How Many Logged Dives Do You Need At Least To Dive In Galapagos?

If you are planning a scuba diving trip to the Galapagos Islands, you may be wondering how many logged dives you need to dive in Galapagos. Scuba diving in the Galapagos Islands is stunning, but challenging. It’s these challenges that make it important to understand how many logged dives do you need at least to dive in Galapagos Islands.

50 logged dives is recommended to scuba dive the Galapagos Islands. Most Galapagos scuba diving liveaboards have a minimum of 50 logged dives and PADI Advanced Open Water certification, as the conditions can be challenging due currents and surges, ocean swells, water temperatures and deep dives.

The best way to dive the Galapagos Islands, and especially Darwin Island and Wolf Rock, is by a scuba diving liveaboard. You can check the latest and best deals on Galapagos liveaboards using the following window:

Can you scuba diving in the Galapagos Islands?

You can most definitely scuba dive in the Galapagos Islands. In fact one of the most famous dives includes scuba diving with hundreds of schooling hammerheads at Wolf and Darwin Islands. However, you can only dive Wolf and Darwin Islands from a Galapagos Islands scuba diving liveaboard.

Scuba diving the Galapagos Islands is a year-round activity. But it’s generally better to dive in the months of December to May, as the average water temperatures are generally warmer. Also, the schools of hammerheads are larger between December to May.

Be aware that the seas tend to be rougher between June and November, but this is the best time to see whale sharks in the Galapagos Islands. You will also see schooling hammerheads at this time of year, but the numbers will be slightly lower.

So if you love to scuba dive with sharks, the Galapagos Islands should be at the top of your list of shark dive destinations.

How much does it cost to dive in Galapagos?

It costs around £120 ($160/€130) for a two tank dive in the Galapagos Islands. However, I would recommend you dive on a liveaboard rather than a resort base. Galapagos Islands scuba diving liveaboards range from the cheaper Galapagos Aqua Liveaboard starting at £161 per day ($219/€180).

But if you want to spend more on your scuba diving liveaboard it can cost over £536 per day ($729/€601), which is what the Galapagos Sky Liveaboard costs per day. But to see a full list of Galapagos scuba diving liveaboards in a handy table, please take a look at this page about Galapagos scuba diving liveaboards. Included is a handy table of the best time to go and average water and air temperatures.

Scuba diving Galapagos beginners

The best scuba diving in the Galapagos is not for beginners, especially when you consider it’s referred to as the best advanced diving location. It has also been noted in a leading diving magazine as one of the world’s 10 most difficult recreational dive sites.

The diving is often drift diving in currents with underwater surges, some low visibility diving and at times in colder waters. You are far better to build your diving experience from beginner diver and take your Advanced Open Water Diver certification or equivalent beforehand. This way you will be able to enjoy more of the diving the Galapagos Islands are famous for. This includes diving with the schooling hammerheads at Wolf and Darwin Islands.

Also, be prepared to dive in a drysuit to be really comfortable when the sea temperatures are colder. But some scuba divers are happy in a thick wetsuit or a semi-drysuit in water temperatures this low.

Galapagos diving tours on a liveaboard

Galapagos diving tours provides the opportunity to see the following sea creatures:

• Huge schools of scalloped hammerheads.
• Galapagos sharks.
• Large whale sharks.
• Tiger sharks.
• Swim with Galapagos sea lions.
• Swim with penguins.
• Dive with marine iguanas.
• Experience sea turtles.

My top pick for a Galapagos scuba diving liveaboard is the Galapagos Aqua Liveaboard. The Galapagos Aqua liveaboard is perfect if you’re looking for the best all-round Galapagos liveaboard. The Galapagos Aqua is perfect as it has a maximum of 16 divers onboard. It also has flexible booking terms; is rated 9.0 out of 10 and has nitrox is on board. Plus dives the best dives around Darwin and Wolf Islands. Read this review of the Aqua here.

But you may also like to find out if there are great white sharks in the Galapagos Islands.

Table of Galapagos liveaboards

This list of Galapagos liveaboards is in descending customer rating order, followed by Scuba Diving Luxury Rating (SDE Lux Rating, see below), so the liveaboards with the highest customer rating and the best SDE lux rating will be at the top of the list. If you want to change the list order, use the “Sort by” dropdown below.

The Scuba Diving Earth Luxury Rating (SDE Lux Rating) is explained on each liveaboard review when you click the “Discover Liveaboard” link, and is my own Liveaboard Luxury Rating I’ve assigned to all liveaboards. Choosing between liveaboards is helped by customer scores, and if you get stuck choosing between two or three liveaboards, where each one has a high customer score out of 10, you can use the SDE Luxury Rating to help narrow down your choice.

Think about it like using Booking.com when searching for the best hotel. Booking.com also use a customer score where each customer rates hotels out of 10. This is similar to the liveaboard customer rating, which is also rated out of 10. But let’s say you only like to stay in hotels rated 8 and above on Booking.com, but you also want the hotel to have WIFI or parking, or to have a swimming pool etc. The features each hotel has is usually secondary to the score out of 10.

I hope you enjoyed this page about how many logged dives do you need at least to dive in Galapagos

If you have more questions either about snorkelling or scuba diving (or specifically about how many logged dives do you need at least to dive in Galapagos), please comment below with your questions.

Please share your experiences, plus dive sites, resorts and liveaboards you recommend. Share the time of year of your trip together with what you saw, the visibility, currents and dive operator, as this will help others who read this page.

There will also be many more pages and articles about scuba and scuba diving safety tips (and on snorkelling too) for you to read and learn about this fabulous sport.

Have fun and be safe!