UPDATED  Nov 18, 2011
On January 31 of each year the Galapagos National Park (GNP) issues every yacht in Galapagos a patente (permit).  On each patente there is an itinerary that specifies the sites which can be visited each day and authorizes the activities which can be done at each site. 
At the beginning of 2010, there were 6 yachts authorized by the GNP to offer diving trips in Galapagos.  4 of these 6 yachts had permanent diving patentes (the 2 Aggressor yachts, the Galapagos Sky - formally the Sky Dancer, and the Deep Blue) and each of these patentes included several land visits during the week.   
The other 2 yachts had temporary diving patentes (the Estrella del Mar and the Alta).  These patentes did not include any land visits within the GNP park.  In April of 2010 the Alta SANK reducing the number of dive yachts to 5.  In mid 2010, the GNP authorized 13 new groups the right to be granted a diving patente and on July 9, 2010 the first of the new diving patentes was issued to the new yacht "Humboldt Explorer".   This new patente did not contain any land visit within the GNP. 
The GNP offered the remaining groups the opportunity to covert their future patente from a dive patente to a naturalist patente and 3 of the remaining 12 groups accepted this offer.  Therefore the maximum number of dive yachts in Galapagos will be capped at 14.  Two new yachts, the M/V Darwin Buddy and the M/V Wolf Buddy were constructed in Guayaquil Ecuador in 2011.  The first of these 2 new yachts, the MV Wolf Buddy, begin operation in Galapagos in early October of 2011.  The MV Darwin Buddy began operations in early November 2011.  This brings the total number of dive yachts in Galapagos to 7 (the 2 Aggressor yachts, the Galapagos Sky, the Deep Blue, the Humboldt Explorer, the Darwin Buddy and the Wolf Buddy)

Land Visits on Dive Trips in 2011 
When the park issued the patentes for the dive yachts in 2011, NONE of the yachts were authorized to make land visits within the GNP and they authorized each yacht to do a maximum of three dives per day, two in the morning and one in the afternoon.
You should keep several things in mind when thinking about all this:
1.  Dive trips all run to the islands of Darwin and Wolf (the best dive sites).  These 2 islands are a 14 to 20 hour navigation from the southern islands.  The dive yachts all spend at least 3 days up there diving and land visits have NEVER been allowed.  Therefore Galapagos dive trips have NEVER offered very many land visits. 
2.  97% of all the land in Galapagos is owned by the GNP but 3% is privately owned.  The GNP can not restrict land visits to sites that are not owned by the park and there are a number of tourist sites in these areas.   
3.  Night diving in Galapagos is dangerous so it is not allowed.
4.  Diving in Galapagos is high energy diving and thus few people are physically capable of doing more than 3 dives.  Long navigations between sites also restrict the number of dives that are possible.  Therefore restricting the number of dives per day will have little effect on the number of dives that are offered on any given Galapagos dive trip.

Here is a list of the land visits that are offered by the dive yachts in 2011
All land visits listed below are NOT within the national park

Galapagos Sky:   
Highlands of Santa Cruz
Interpretation Center - San Cristobal Island

Aggressor 1 and 2:
Puerto Ayora - Charles Darwin Research Station
Interpretation Center - San Cristobal Island

Deep Blue:
Highlands of Santa Cruz
Puerto Ayora - Charles Darwin Research Station
Interpretation Center - San Cristobal Island

Humboldt Explorer
Interpretation Center - San Cristobal Island

Darwin Buddy / Wolf Buddy
Puerto Ayora - Charles Darwin Research Station
Interpretation Center - San Cristobal Island

Want to know more about the situation - read on:
Galapagos Adventures has been operating dive trips to Galapagos since the early 1990s.  As a result of our longevity in this field, we have a much clearer understanding of the situation concerning the current state of things in Galapagos.  There are many people who are interested in going to Galapagos to dive but they are in various levels of awareness as to the issues concerning such a trip.  This is a VERY simplified explanation as to what has transpired in the Galapagos diving industry over the past 20 years.  I am writing this document to help regular divers/ dive tourist understand the situation there a little better.  Hopefully after reading this you will have a better understanding of what you can and can not do and why. 

Back in the 1990s, very few people were diving in Galapagos.  Only about 30,000 people a year traveled to Galapagos of which less than 1500 came to dive.   Diving was a completely unregulated activity and no one paid much attention to it. 

In March of 1998, a law was passed by the government of Ecuador that was intended to help protect Galapagos.  Like all laws, it is subject to interpretation by the courts and by the government agencies that are assigned to enforce it.

Over the next 10 years, the Galapagos travel industry exploded with an estimated 150,000 people a year traveling there.  Galapagos suddenly became one of the hottest dive destinations in the world and an estimated 20,000 divers coming to dive there each year.  As a result of this huge increase in tourist activities, in order to protect the wildlife and the park, the rules of the Galapagos National Park (from here on abbreviated - GNP) had to be much more strictly enforced and many new rules had to be added.

