina's refusal to attend meeting and/or sign documents.
When 2008 arrived only the Sky Dancer and the 2 Aggressors were allow to continue to operate dive trips.   Many yachts owners did their best to try to get permission to continue to offer diving trips and when Raquel Molina was fired, it gave many of the dive operators a renewed hope for a resolution to the diving issue.   Unfortunately as time passed this hope faded and with the lone exception of the Deep Blue, all of the other yachts have given up on diving and have entered into the naturalist trip market.

On February 15, 2008, the Ecuadorian courts sided with the Deep Blue in their lawsuit against the GNP and as a result, the Deep Blue was given the legal right to offer dive trips.  They received the official documents from the courts on February 19 and on February 26, they requested an itinerary change from the GNP to a diving itinerary which includes Darwin and Wolf.   Raquel Molina, the now ex-director of the GNP immediately departed for Quito so that she could delay the signing the required documents.  This is not a surprise.  This is exactly the kind of behavior she exhibited last summer when she delayed for almost 2 months the compromise that was worked out to allow the dive operators to resume their operations .   
The second week of March the owners of the Deep Blue contacted the courts to complain that the GNP has thus far refused to follow the court's directive.  On Friday March 14, the courts issued an order to the GNP instructing them to issue a new patente with a diving itinerary within 5 business days but in typical GNP fashion, they managed to delay the issuing of the patente again.  Finally on April 15, 2008, the GNP issued a new patente to the Deep Blue with a diving itinerary.

Click here to see the new diving patente for the Deep Blue

LAND VISITS ON DIVE TRIPS/ DIVING ON NATURALIST TRIPS
The fishermen have argued that doing land visits on diving trip or diving on naturalist trips constitutes a "double activity" which they claim is illegal.  All of the naturalist yacht have been told to stop offering diving on their trips.   A few of the naturalist yachts still offer diving by subbing the diving out to one of the land based dive operators.  Diving on these trips is only possible when the yachts itinerary has the yacht close to one of the towns.  The 4 yachts which now have diving patentes are still allowed to do a few land excursions during the tour, exactly like it was in 2007.  Keep in mind that there never have been very many land excursion on any Galapagos dive trip.  Darwin and Wolf are the 2 best dive sites in the world so much of your time is spent there.  Land visits never have been and never will be allowed on those 2 islands.
It is possible that this may change in 2009 and that the dive yachts may not be allowed to visit land sites that within the National Park areas in 2009.   However land visits will be allowed in the towns and on privately owned areas. 

I hope this information has been helpful to you in understanding the very complex situation that is occurring in Galapagos. I will update this information as new information comes to light.

Sincerely
Ken Weemhoff
Pres. Galapagos Adventures