HAMMERHEADS, GIANT MANTA, ORCAS....ECUADOR 2010

ECUADOR 2010. diving in the galapagos and isla de la plata.
thanks to andy philips , kari & matt atkins for the extra footage.
Sadly, legally sanctioned no fishing zones in and around Ecuador' national parks are not being enforced. All the diving I did after I left the Galapagos was at Isla de la Plata, eighteen miles by boat from Puerto Lopez. Isla de la Plata is a national park sometimes refered to as "the poor mans Galapagos", a national park with a two mile no fishing zone around it. Yet everyday fishermen and tourists on sport fishing charters plied the waters above us as we dived. We removed hundreds of feet of abandoned fishing nets we found wrapped around the reef within five hundred yards of the national park rangers station (the guys we had to pay each day for our park entry fee). The fishermen even used the calm bay in front of the rangers station as a mooring while they repaired their nets!! Ecuador is yet another country whose marine life is being decimated by the greed to satisfy the asian market for shark and ray fins.
Hurry to Ecuador, it's a lovely country and the diving is fantastic but sadly at the rate they're fishing sharks and rays, they'll be none left in a few years.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• galapagos
• wolf island
• darwin
• shark
• hammerhead
• orca
• manta
• whale shark
• finning
• underwater diving
• scuba
• puerto lopez

[laurencehegarty]

well about 70% of all fish caught are waste, thrown back dead because they weren't what the boat was after. the most wasteful and destructive method of food production on earth.

[TheGarakatsu]

so cool

[yusamson]

pretty upset

[1Dann1]

so sad. our entire ocean is very rapidly becoming a wasteland. most of the people i kno dont even like sea food.. and yet we harvest in such quanitiy. i wonder how much of what we catch becomes waste anyway

[Carlitos2377]

powerful.. thanks