All yachts that operate within the park / marine reserve must have a permit called a "patente".   Each year the GNP issues a new patente to all the yachts in Galapagos.  On the side of each patente the approved itinerary for that yacht is listed.  Each yacht is required to follow the approved itinerary each week for that entire year UNLESS special permission is granted by the GNP to alter the itinerary.  This controls the number of tourists that visit each of the approved sites within the park and prevents congestion at those sites.  In the 1990s, changing a yacht's itinerary was a simple as making a request to the park.   However as the number of tourists exploded, it became more and more important for the park to enforce this rule.  Getting a special itinerary for a specific week became more and more difficult.  In 2005, the GNP decided to no longer accept any request for modifications of itineraries and all yacht had to follow their approved itinerary without exception.

Prior to 2007, many yachts would offer diving as an activity during their regular cruises to those passengers that were scuba certified.  This was known locally as "occasional diving programs" and it brought in additional revenue for the yachts.  Sometime in 2007 (I don't recall the exact date) the GNP announce that naturalist yachts could no longer offer diving as an activity on their tours.  The reasoning for this was that a single tourist doing both land visits and diving was having the environmental impact of 2 people (one that was diving and one that was walking around on shore) and they wanted to reduce this impact.  Some yachts decided to "skirt" this rule by subbing the diving out to one of the local dive operators.  When the yacht is close enough to the town, the local dive boat will come out to the yacht and pick the passenger up.  The passenger will then go diving with the local operator and as a result will miss the land visits that day.  This eliminates the environmental impact on the land from that passenger on that day and has an additional benefit of increasing the local town's economy so the park allows it. 

Prior to July 2007, many yachts were operating dive trips to Darwin and Wolf.  They were also running naturalist trips on some weeks.  They were able to do this by having a naturalist itinerary on their patente and following that itinerary when they were operating naturalist trips.    Remember that diving was an unregulated activity AND no land excursions are allowed on either Darwin or Wolf so on the weeks they were operating dive trips, they would simply "skip" their land visits on several day, motor to Darwin/Wolf, dive, then motor back to the southern islands and jump back on their regular itinerary.  This actually reduced the environmental impact on the land visitation sites so the GNP did not seem to mind.  Some yachts had been doing this for almost 20 years without any problems. 

In July of 2007, without prior notice, the GNP decided shut down all of the yachts that were offering diving trips except for 3 (the Aggressor I, Aggressor II and the Sky Dancer).   Hundreds of dive trips were cancelled and thousands of divers were directly affected.  Needless to say this created massive chaos that rippled throughout the diving community.  The justification for this action was
1.  The yachts were NOT following the itinerary on their patentes. 
2.  The GNP interpreted the law that was passed in March of 1998 in such a way as to give the rights to operate diving trips to the local fishermen.  As a result the park stated that all the yachts offering diving were conducting an unauthorized and illegal activity. 
The 3 yachts that ONLY ran dive trips had Darwin and Wolf listed on their patentes so they were allowed to continue their operations uninterrupted even though in allowing them to do this, it contradicted reason number 2.  ALL other yachts where told to immediately STOP all diving operations despite the fact they had dive trips in progress. 
After 6 very difficult weeks, the president of Ecuador stepped in and ordered the GNP to allow the yachts that had previous contracts with various dive operators to operate diving trip through the end of 2007.   

The original concept of giving rights to operate diving trips to the fishermen required that the fishermen that applied for the diving patente not only give up their rights to fish but also they must own the yacht that is to operate the diving tours.  The fishermen are NOT allowed to lease this permit to someone else that either already owns or has the money to purchase a dive yacht and the permit could not be used in either a partnership or a corporation.   Of course it is easy for most of us to see that the fisherman - being a poor and uneducated bunch - are not able to come up the amount of money that is required to purchase a live-aboard diving yacht and no one in their right mind is going to transfer the ownership of a multimillion dollar yacht over to a fisherman on a handshake.  After wasting a bunch more time, the GNP decided to modify this position to allow people who are "permanent residents" of Galapagos to form partnerships with fishermen in order to put together groups of people that collectively will be able to successfully operate diving charters.  As a result a number of groups attempted to put things together in order to get involved with the Galapagos diving industry. 
The GNP came up with an elaborate point grading system to determine who would get a diving patente (the legal document outline all this was over 60 pages long !).  The GNP gave the fishermen until the end of June 2008 to fill out and submit all of the required paperwork to apply.  They extended the deadline until Sept 30, 2008 then extended it again to Dec 31, 2008 and then again to Feb 28, 2009. 
Finally in the spring of 2010, the GNP give the rights to apply for a diving patente to these 13 groups.  Each group has been given a total of 3 years to come up with a yacht and prove to the park that they can operate dive trips.  If they can, they will be issued a patente.   On July 9, 2010 the FIRST of these permits was issued to the Humboldt Explorer.   In September of 2011 the second new patente was issued to the MV Wolf Buddy.  More will eventually follow.   


What is available for dive trips to Galapagos in the year 2011 and the prices